Complexity Welcome in Collaborative Practice
Collaborative Process is well-suited to support couples and families with complex financial and legal issues. One of our CPT members wrote about a particularly challenging file for the Ontario Bar Association’s newsletter.
There was a strong collaborative team consisting of two collaborative lawyers, one collaboratively trained neutral family professional, some neutral tax advice and some jointly retained international supportive professionals. She identified the three main factors which contributed to the success of this negotiation:
- The clients’ commitment to saving their children from the trauma of court;
- The clients’ reasonable instructions to the team to generate legal avenues that would suit their own particular needs; and
- The ability of the two main lawyers to negotiate solutions that at times deviated substantially from the legal model which did not provide the right framework to this family, but that were nonetheless suited for the challenging needs of this family
It was Collaborative Law’s unique feature of not permitting the lawyers to take the case to court in the face of an impasse that saved this family from disaster, because, wrote Boutet, the lawyers found themselves very close to the precipice on a number of occasions. The clients were committed to finding solutions no matter what, and the team of professionals was determined to finding creative solutions to the impossible set of circumstances.
