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Divorce Attorneys
Your collaborative attorney assists you in resolving your family law issues by working with you and your collaborative law team while remaining as your advocate. In addition to their years of experience as divorce attorneys, all attorney members of the Charlotte Collaborative Divorce Professionals have received additional training in the Collaborative Law Process. In this role, your collaborative attorney will educate you on the law, help you generate settlement options consistent with your family’s unique needs and goals, discuss potential outcomes with the rest of your collaborative team, and prepare your separation agreement and other settlement documents. Your relationship with your collaborative law attorney will be governed by an agreement between you and that attorney as well as the Collaborative Law Participation Agreement you sign with your spouse confirming your desire to resolve your disputes outside the courtroom.
Collaborative Divorce Coaches
Your divorce coach will focus on guiding you through the anxiety and anger often associated with a divorce and will also help you to look forward so that you can each rebuild your life. The goal is to allow each of you to have a place to express your feelings and desires regarding the outcome of your divorce. Many times, with the assistance of a divorce coach, you can more effectively communicate your needs and priorities to move forward in the process and refrain from getting stuck in the past.
Depending on the relationship you have and the needs of your case, you and your spouse may each have a coach, or you may have one coach to work with both of you. Your option to have one coach or two depends on the relationship you have coming into the divorce and if you are able to amicably discuss and negotiate issues. If this is the case, then often only one coach will be retained. If, on the other hand, you each desire to have your own collaborative coach, then a two-coach model can be used, as well.
Child Specialists
Your child specialist assists the team in addressing the children’s needs, as they experience the restructuring of your family. These services may be appropriate for some or all of your children, depending on the circumstances of your case.
The goal of the child specialist is to enable the children, who are also negotiating the details of their new home situation with each parent, to have a smooth transition. A child specialist gives your children a voice in expressing their feelings in situations that may feel uncomfortable to them. In addition, your child specialist will provide important developmental information and guidelines to help you reach an appropriate parenting agreement that maintains a healthy ongoing relationship with each parent.
Financial Neutrals
The Financial Neutral in a collaborative law case is typically a seasoned financial professional with CDFA™ (Certified Divorce Financial Advisor) and CFP® designations (Certified Financial Planner) and focused financial planning experience. In addition, he/she has achieved a high standard of collaborative law-specific training.
The Financial Neutral is an unbiased financial expert working on behalf of both spouses to provide a detailed analysis of the financial aspects of their marriage and to help determine the immediate, short and long-term financial impact of proposed divorce settlements. The collaborative setting allows for spouses to engage cooperatively about their financial questions and concerns and for the Financial Neutral to consider and financially evaluate unique solutions not as likely to be proffered in an adversarial divorce.
- Gathering and cataloguing comprehensive financial documents and identifying gaps in information and missing assets.
- Reviewing tax returns for missing data with regard to investments and businesses.
- Analyzing qualified and non-qualified retirement plans and valuing defined benefit pension plans.
- Reviewing whether bonuses should be treated as income or as an asset and analyzing equity compensation methods such as stock options and RSUs.
- Providing multiple spousal support/child support scenarios and estimating need for spousal support versus ability to pay.
- Reviewing a support offer for alimony recapture.
- Reviewing for child support reclassification.
- Developing a fluid budget including long term changes to circumstance.
- Calculating the short- term and long-term effects of dividing property by providing projections of settlement offers to measure whether the offer over time is equitable.
- Analyzing the tax effects of property division including capital gains on investments and real estate.
Financial matters are a large agent of stress for anyone and they become especially pronounced in the situation of divorce. Furthermore, these decisions today can have a huge impact throughout the rest of each spouse’s life. Consequently, the inclusion of a Financial Neutral is paramount to the success of the collaborative process.
The goal of the collaborative process is to settle divorce cases through this team approach, thereby avoiding the cost and stress of a court procedure. Should this not be possible and should a court process become the only remaining avenue, then the team would be disbanded.