All divorces involve decisions and choices. Which solicitors will assist you, and how you will utilise their help, are decisions that can powerfully affect whether your divorce moves forward smoothly or not.

Some couples resolve all their divorce issues without any professional assistance at all, although all are advised to seek legal advice. On the other end of the spectrum, some couples engage in protracted courtroom battles that cost dearly in emotional and financial resources and can take considerable time to complete. Most people find their needs fall between these extremes.

Below are the choices for obtaining professional legal services in divorce that are available today. The list moves from choices involving the least degree of professional intervention, and the most privacy and client control, to choices involving greater professional intervention and the least privacy and control.

Mediation:

A single neutral person, who may be a lawyer, or simply a mediator,acts as the mediator for the couple. The mediator helps the couple reach agreement, but does not give individual legal advice.

Collaborative Law:

Each person retains his or her own trained collaborative lawyer to advise and assist in negotiating an agreement on all issues. All negotiations take place in "four-way" settlement meetings that both clients and both lawyers attend. The lawyers cannot go to court or threaten to go to court. Settlement is the only agenda. If either client goes to court, both collaborative lawyers aredisqualified from further participation. Each client has built-in legal advice and advocacy during negotiations, and each lawyer's job includes guiding the client towards reasonable resolutions. The legal advice is an integral part of the process, but all the decisions are made by the clients. The lawyers generally prepare and process all papers required for the divorce.

Conventional Representation:

Each person hires a lawyer. The lawyers may be good at settling cases, in which case they work towards that goal at the same time that they prepare the case for the possibility of a court hearing. The pacing and objectives of the legal representation tend to be dictated by what happens in court. Cases handled this way generally involve higher legal fees, and take longer to complete than collaborative law cases or mediated cases. The risk of a high conflict divorce is higher than with mediation or collaborative law.

One or both parties may be motivated primarily by strong emotion(fear, anger, guilt etc) and as a consequence the parties take extreme, black and white positions and look to the courts for revenge or validation. Reasonable accommodations are not made. This is the costliest form of dispute resolution, emotionally and financially. It is always destructive for the children involved. Such cases can drag on for many years. Few clients report satisfaction with the outcome of cases handled this way, regardless of who won.