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CDSOC

Collaborative Divorce Solutions of Orange County

Connect With A Professional Today:
(949) 266-0660

  • The Collaborative Process
    • Overview
    • The Professional Team
    • FAQs
  • Find a Professional
    • Divorce Professionals
    • Professional Resource Members
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    • Upcoming Workshops
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Brian Don Levy

Experts Contribute to Best Practices at Collaborative Practice California Conference

April 12, 2017 By CDSOC

Orange County Collaborative Practice professionals will share their expertise with colleagues in April at the annual Collaborative Practice California Conference XII in Redondo Beach.

Members of Collaborative Divorce Solutions of Orange County (CDSOC) are in demand as professional education panelists and seminar leaders throughout Fall 2017 due to their expertise and experience working with a diverse array of Orange County clients in the Collaborative approach to divorce.

“Many collaborative professionals are committed to continuing professional education in order to provide the best service to our clients,” said Dr. Carol Hughes, CDSOC member and workshop leader. “The annual conference of Collaborative Practice California is one venue for us to do this.

“We CDSOC members are honored to be contributing to the further growth of our Collaborative colleagues throughout the state. Ultimately, the reward is offering better options to clients who want to avoid the trauma, time and expense of a litigated divorce or other disputes,” added Dr. Hughes.

Collaborative Practice California presentations include:

Left to right: Cathleen Collinsworth, Carol Hughes, Bart Carey

Collaborative Family Lawyer and Mediator Bart Carey, Divorce Coach and Child Specialist Dr. Hughes, Ph.D., LMFT, and Financial Specialist Cathleen Collinsworth, CDFA™, MAFF™ will facilitate an advanced seminar titled “Grand Rounds for Collaborative Practitioners.”

The workshop format introduces the “Grand Rounds” concept used in the medical profession. A supervising physician-professor and small group of residents visit individual patients in their hospital rooms, diagnosing their symptoms and discussing together how best to help each patient through collaborative problem-solving.

In a similar way Bart, Carol and Cathleen will apply their expertise to analyze individual case challenges presented by participants. The team will “diagnose” and assess the symptoms and prescribe the best course of action.

As a result of the workshop, the attendees will learn how to analyze case challenges presented by their own clients, and then design and implement creative solutions on their behalf.

Collaborative family lawyer and mediator Diana L. Martinez will present a workshop on diversity and cultural issues in divorce.

Collaborative Family Lawyer and Mediator Diana L. Martinez, will co-present a seminar with other California Collaborative professionals discussing cultural competency in family law practice, “Becoming Culturally Competent and Ethically Responsible: Beyond Basics.” Professionals working with families going through divorce and separation need to increase awareness and skills to discern the complex aspects of culture, world views, and communication patterns of the families they interact with during the legal process.

Participants will also learn to identify sociopolitical aspects of racism, power and privilege, and how these may impact issues of trust and create barriers while navigating the legal process. Being able to empathize and navigate these challenges will lead to greater understanding of client needs and achieve a successful outcome without resorting to litigation.

Patrice Courteaum M.A., LMFT, Divorce Coach and Child Specialist

Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Divorce Coach and Child Specialist Patrice Courteau, MA, LMFT, will participate in a panel discussion about effective Collaborative Practice outreach in a digital age.

Orange County families who are considering a Collaborative approach to their divorce can be confident in the guidance and qualifications of CDSOC members, who not only uphold high standards in their personal practice, but who are called upon to help California’s Collaborative professionals develop the highest standards in this area of family and civil law.

CDSOC members are available to speak to groups of professionals and to any interested organization or program about the Collaborative Practice approach to solving dispute in family law matters or any civil dispute instead of resorting to time consuming, costly litigation that destroys ongoing relationships. Contact CDSOC at 949-266-0660.

Filed Under: Coaching, Collaborative Divorce, Collaborative Practice, Divorce and Emotions, Divorce and Money, Divorce and The Law, Events and Training, Financial, Legal, Mental Health, Tips & Resources Tagged With: Brian Don Levy, Cathleen Collinsworth, Collaborative Practice California, CP Cal Conference, Diana Martinez, Divorce, Divorce and Children, Divorce Experts, Dr. Carol Hughes, News Release, Patrice Courteau, Practice Groups, Professional Development

Members Lend Expertise at Collaborative Divorce Education Institute 3-Day Training

February 11, 2017 By CDSOC

Experienced legal, financial, and mental health Collaborative Practitioners from Collaborative Divorce Solutions of Orange County shared their expertise at the 2017 Three-Day Collaborative Divorce Interdisciplinary Team Training in January.  Through lectures, discussions, and group participation, the training team helped both new and experienced Collaborative Professionals to develop more skills and a new understanding of how to support and lead their clients to a successful resolution without resorting to litigation.

