Why you should know your options
If you are contemplating the possibility of a divorce, you and your spouse might be like many couples for whom restructuring your family, disentangling your family’s finances, or planning your family’s separate futures cannot be done by a simple discussion at a kitchen table. Once the decision has been made that a divorce will occur, the next most important decision facing the couple is what process they will use to resolve their differences. The process that they select will not only have an impact upon the shorter term personal, emotional, and financial costs of reaching a resolution, but also the longer term, post-divorce outlook for all family members – both spouses as well as all children, whether adults or minors. Therefore, it is important to be well-informed regarding all of the existing process options, especially including the non-adversarial process options of collaborative divorce and mediation.