Collaborative law is a legal process enabling couples who have decided to separate or end their marriage

Marriage

Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...

 to work with their lawyers and, on occasion, other family professionals in order to avoid the uncertain outcome of court and to achieve a settlement that best meets the specific needs of both parties and their children without the underlying threat of contested litigation. The voluntary process is initiated when the couple signs a contract (called the "participation agreement"), binding each other to the process and disqualifying their respective lawyer's right to represent either one in any future family related litigation.

The collaborative process can be used to facilitate a broad range of other family issues, including disputes between parents and the drawing up of pre and post-marital contracts. The traditional method of drawing up pre-marital contracts is oppositional, and many couples prefer to begin their married life on a better footing where documents are drawn up consensually and together.

History

This approach to conflict resolution was created in 1990 by a Minnesota family lawyer Stuart Webb, who saw that traditional litigation was not always helpful to parties and their families, and often was damaging. Since 1990, the Collaborative Law movement has spread rapidly to most of the United States, Europe, Canada and Australia. Per the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals ("IACP"), more than 22,000 lawyers have been trained in Collaborative Law worldwide, with collaborative practitioners in at least 46 states. In some localities, Collaborative Law has become the predominant method for resolving divorce, co-habitation and other family disputes. More than 1,250 lawyers have completed their training in England where collaborative law was launched in 2003.

The growth of the collaborative process in England and Wales has been encouraged by both the judiciary and the family lawyers organisation, Resolution. In an address to London family lawyers in October 2009, the newly appointed Supreme Court Justice, Lord Kerr of Tonaghmore became the first member of the Supreme Court to publicly endorse Collaborative Law and called for its extension to other areas. Previously, in October 2008 the Hon. Mr Justice Coleridge, a High Court Judge of the Family Division, had promised that collaborative agreements would be fast tracked in the High Court of England and Wales.

Organizations

The primary global collaborative organisation is the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals (IACP), which was founded in the late 1990's by a group of northern California lawyers, psychotherapists, and financial planners. There are numerous practice groups (or PODS) of collaborative practitioners worldwide. An updated list of worldwide practice groups and their individual members can be located on the IACP website, www.collaborativepractice.com.

The American Bar Association ("ABA"), the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, and the International Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers ("IAML") all have Collaborative Law committees.

IACP is an interdisciplinary organisation whose members include lawyers, mental health professionals and financial specialists. National Collaborative organisations have been established in many jurisdictions,including Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, England, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Kenya, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Scotland, Switzerland, and Uganda, as well as the United States. There is an active on-line collaborative community on Twitter., and several active listservs with worldwide membership (limited to practicing collaborative professionals.

In England and Wales, Resolution, the family lawyers organisation founded by John Cornwell and Henry Brown, one of mediation’s founding fathers, to encourage a constructive approach to divorces and family law, has sole responsibility for the training and accreditation of all collaborative professionals. The development of its code of practice was adopted in the course of two decades. Courts in family disputes are now mandated to consider not just the steps in proceedings, but the way they are carried out.

Almost one-third of all English family lawyers have now completed their collaborative training. In the Republic of Ireland regional collaborative law associations have been set up in cities such as Galway, Cork and Dublin.

Uniform Collaborative Law Act

In the United States, the Uniform Collaborative Law Act was adopted in 2009 by the Uniform Law Commission, and thereby became available to the individual States to enact as law. In 2010, the Uniform Collaborative Law Act was amended to add several options and renamed the Uniform Collaborative Law Rules and Act. As of October 2011, the Uniform Collaborative Law Act was enacted into law in the states of Utah, Nevada, and Texas, and was pending enactment in several additional U.S. states. See, http://www.nccusl.org/Act.aspx?title=Collaborative%20Law%20Act.

The Overview to the Act provides a comprehensive and reliable history of the emergence of collaborative law in the United States; http://www.law.upenn.edu/bll/archives/ulc/ucla/2010_final.htm. The Hofstra Law Review has published a special issue about the Uniform Act, Vol. 38, Issue 2 (September 2010), edited by Andrew Schepard, the "reporter" (i.e. committee chair) for the committee of the Uniform Law Commission that drafted and ultimately enacted the Uniform Act.

In France the AFPDC was created in 2009 to develop and implement collaborative practice in France. See, http://www.droit-collaboratif.org.

Books

Pauline H. Tesler, COLLABORATIVE LAW: ACHIEVING EFFECTIVE RESOLUTION IN DIVORCE WITHOUT LITIGATION (American Bar Association, 2001, 2008).

Pauline H. Tesler and Peggy Thompson, COLLABORATIVE DIVORCE: THE REVOLUTIONARY NEW WAY TO RESTRUCTURE YOUR FAMILY, RESOLVE LEGAL ISSUES, AND MOVE ON WITH YOUR LIFE (Harper Collins, 2006)

Articles

Friendly Divorce Christian Science Monitor – May 21, 2004 http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0521/p02s01-ussc.html

Getting a Divorce? Why it Pays to Play Nice, CNN Money - July 1, 2005 http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/moneymag_archive/2005/07/01/8263126/index.htm

Bringing Harmony to Divorce - article by collaborative lawyers, James Stewart and Charlotte Bradley, published in The Times

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

to mark the launch of Collaborative Law in London, 21 November 2006.http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/public_law/article640680.ece

Collaborating on Divorce, Forbes - January 16, 2007 http://www.forbes.com/finance/2007/02/16/divorce-marriage-collaboration-pf-tax-in_er_0216marriage_inl.html

A Sweeter Parting, Legal Week 29 November 2007 http://www.legalweek.com/Articles/1073662/Private+Client+A+sweeter+parting.html

NYS Unified Court System's Collaborative Family Law Center
http://www.nycourts.gov/ip/collablaw/