Win Your Divorce By Staying Out Of Court

By Ginger Gentile

The Covid-19 pandemic has made the backlog of family court worse, with some jurisdictions being shut down completely for months. Many divorcing couples rely on the courts to settle disputes without realizing that there is another path when you can’t reach an agreement on your own: collaborative law. 

One of the leading proponents of collaborative divorce law is Ashley-Nicole Russell, a child of high conflict divorce, lawyer and author of the book A Cure for Divorce Culture. “I do not believe that litigation helps families because it fails to protect children during the process since parents are pitted against each other,” said Russell. By the end of 2021 she expects to have settled a total of 500 cases using collaborative law.  

Collaborative family law is an out-of-court settlement which is similar to mediation with a key difference: In mediation, spouses work with one neutral third party who cannot give legal advice. In a collaborative setting, each spouse is represented by their own attorney. The attorneys are incentivized to settle because they sign an agreement that they cannot represent their clients in a trial.