The most famous divorce in the news is, of course, the Brad Pitt-Angelina Jolie split. Needless to say, their divorce isn’t exactly typical. Moreover, Ms. Jolie filed for divorce in California, which has very different statutes and case law from New York divorce laws. This recent article from the New York Times gives some good basic information regarding divorce options for couples residing in New York State. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/01/your-money/how-rich-couples-who-arent-pitt-and-jolie-manage-their-divorces.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0
The article is a bid misleading in the way it describes team of “neutral” professionals who work on a collaborative divorce. Actually, each spouse in the divorce has their own attorney. But collaborative attorneys are trained in conflict resolution and interest-based negotiation, which is very different from the adversarial negotiation model that most attorneys know. So collaborative represents the best of two models. Collaborative is a form of mediation, which seeks to reduce conflict and facilitate a settlement that works well for both spouses. At the same time, in collaborative, each spouse has his/her own lawyer; this corrects power imbalances that make mediation a bad fit for a couple where one spouse has more financial assets and/or negotiating skills than the other.
