Collaborative Law, Collaborative Coaching and Mental Health in the LGBT Community

Collaborative Law is a process that has been used in the GLBT community for resolving issues between partners and/or co-parents who want permanent, legal separation whether the partners are legally married, are vested in a registered domestic partnership, or have been involved in a committed relationship without the benefits of any legal process.

Collaborative law is especially valuable because it circumvents the use of court judges to adjudicate issues of separation where the law has yet to be tested sufficiently for case law to have arrived at reasonable solutions to the issues of rights of community property in domestic partnerships and to healthy resolution of custody and visitation rights in GLBT families.

When litigated, these issues can easily wind up taking large amounts of time due to the complexity of case law; cost substantial amounts of money for legal advocacy; cause complicated, long lasting emotional consternation.

Collaborative Coaching and Collaborative Law Process

Collaborative coaching is a significant part of the collaborative law process. A couple that desires a permanent separation works with a mental health professional who has been specially trained in the collaborative process. Usually, each partner has their own coach.

The coaches work jointly and separately to help the partners define what they want to accomplish through the separation. They work with the partners to develop skills so that they can speak directly about their concerns and needs, and then problem solve without emotion interfering with rational decision making. In this way, the couple is far more able to achieve their goals for the separation than if they used more divisive forms of attaining a legal separation.

Long term research shows that couples who work together to achieve mutual agreements are more successful in establishing new lives and, later, new relationships. They can protect themselves and their children from carrying the emotional baggage of the old relationship into their new, separate lives and the separate families.

Collaborative law is a legal and private process. All agreements are legally enforceable. And because the entire process takes place in the privacy of an office, neither partner has to be party to a public forum where personal issues are aired in public before strangers