Step 1: Assemble your professional team. Your professional team are Collaborative lawyers, therapists, and financial professionals trained, continuously, in mediation and collaborative divorce.
Step 2: Commitment and Planning. Identifying goals and concerns, addressing any urgent issues, and planning your process are key to an efficient and productive process.
Step 3: Gather required and necessary information – Family, Financial, and Legal. This can include testing/sampling different parenting plans. You can also run different asset, debt, and income sharing scenarios to see the impact on you, your partner, and your children.
Step 4: Create your agreements with the support and guidance of your legal, family, and financial professionals. The Collaborative Lawyers will file all necessary paperwork and, once the judge signs the judgment, these become your orders – binding and fully enforceable.
Step 5: Follow Up. Various members of your professional team may follow up to see how your agreements are working out. You always have the option of re-engaging your team to address future disagreements (parenting plan, sharing of income, and just general changes of circumstances).