Is it true what they say - that it is not the divorce itself but the way you divorce that takes the heaviest toll?

Tom Fisher, a solicitor specialising in Family Law based in Heswall at Jackson Lees, certainly believes so. As well as being a member of the National Campaigning Family Law Group Resolution, Tom is also a member of a pioneering group of solicitors across the country who offer a way of making the break and surviving the aftermath – Collaborative law.

It is a sad fact of life, but divorce is here to stay with the most recent statistics suggesting that almost half of UK marriages will end in failure. The real cost of relationship breakdown is not merely financial, although anyone who has been through the process will know how costly court battles over splitting assets can be.

The real costs are in the personal and emotional turmoil that so often accompanies the end of relationships. A bad divorce can leave lasting scars. Not just on the two main protagonists, but on their children and on their extended family and support network too.

Imagine though a situation in which the client sits down, together with their former partner, and their respective solicitors and commit to sorting it out together. Both clients share their hopes, their aspirations, their expectations and even their fears, and the four of you work together to create an agreement with which you all agree. The clients emerge from the process ready to get on with the rest of their lives without the bitterness and unresolved anger that so often accompanies the divorce process.

This approach is called Collaborative law, and for many couples and their children, it is proving the very best way forward.

So how does it work?

To start with everyone enters a written agreement not to go to court. Lawyers who practice the collaborative approach have all the technical legal expertise you would expect. Additionally they have taken extra training in how to work collaboratively. It does take a special kind of lawyer. They are skilled and compassionate professionals who are not afraid to call in additional help, from mediators or counsellors for example, where the situation demands it.

Both clients set the agenda. They work at the pace at which they feel comfortable. They commit to full disclosure and all talk openly about the issues that matter to them. They don’t feel as if they are being dragged helplessly along a legal conveyor belt.

Tom says:

One of the benefits is that Collaborative law sends out remarkably positive signals to children who, research has consistently shown, benefit hugely from knowing that their parents are working out their differences together, constructively.

It’s not an easy option; it requires the right mind set from everyone involved. But for couples for whom it is right, it provides a genuine resolution of marital breakdown and those who come out the other end report a genuine sense of well-being. Many successfully remain friends with their former partners, in an atmosphere of respect and understanding which, they say, at the beginning of the process they could never have contemplated.

If you are going through a relationship breakdown from your partner, Collaborative Law is a method that seeks to resolve your differences in an amicable and positive way without the need for Court proceedings.

If you would like to talk to one of our specialist family law advisers, please contact our Liverpool and Wirral experts by clicking here for a call back or message us your enquiry.