Articles | Seattle Divorce Services

Moving from Positions to Interests

At the recent annual conference of the Collaborative Professionals of Washington, I attended a workshop by Jacinta Gallant, a mediator and Collaborative lawyer from Prince Edward Island. One of the things she spoke about was the process of moving from positions to interests in negotiations. Positio...

Six Tips for Settling Your Divorce

Note that I did not say "winning" your divorce. As a general rule, no one wins a divorce case; instead the court tries to be as fair to both as possible and both sides get something. While there are those people who look forward to taking the other spouse to court, most people just want to get the c...

What is a Status Conference?

When a divorce case is filed with the court in King County (the county we do most of our work in), the court issues a case schedule with a number of dates and deadlines on it. One item on the case schedule that many people have questions about is the Status Conference....

What is Co-Parenting, and Why Would We Do It?

To me co-parenting means two parents who, though no longer together, are able to cooperate with each other in jointly parenting their children. Many separated parents seem to operate in different spheres - each is parenting during their time with the children entirely independent of the other. Ea...

Forgiveness – Do It For You

By "forgiveness", I mean letting go of anger. When you carry anger toward another person, it generally hurts you more than it does them. If the person you are angry at is an ex, then your anger probably does not even mean that much to them. They are walking around, getting on with life, and all the...

A Problem to Solve, Not a War to Win

Too often divorce is seen as a war (remember "War of the Roses"?). When we see it as a war, then "winning" becomes the primary objective. But how often does one really win in a divorce? Certainly a hard fought divorce comes with many costs -- money, time, energy, etc. Both parties emerge emotionally...

Changing the Role of the Divorce Lawyer

Collaborative process is unique in that it fundamentally changes the role of the lawyer in divorce cases. Rather than being the mouthpiece for the client, the Collaborative lawyer supports the client in speaking for him or her self in direct discussions with their spouse or significant other....

Using a Child Specialist in Your Divorce

We often have a Child Specialist on the team in our Collaborative divorce cases. However, a Child Specialist can be very helpful in any divorce with children where the parents hope to be able to continue to work effectively together as co-parents after the divorce. A Child Specialist role is very...

Divorce Coaching

When couples want to have a more amicable divorce process, Divorce Coaching can help turn that hope into reality. We regularly use Divorce Coaches on Collaborative teams, but a Divorce Coach can also be very helpful to couples engaging in mediation or using a kitchen table approach. Divorce Coach...

Explaining and Using Nonviolent Communication

The other day I mentioned the phrase "nonviolent communication" to my spouse. She asked what that meant - to her it sounded like something used to stop domestic violence between parties. In fact, "violent communication" does not refer to physical violence, but rather refers to something most of us a...