COLLABORATIVE FAMILY PRACTICE

Collaborative Family Law is an out of court, dispute resolution process where each party has the benefit of working with their own lawyer, while simultaneously working together with the other party and their lawyer.

The advantages of Collaborative Family Law include efficiency, transparency, sharing of information (e.g. financial disclosure), sharing of expenses (costs of experts: property valuations, child assessors, financial planners) and an overall goal of cooperating to reach fair, personalized resolutions. A key benefit of working in a Collaborative Process is that your lawyer represents your specific interests, but both lawyers share a commitment to co-operating as a four-way team to reach resolutions that are best for your family.

Fundamental to the Collaborative Process is that the parties agree:

• Not to pursue litigation (agreement not to threaten or go to Court) in favour of working within the Collab.Process,
• To suspend all limitation periods while working within the Collab. Process
• That their Collaborative lawyers cannot continue as their counsel if settlement cannot be achieved and future litigation is pursued.