Reduced Costs & Benefits

How To Reduce Your Costs

Increased interpersonal conflict, ineffective communication and emotional reactivity will increase your divorce costs, regardless of the divorce process you choose. The more professional intervention you need to resolve your divorce matters, the more you’ll pay. 

We recommend you both attend our Divorce Options® Webinars ideally twice – it’s a lot of information and it’s easier to take it all in the second time. Different professionals present each time. Then we suggest you attend our Divorce Doctors Webinar and come prepared with tons of questions – ideally those that may be relevant to others as well. Understanding the basics and reading through this website means you are not paying professionals top dollar to provide basic information. You’re coming into the process far more prepared, less anxious and better equipped to make critical decisions. (See additional Cost-Reduction handouts on our Resources page.

Divorce is not just a legal process. It is an emotional, relational, financial and legal process. Unlike most attorneys, VCD’s Divorce Attorneys don’t try to wear all the divorce “hats” themselves. Trained to work in interdisciplinary collaborative teams, our attorneys are better equipped to pull in less expensive specialists to handle the financial and emotional/communication matters of your divorce. Remember, all VDC professionals are trained in both Mediation & Collaborative Practice. 

A “neutral” financial specialist may start even your litigated divorce by gathering and organizing a couples’ financial data, for attorney use in later negotiations. (All divorce processes legally require financial transparency!) The Financial Neutral helps build trust and eases tensions. As transparency occurs, anxiety, adversarial positioning and defensiveness diminish.  At the same time, a licensed therapist can be helping the couple to mediate their parenting plan (custody agreement) to be later included in your final divorce agreement (“Judgment”). Even in litigation, meeting together first with a neutral, financial specialist trained in both mediation and collaborative practice can save you both considerable attorneys’ fees.

Financial specialists and licensed therapists are typically less expensive than attorneys, and can lay the groundwork for your divorce, regardless of the process you choose (litigation, mediation or collaborative divorce), and thereby reduce attorney fees. Your attorney(s) can negotiate the division of your assets and debts and write up the final Judgment (divorce agreement). 

Furthermore, you do NOT have to trust one another to ensure financial transparency in a Mediation or Collaborative Divorce! This is especially true when your professionals are collaboratively trained (ask us more about this!). It is also a myth that you must already be civil and respectful to mediate effectively. Many high-conflict couples divorce using Mediation or Collaborative protocols, provided they have adequate professional communication and financial support. 

We reduce your costs by having our professionals each handle their specific areas of expertise, skill and training and by eliminating any duplication of efforts. Our independent professionals are equipped to work together efficiently to get you to the divorce finish line.

* For a list of Divorce Modest Means Resources, please see our Resources page, to download our handout. 

Benefits of Team Mediation or Collaborative Divorce Process:

  • You, not a judge or lawyers, make decisions and agreements – limited only by your own reasonableness, creativity, flexibility and the law.
  • The Team controls the process to ensure efficiency and a safe, open context for communication and creating win-win options.
  • The absence of adversarial professionals. Distrust and fear require more professional intervention and higher costs.
  • 1 or 2 Licensed Divorce Therapists help contain even most high-conflict couples to get to the divorce finish line.
  • Individualized support from professionals trained to consider the needs and wellbeing of all family members.
  • Avoid costly court battles and the added costs of using additional divorce professionals who are not working together collaboratively.
  • Avoid the emotional stress and pain for immediate and extended family members when litigation requires you to “win against” your partner in an adversarial process.
  • When emotions run high, emotion regulation skills learned from Licensed Divorce Specialists permit calm, thoughtful decision-making and solutions.
  • Communication skills-building and support offered by Licensed Divorce Therapists before and during any necessary but difficult conversations.
  • Co-Parents create a detailed Parenting Plan with co-parenting experts who help you anticipate your children’s future developmental needs, and avoid future conflict.
  • Consensual Dispute Resolution (CDR) is a private and confidential process – only the final agreement (“Judgment”) is submitted to the court.
  • Full disclosure and transparency regarding all assets and debts are legally required in any divorce process; your single, neutral Financial Specialist can help secure transparency, and track and trace finances in a friendlier context, without costly subpoenas and litigation.
  • To prepare for decisions about how to share assets and debts, your neutral Financial Specialist offers a safe context to ensure education and a clear, shared understanding of your family’s finances that reduces anxiety, helps rebuild trust and reduces costs.
  • Unlike divorce with a single, neutral mediator or litigation, in a Collaborative Divorce each partner is “legally represented” by a Family Law Attorney who considers their client’s best interests, as well as the wellbeing of all family members.

(Note: One big difference between any form of Team Mediation & Collaborative Divorce is the Disqualification Clause required by a Collaborative Process. The Disqualification Clause requires all professionals to resign from the process if either partner opts to go to court, and thus increases each partner’s investment in the success of this process.)

Critical Collaborative Divorce Benefits for Children & Adult Children of Divorce, with a neutral Child or Adult Child Specialist:

  • The neutral Child Specialist ensures Children and Adult Children of divorce are given a voice – not the burden of a choice
  • The impact of parental conflict, as well as kids’ needs and concerns are considered, understood and respected
  • Children are buffered from the toxic levels of stress and conflict – the fall out of costly court custody wars
  • Children are more protected from the toxic stress of being used by parents as go-betweens or confidantes, and from carrying parents’ emotions as well as too much “adult” information
  • Co-parents learn to communicate effectively, and manage intense emotions to create a healthier, respectful context for raising their children
  • Co-parents can learn to be skilled at jointly and respectfully participating in kids’ developmental events going forward (e.g. sports events, graduations from high school & college, weddings, baby showers, grandchildren’s birthdays and events)
  • Divorce Coaches help co-parents create a detailed Parenting Plan, informed by the Child or Adult Child Specialist, and that anticipates children’s future developmental needs, and avoids future challenges.

Review our bios and contact any VDC professional to get started.