If you missed this year’s event, be sure mark your calendar for next year’s training in January 2018.

Scenes from the 2017 Collaborative Divorce Education Institute 3-Day Training at National University in Costa Mesa, California.
Scenes from the 2017 Collaborative Divorce Education Institute 3-Day Training at National University in Costa Mesa, California.

Filed Under: Collaborative Divorce, Collaborative Practice, Divorce and The Law, Events and Training, Financial, Legal, Mental Health Tagged With: Brian Don Levy, Bruce Fredenburg, Carol Hughes, CDSOC, Collaborative Divorce Education Institute, Diana Martinez, Dr. Marvin Chapman, News Release, Patrice Courteau, Professional Development, Suanne Honey

The Most Effective Way to Reduce the Cost of Your Divorce or Civil Dispute

January 3, 2017 By CDSOC

by Brian Don Levy, Esq., Collaborative Attorney and Mediator

What single item can add the most cost to your divorce or civil dispute?  Acting or reacting based on emotional thinking, or making unilateral decisions that are based in emotional thinking.  It is critical to understand how our emotions can drive our thinking and our behavior, and it is important to manage those emotions in a healthy way that allows for understanding viable solutions and facilitates well thought out problem solving.

Every legal and financial decision is potentially wrapped in emotion, and those emotions can prevent us from fully understanding our options and choosing the options that make the most sense going forward.  For almost every divorcing couple or civil disputant, trust is usually broken and communication is not working very well, if at all.  Bringing broken trust and poor communication into the decision-making process is not a good recipe for success.

Therefore, communication coaches are an important investment to be made in achieving a long term satisfying outcome for those in conflict.  I use the term “investment” because failure to understand and manage emotions is a huge cost inflator for those engaged in civil and family law disputes.  The valuable work provided by the communication coach is a cost savings mechanism as well as a valuable resource for those in conflict.

Our emotions determine the “elevator music” that plays in the background of all we do.  Going through a divorce or civil dispute creates uncertainty and ambiguity, which can drive fear.  If fear is the background music playing in our minds at times of conflict, then our ability to process choices and achieve informed consent is limited if not impeded.  Having a communication coach to work with allows a sounding board to check in and assess if we are reacting from an emotional standpoint rather than a legal or financial standpoint.

Having a communication coach also makes it easier for the client to stay present and focused, manage their emotions, and moderate their behavior.  It has been my experience in working with clients embroiled in civil and family law disputes that communication coaches can assist in measurable ways on many levels, including:

  • Helping client create enhanced safety zones;
  • Helping client cope with strong emotions and stress;
  • Helping client to practice effective communication;
  • Helping client remove barriers to communication;
  • Facilitate necessary and difficult conversations;
  • Check in with clients and make sure they stay on task; and
  • Coach the client to the finish line of their dispute resolution process;

Collaborative Law is a unique process that utilizes an integrated team of professionals working together to help people involved in all types of civil and family law disputes to co-create agreements that will be durable and lasting.  Each professional is highly trained in his or her specific profession and all professionals work together to support a healthy outcome.  The integrated team of Collaborative professionals includes legal professionals, financial professionals and communication coaches to support a conflict resolution process that promotes healthy and sustainable outcomes.

Communication coaches are a vital component to the interdisciplinary team of professionals to help us separate the fear or anxiety from the decision-making process so that clients can remain fully present in meetings and in making the important decisions that must be made in a way that will be satisfying, durable and lasting.

Experience is not Expensive.  It’s Priceless!

Filed Under: Collaborative Divorce, Collaborative Practice, Divorce and Emotions, Divorce and Money, Financial Tagged With: Brian Don Levy, CDSOC, Cost of Divorce, Divorce Agreement, Divorce and Mental Health, Divorce and Stress, Family Law, Family Law Attorney, Make Divorce Easier

The Most Important Decision You Will Make in Your Divorce

April 30, 2016 By CDSOC

by Brian Don Levy, Esq., Collaborative Attorney & Mediator

The case history: John first came to see me looking for an attorney to represent him in his divorce case in family court. This is the most important choice he will have to make in the entire divorce process: choosing the process for his divorce case.

