10 years after a collaborative divorce
Divorce, especially when you have children, isn’t exactly a neat and tidy event where you make decisions, come to an agreement, and pretend like the marriage never happened. Divorce itself is a process and requires some time to finalize, while life after divorce takes some getting used to.
For many people, Collaborative Practice feels like a new approach to divorce. Even though we can tell you that this method has been around since 1990 and has seen great success, it’s often easier to show you examples of how collaborative law has stood the test of time – and the test of families.
The Vancouver Courier recently published an in-depth article about collaborative family law in British Columbia, as told through the stories of individuals involved in various Collaborative Practice roles. To us, the voice we listened to most attentively was that of Robyn Ross, a mother who was one of the first people in the province to choose a collaborative divorce.
The part we would like to share with you is how the process she and her ex-husband chose impacted their family ten years after they divorced:
“’One of the things I learned going through my divorce that way was that I needed to love my child more than I hated my husband,’ said Robyn Ross with a wry laugh.
The Vancouver movie industry worker went through her divorce a decade ago, but she was among the first in the province to try an exciting new approach, dubbed collaborative divorce, that avoids litigation, resolves conflicts and enhances mutual respect and regard between the divorcing spouses.
Like a small but growing number of B.C. couples, Ross and her ex-husband turned to this new cooperative approach as an alternative to the emotional and financial damage often involved in courtroom litigated battles.
Ross credits the collaborative process with allowing her and her ex-husband to get past bitter feelings to become real friends as they cooperate in raising their daughter.
‘Our daughter is doing amazingly well,’ Ross said. ‘And at the end of the day, my ex and I both felt the process was fair.’
Despite what started as a deeply unhappy separation, Ross told the Courier, she and her ex-husband are now good friends, and when he remarried a few years later, she was comfortable attending the wedding and has developed a friendship with his new partner.
‘In collaborative divorce,’ Ross said, ‘everyone is held accountable for the best interests of the child. I wouldn’t want anyone to think it was easy. It wasn’t. But collaborative divorce gives you the tools you need. I couldn’t have had all this joy and family without the collaborative process.’”
– Read the entire Vancouver Courier article.
If you would like to learn more about the legal method Robyn Ross talks about in this article, please take a minute to read through What is Collaborative Practice? or continue to browse our articles and resources. You’re also welcome to get in touch with a collaborative professional.
