Collaborative Law

The collaborative process is one of a number of options for negotiating a financial settlement or child arrangements without going to Court. It can help you and your former partner reach an agreement whilst retaining the support and guidance from your own team of professionals.

What is the collaborative process?

Under the collaborative process, each person appoints their own collaboratively trained lawyer and you and your respective lawyers all meet together to work things out face to face. Both of you will have your lawyer by your side throughout the process and so you will have their support and legal advice as you go.

Besides your lawyer, you will have the opportunity, if needed, to work with an independent financial adviser (financial neutral), a family consultant, a child specialist or an accountant, who will provide you with specialist help regarding financial matters and those concerning children, parenting, communication and emotional support if and when you need it. All these professionals will collectively make up your collaborative team.

You and your team sign an agreement that commits you to trying to resolve the issues without going to court and prevents your team from representing you in court if the collaborative process breaks down. This means that everyone is absolutely committed to finding the best solutions by agreement, rather than through Court proceedings.

You also share anchor statements. These are personal statements about your main motivation for choosing the collaborative approach and avoiding Court. Referring to them helps to keep things on track when negotiations become a little tricky. Your solicitors will help you with your anchor statement.

Each family is different, but the Court has to follow set guidelines and procedures when making decisions for you; collaborative law gives you more flexibility in deciding what is important for you and your family. The collaborative process can offer a much quicker solution than going to Court, especially at the moment when there are significant delays at Court, meaning that it could take up to 18 months or more to finalise your case. It is also generally less costly than going to Court.

The Court now expects couples to do all that they can to resolve their differences out of Court and collaborative law is one approach that will meet this requirement.

As communication is through meetings, there are no delays in waiting for replies to emails and letters. You can time your meetings to fit in with other family events, working around occasions such as weddings, the start of a new school term and so on and ensuring that your family comes first.

Your partner will also need to instruct a collaboratively trained lawyer and we can provide you with details of local lawyers who can help or you can contact Resolution where there is a list of collaboratively trained lawyers.

What happens next?

Our Senior Associate Solicitor, Sally Ward and Associate, Samantha Markham are collaboratively trained. You would meet with Sally or Samantha who will discuss the process in more detail, find out what your priorities and concerns are, what you think your partner’s priorities and concerns are going to be and what you will say in your anchor statement. Your lawyer would then speak to your partner’s lawyer, having first agreed with you what she will tell them; your solicitors agree on the agenda for the first meeting.

There will usually be a series of meetings before you reach a settlement and, at each meeting, you will decide what needs to be discussed at the next meeting and what information is needed.

The final meeting is used to draft a Consent Order together and sign it, so that it can be submitted to Court and made legally binding.