As a firm believer in the Collaborative Divorce Process, we discussed why John should consider the Collaborative Divorce process, which is part of every initial divorce consultation – when I meet with clients – I discuss divorce process options.

John then disclosed he had already been in mediation with some of my legal colleagues. John’s wife, Mary, withdrew from the process. He was distrustful of the process and not inclined to give it another try.

In spite of John and Mary’s failure, I still believed the Collaborative Process would serve them well. Nearly a year later, the divorce case was successfully concluded through the Collaborative Process.

How did we make this work?

I suggested that this would be a different experience because we would build a more complete team of collaborative professionals. I also suggested that I would ask the team to implement a protocol of reducing each and every agreement to a Collaborative Stipulation & Order to be signed by the parties and submitted to the Court for a Judge’s signature, thus creating a safety net – if either party withdrew, there would be the underlying agreements that have become Court Orders, thus the failed history would not be repeated. John became enrolled in the process that I envisioned for him.

The Family

John is a successful and employed individual who works in the entertainment industry. Mary, his wife, lacks trust in John because of John’s history of drug abuse and failed attempts at sobriety.

John lacks trust in Mary due to her history of making agreements and refusing to honor them. Mary believes that John is not worthy of being a father to their five-year-old twins and cannot be trusted due to his history of serious drug use. John believes that Mary is smothering the children and won’t let go. John has been practicing sober living for approximately 18 months and believes that as long as he is willing to evidence his sober living, he should not be kept away from his children.

The Collaborative Divorce Team

The Collaborative Practice Professional Team consisted of two collaborative lawyers, a neutral financial professional, and three very strong mental health professionals – two serving as coaches for John and Mary, and one serving as the Neutral Child Specialist.

Our Professional Team relied upon each other time and again, and the channels of communications were constant and open. The final electronic file for this case contained nearly 1,300 Professional Team e-mails.

John and Mary both had their respective coaches, and the children had a gifted Neutral Child Specialist whom the team relied upon to keep the parents focused on their children to the greatest extent possible instead of the own individual agendas. The Professional Team worked diligently and often times conducted three-way telephone conferences to remove temporary impediments and roadblocks created by the parties. The very first time that Mary made an agreement on visitation and then refused to honor it, a series of teleconferences ensued late on a Friday afternoon, resulting in an honoring of the agreement and John’s first overnight with his children.

Our Working Agreements

Three process agreements were co-created and agreed to by the parties. John agreed that given his history, he had the burden of proving his sober living as a condition precedent to being an involved parent to his twin children. John submitted random urine tests twice a week to his coach, who then sent the results to the rest of the Professional Team members. The second protocol was that every agreement would be and was reduced to a collaborative stipulation and order that was filed with the Court, and became an enforceable court order. The Third team protocol was that the Professional Team exchanged their personal cell phone numbers and committed to be available to all Professional Team members as needed and dictated by the family problems as they occurred.

The First Crisis

After several months of negative random drug tests, John tested positive for opiates!

When confronted by his coach, he broke down and cried; swearing that he had not fallen and had not used any drugs. What to do? John’s Coach and lawyer, and Mary’s Coach agreed that before reacting to the “dirty test” the possibility of a false positive had to be explored first. The urine test was re-submitted for additional testing, and John was asked to take a hair follicle test. The hair follicle test and the re-test of the urine test both concluded that John had in fact continued on his path of sober living, and the prior positive test was in fact a false positive. Eventually, John was moved from twice a week random urine tests to quarterly hair follicle tests, then to every six months.

The Second Crisis

Mary fired her collaborative Lawyer, and John saw that she once again reneging on her commitment. As it turned out, Mary replaced her collaborative lawyer with another collaborative lawyer, and I was able to point out to John that in so doing, she evidenced her commitment to the collaborative process. Confidence was rebuilt quickly, trust was re-enforced, and we proceeded forward.

The Victory for the Children

As John moved through the process of providing proof of his sober living in an irrefutable manner, the team worked with Mary in making her more comfortable moving from John having very little contact with the twins to being a truly involved parent who enjoyed equal time share with the twins and lots of overnight visits. The children benefited from the more normal and less restricted contact with their father, and now enjoy having two parents and two homes to grow in.

