http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/ ... 44948.htmlTeam method smooths divorce
Process comes with attorneys, emotional coaches, financial consultant and child therapistBy K.C. HOWARD
REVIEW-JOURNAL
At a weekly exchange, Tanya Brandl kisses her son, Adrian, 5, on Thursday as her ex-husband, Harald Brandl, picks him up to take him home from Cafe Heidelberg, which she owns. The two chose a collaborative divorce to prevent the separation from becoming adversarial.
Photo by K.M. Cannon.On a September afternoon at the law office of Amesbury & Schutt, the Brandls finished signing their papers.
They dropped their pens and clapped.
The small room with a number of local professionals erupted in applause.
"I want to thank all of you for helping us get through this. That was very pleasant," Tanya Brandl said.
After six years of marriage, the Brandls had just settled their divorce.
The Brandls meet Sept. 22 with some of their team to finalize their collaborative divorce, which allows a couple to negotiate the terms of their separation with the help of a child specialist, two attorneys, two therapists and a financial adviser. Clockwise from left, Harald Brandl, attorney David Amesbury, attorney Allison Herr, financial adviser Craig Mackey, Tanya Brandl and licensed therapist Louie Ladenburger discuss the marital settlement agreement.
Photo by John Locher.On Wednesday, the courts made it official, concluding the first full-fledged collaborative divorce in Nevada.
Known as the bloodless divorce, collaborative separation is a team process in which each spouse has an attorney and an "emotional coach," who is a licensed therapist. A financial consultant advises the couple on complex tax questions, and a child therapist is involved to help prepare families for separation and give the child a voice in the process. Together the team creates a breakup.
"It's closing the door on a lot of Harald's and my pain we've had, and it's opening the door for the future relationship" as friends, Tanya Brandl said.
The Brandls had a son, then marriage counseling and years of contemplating divorce.
"We're friends still through the end," she said.
A month after they signed their settlement, Harald Brandl arrived with flowers and wine for his now ex-wife's birthday party.
"Was it a good bottle?" he asked her Thursday night when he came to pick up their son at her restaurant, Cafe Heidelberg.
"It was," she said. "There's still half left."
Tanya Brandl's attorney, David Amesbury, said that gesture "was something completely unprompted and just a natural conclusion and a natural reaction to the process."
Collaborative Professionals of Nevada, which was incorporated last February, now has about 32 members statewide and hopes to grow. It will host a three-day collaborative training session Nov. 11-13 at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
About 25 therapists, financial planners and attorneys have registered for the seminar, which will certify them to begin collaborative team practices.
"The collaborative practice: It's the best of mediation and the best of litigation," said Allison Herr, Harald Brandl's attorney.
The Brandls signed their document agreeing to use the collaborative method -- and the four professional coaches working with Amesbury and Herr -- for better or worse, in June.
There is a costly pitfall if a couple can't find a solution through collaboration and decides to pursue another route, such as litigation or mediation: They forfeit their coaches and attorneys.
The forfeit provision commits everyone to the final outcome: a fair settlement agreement. It prevents a spouse from threatening legal action to get leverage and prods everyone to find reasonable middle ground, said Robert Lueck, a former Clark County Family Court judge and spokesman for the Nevada collaborative group.
"A traditional divorce encourages people to fight. It's a very traumatic way to have people break up," Lueck said. "We look upon (divorce) as a problem to be solved rather than battles to be fought."
The Brandls are not the first couple to try collaborative divorce in Nevada.
That first couple was unable to find a resolution after months of trying, according to their collaborative team, which also worked with the Brandls.
"The gal has some emotional issues hurting her. She can't even show up to meetings. So we're happy to drop it," said Dr. Louie Ladenburger, Harald Brandl's "emotional coach."
Ladenburger, a marriage and family therapist, worked with Harald to prepare him for the separation.
He described his role as clearing the way to make the road to separation smooth.
He recommends collaboration for couples with children.
"If you don't have children, you don't have to see each other again ever. All you have to do is come to a satisfying agreement, and I think mediation can do that. But when you have children, who is there to listen to the voice of the child, and secondly, how are you going to coexist?"
Divorce should be thought of as a new relationship rather than an ending, he said.
"The idea is you've still got to be a mother and a father. Your child is maybe going to get married. Are you going to be there and make sure it's a neat event, or are you going to throw daggers at each other?"
A couple has to stop wanting to hurt each other for collaboration to work, he said.
Dr. Paula Squitieri met with the family and helped the Brandls learn how to protect their 5-year-old son, Adrian, from emotional scars he might suffer during the separation.
"There are things that could have happened that did not," Tanya Brandl said. "We could have started name calling. Adrian had to be prepared that Daddy was moving out and Adrian's going to have two houses. He could have got into bed wetting and all that, but nothing happened."
"The only thing changing for him is I live in a different place and I'm not there in the morning," Harald Brandl said.
They have divided holidays so Harald Brandl, who hails from Munich, gets to be with his son on Christmas Eve, the day Germans celebrate with presents. Tanya Brandl has him for Christmas.
"Mom's house is all American," she said.
Squitieri, who is also president of the state Board of Psychological Examiners, said children around the age of 6 tend to be "egocentric" and believe their actions are responsible for changes.
"You want to make sure they don't internalize the divorce as something they have caused," she said.
After a controversial divorce, children can experience depression, anxiety or school adjustment problems, she said.
