Book Review

Each month, beginning January, 2007, we will highlight one book that may be helpful to families facing divorce.   If you have any suggestions or wish to submit a book review to us, please contact Beth Lewandowski at beth@consideringdivorce.com

Collaborative Divorce: The Revolutionary New Way to Restructure Your Family, Resolve Legal Issues, and Move on with Your Life
By Pauline H. Tesler, MA, JD and Peggy Thompson, PhD.
269 pages
Harper Collins (2006)

The authors of this book successfully plot the path for divorcing couples to transform their relationships into two functioning but separate units. For persons contemplating divorce, it is imperative that they at least consider the various options available to them on their road to dissolving a marriage. Adversarial litigation is not the only way out; healthy alternatives such as mediation, collaborative and cooperative divorce focus on solving problems to move forward, and laying the grounding for preventing problems in the future. Collaborative law, in particular, offers the security of individual representation while working on a palatable agreement to end a marriage.

This book details not only the emotional aspects of divorce, but how collaborative law can help in the process. By requiring the parties to sign an agreement not to litigate, cooperation and full disclosure become the centerpiece, and confrontation is put to rest, allowing divorcing couples to concentrate on what is important to them. Collaborative law offers a safe place for parties to develop methods to ensure respect and understanding in their future dealings. Examples of couples who have chosen the collaborative process to end their marriage are peppered throughout the book and give readers a chance to identify with the participants and understand the normal emotions of divorce including grief, sorrow and fear. Readers also will learn that a collaborative approach to divorce may help change negative emotions into such positive emotions as optimism, hope and acceptance. Along the way, divorcing parties may find that they have saved money by not litigating their divorce and have set the framework for keeping any future conflicts out of the courts.
In Collaborative Divorce, the authors outline the steps one will take to end a marriage in a collaborative way, from setting goals and organizing the “team,” to reaching a resolution, attaining a sense of closure and preparing for future changes. What attorneys brush off as unnecessary obstructions may be serious issues that need to be addressed in order for the divorce to move forward. Readers will learn that it is perfectly all right in a collaborative divorce to respectfully address these things.

Divorce is never easy, but Collaborative Divorce offers an opportunity to ease the pain of this common life transition, and in many cases, make divorce the first phase for a long-term change of life. This is revolutionary in the field of matrimonial law.

Copyright 2007 Marta J. Papa, P.C.
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