Collaborative Law

Going to court is the most expensive and painful way to settle your differences in a divorce. Litigation and the preparation for it use many hours of an attorney’s time. Collaborative law seeks to resolve legal disputes between parties without resorting to the adversarial process of litigation. The goal of collaborative law is to reach resolution of family law conflicts by engaging the parties and their attorneys in working towards a common end. This serves several purposes:

• Preserves goodwill between divorcing parents
  Collaborative law creates a better environment for post-divorce relationships. This benefits you and your children.
• Protects your children from aggressive litigation
  Children should not be pawns in the adversarial process.
• Saves time and money Collaborative law can reduce
  financial stress caused by protracted litigation.
• Creates a binding agreement The settlement agreement
  is stipulated to by both sides, and entered by the court as a final order.

The Collaborative Law Process
Instead of going to court, the parties to a divorce and their attorneys meet in a four-way process, where they negotiate your issues. Once they reach an agreement, an order of the court is entered that has the same effect as if they had taken their issues to trial. Because the parties are focused on solving the problems, not highlighting differences (the focus of the adversarial process), the process moves forward more quickly and less expensively.

At the beginning of the collaborative law process, the parties sign a contract agreeing not to resort to litigation. If negotiations break down and divorcing spouses cannot reach agreement, the lawyers participating must withdraw and the parties must retain new attorneys to represent them in an adversarial process. This serves as a strong
incentive to those divorcing and their attorneys to work toward reaching a cooperative resolution.

With collaborative law, the process is designed to produce a win-win solution, so both sides can live with it; and after all, is that not what you are going to have to do: live with it?

If your marriage is ending, you owe it to yourself and your children to contact a collaborative law attorney at the Law Offices of Michael D. Harnois PLC in Duluth, Minnesota by filling out our online information form or by calling our office at 218.260.2392.

Our office is conveniently located to serve clients in Duluth and the surrounding area, including Cloquet, Hermantown, Proctor, Twig, Meadowlands and Carlton, as well as the counties of St. Louis, Carlton, Lake, Pine, Itasca, and Kanabec.