The Victory for the Clients

John and Mary’s divorce case is finished. But the coping and negotiating skills both of them learned through their Collaborative coaches will always be with them and will serve them in many situations for the rest of their lives as they effectively co-parent their children.

The Victory for the Process

The process which was originally described as “failed” succeeded in a significant way in that this very high conflict and contentious case was successful after the collaborative team was assembled, an accurate and detailed assessment was made, and a plan for success was carried out by all of the Professional Team members.

Many other Collaborative Practice professionals believe cases with chemical or alcohol dependency are not well suited for the Collaborative Process. While that may or may not be true for all cases, this case demonstrates that each divorce case is unique. The essential ingredient for a successful Collaborative Law case is an initial in-depth assessment by the Professional Team so it can determine what the family dynamics require, and how to position the parties for success.

My experience on this team has been invaluable in my journey as a Collaborative lawyer, as well as serving as an impressive and hopeful example of what we can do together.

Filed Under: Coaching, Collaborative Divorce, Collaborative Practice, Divorce and The Law, Family Issues, Legal, Tips & Resources Tagged With: Brian Don Levy, Divorce, Divorce Agreement, Divorce and Families, Family Law Attorney, Financial Agreement, Settlement Agreement

How You Can Benefit from the Collaborative Practice Philosophy

April 9, 2016 By CDSOC

by Brian Don Levy, Esq., Collaborative Practice Attorney & Mediator

Social science research including the United States Census routinely reports that roughly fifty percent or more of all marriages end in divorce. Co-habitating relationships fail at similar rates. We expect same sex marriages to follow the same pattern statistically once enough time passes to gather the data over the next decade as well. Psychology Today reports that in 1990, fewer than one in 10 persons who got divorced was over the age of 50, while today one in four people getting divorced is 50 or older.

Since a certain amount of divorce is statistically inevitable, it is imperative we find better ways to facilitate the legal, financial, and emotional processing of a human experience through our civil systems. The emotional devastation that often occurs with the breakup of a relationship shouldn’t be a given. This is where Collaborative Practice lives.

Despite the jokes and eye-rolling over the term “conscious uncoupling,” actress Gwenyth Paltrow put her finger on a healthy modern attitude embodied within Collaborative Practice. Collaborative Practice is the process that provides a more respectful alternative to the destructive divorces we see too often when parties use the court system to end their marriage. Collaborative Practice is designed specifically around ways to minimize the hurt, the loss of self-esteem, the anger and the alienation that occurs in many traditional litigated divorces. It is also designed to support families in transition to take advantage of all of their healthy options and opportunities while building a better tomorrow.

The Collaborative Law approach is grounded upon making human dignity and respect a priority. Individuals may cease being partners, but they don’t cease being good people who deserve consideration. Nor do they cease being parents and part of a family unit after a divorce. Collaborative Practice has a firm grasp on this reality – When a divorce goes into a courtroom, the “winner take all” mentality inflicts damage and leaves pain in its wake, which takes a long time to heal at best, and may never heal at all at its worst. All of this ugliness takes place in a public forum, on the record and for all to see.

Every part of Collaborative Practice is intended to foster the respectful resolution of family problems. These intentions include open communication, interest based negotiations, solution focused negotiation, out-of-court settlement and no court divorce. When respect is given and received, self-esteem is likely to be preserved, making discussions more productive and a healthy and viable agreement more easily reached.

Collaborative Divorce allows the parties involved to find creative solutions that work for their unique situation, in a private and respectful setting. The parties are supported by a team who will help them learn the skills and techniques to work through problems and conflicts in a productive way. The future of the family is not determined by a judge who is a complete stranger to their circumstances.

The end of a marriage or relationship can be tragic in and of itself. Collaborative Practice believes that the process of divorcing shouldn’t cause or add to the pain and suffering, but rather should guide and support the clients and their children in achieving a respectful resolution of their issues, leading to a hopeful, healthy future.

Filed Under: Collaborative Divorce, Collaborative Practice, Divorce and Emotions, Divorce and Money, Divorce and The Law, Family Issues Tagged With: Brian Don Levy, Divorce Alternatives, Divorce and Self-Esteem, Divorce Litigation, Divorce Philosophy, Divorce Settlement, Settlement Agreement

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