Parents must show a united front to the child through communication after divorce, she emphasized.
In the collaborative process, no one is judging the parents, as can be the case in contested divorces where a custody specialist conducts an evaluation and reports back to a judge, who makes the final custody decision, she said.
"I'm providing feedback to the parents about their children's best interests," she said. "It is up to them to make a decision about how they want to proceed."
George Richardson, a collaborative attorney in Palo Alto, Calif., has a billing rate of $350 an hour. He has more than five years of experience in the field.
"So I get to charge more," he jokes.
"I probably cost three times as much as the mental health professional and twice as much as a professional financial consultant. It would be rare for a case to cost less than $10,000 for everything," he said of cases in California, where there are hundreds of collaborative practitioners.
The Brandl's divorce cost about $9,000.
"Collaborative runs typically 40 percent less than a traditional knock-down, drag-out divorce," Amesbury said. "There is money invested upfront toward the professionals, but there are more results sooner."
He pointed to a July "Money" magazine article that found typical traditional divorces cost around $35,000 and collaboratives about $16,000.
Rebecca Burton, a family law attorney in Las Vegas for 14 years, recently completed a contested divorce for $10,000.
The cost of any divorce depends on the attorney's hourly rate and the complexity of the case, she said.
Sometimes it's less expensive to try a case when dealing with a client who "is difficult to deal with in negotiations," she said. Litigation is also a benefit when settlement talks are stalled and when there are unprecedented legal issues, she said.
Judges also can make unpredictable decisions, and clients often are happier when they negotiate their own settlement, she said.
Lueck said he believes collaborative clients will spend less because attorneys are not preparing expensive motions, depositions and briefs.
The most common critics of collaborative divorce embrace the philosophy but cite the practice as fiscally precarious.
"It's really for people who can afford it," said District Judge Jennifer Elliott. "If you fail to reach an agreement, you've got to pick up and start all over again. I think it's a healthy process, but most of who we see do not have the money to afford it."
She said she believes mediation is the best way to sidestep aggressive litigation and alleviate an overburdened Family Court system, where about 14,000 divorces were filed last year.
Elliott is heading up a voluntary program in Family Court that allows couples to use private mediators to settle their child custody and financial matters.
Ann Price McCarthy, former president of the State Bar of Nevada, said collaborative can be twice as expensive as traditional methods if it fails. She also noted that mediation and collaborative are not appropriate approaches for domestic abuse victims, many of whom "aren't capable of thinking for themselves if they are in the same room as their abuser."
Julie Macfarlane, a University of Windsor professor in Ontario, conducted a three-year study on collaborative family law, one of the few case studies available to date. Her research monitored 16 collaborative separations in the United States and Canada.
"I watched cases that settled in two months and ones that settled in 18 months, and there is a difference in cost. You can be sure the low-income (couples) were the ones settling quicker," she said.
The principle goal of most couples was to reduce expenses and have speedier results. But some found themselves bitterly disappointed with their final bill and disillusioned at how long the process took, according to the study.
"There is a low-cost version. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles in terms of financial planners and coaches," Macfarlane said. "But it does exist."
A variation of collaborative without all the coaches, sometimes called a hybrid, can be more cost effective, she said.
Jesse Soodalter, of Providence, R.I., did not want a complicated separation from her husband. She first tried a traditional divorce attorney.
"He went into the process and it was '(my husband) is the enemy and they're out to screw us.' I didn't want to be treated that way. I wanted it to be as humane as possible," she said.
Her collaborative divorce cost about $3,000 and did not include any coaches, merely the agreement to not go to court.
She avoided mediation because she wanted more legal counsel than mediation offered.
She recommends it to anyone "who doesn't actively want to screw over their ex, anyone who is looking to avoid ... an ugly adversarial process."
There have been several hybrid collaborative cases in Nevada, but Amesbury recommends the full-fledged, six-member team.
The coaches, who charge around $150 an hour, make the divorce more efficient so that couples use fewer hours with attorneys, who charge from $250 an hour on up in this town, he said.
"It's one for all and all for one."
Divorce Options
Mediation: A couple sits down with a neutral certified mediator who helps the couple work out a marital settlement agreement. State law requires couples with children to sit down with a court-appointed mediator to settle child custody. No financial matters can be discussed and no attorney is allowed to be present during negotiations. Couples can have an attorney review a draft agreement before they sign it. A pilot project in Clark County, the Private Sector Family Court Mediation Program, allows couples to pick a private mediator to settle all aspects of their divorce out of court. Attorneys are allowed in the mediation conference to provide legal counsel. Some Family Court judges recommend it; some don't.
Contested or traditional divorce: If the couple can't agree on property distribution, support or child custody, or one of the parties doesn't want the divorce, their case will go before a judge, who will listen to the arguments and settle the divorce for the couple. At any point, the couple can decide to forge a settlement with their attorneys.
Uncontested divorce: The couple can agree to divorce terms without going to trial. Attorneys are optional but recommended. The couple drafts the terms of the agreement and files a divorce decree with the court, which sends the judgment to the couple.
Collaborative divorce: Couples hire a team of attorneys and coaches associated with the Collaborative Professionals of Nevada, who are trained according to the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals standards. The team works individually and together to work out a marital settlement agreement. The couple signs a divorce decree, which is then filed with the court. If the couple can't come to an agreement through the collaborative process and chooses another route such as litigation, they can no longer use their team.
