As a divorce attorney, I have been part of the collaborative divorce movement for 12 years. Before that, I spent 25 years in the adversarial divorce system. Over the past 14 years – since collaborative began in New York State – collaborative has been gaining a reputation as the less stressful, less costly, way to divorce. Yet it astonishes me that many people still choose to go the adversarial route; many of those divorces escalate into monumental messes.
I wish there were a way to persuade people that – even in high conflict divorces – revenge on your spouse is not in your best interest. In New York State, there are legal guidelines for distribution of assets, maintenance, child support, etc. Fighting for demands beyond those legal guidelines can be a great adrenaline rush. Your attorney may even succeed in getting your spouse to cave on some of those issues. You may feel that you have “won.” In the long term, though, you lose. The true winners are the adversarial attorneys who have succeeded in lining their pockets with assets that could have been shared by the divorcing spouses.
