'Friendly' divorce movement gains ground

Though she can make substantially more money litigating, Ms. Trusch is changing her entire practice to collaborative law. She says she knew it was right when, "for the first time ever, I was hugged by the client on the other side."

The main disadvantage, however, is that if the parties can't reach a negotiated solution, they must fire their collaborative lawyers and hire litigators.

That will have meant wasted time and money, says Thomas Oldham, a professor at the University of Houston, who focuses on family law and marital property rights.

He touches on collaborative law in several of his classes and says the advantages seem to outweigh the disadvantages. "A number of very good lawyers are quite excited about it," he says.

Collaborative law was developed in 1990 by a Minneapolis family lawyer, Stuart Webb, who was burned out from handling divorces in court. Since that time, 4,500 lawyers across the country have been trained in the process, a number that has been roughly doubling each year as demand for the service rises.

In 2001, Texas became the first state to adapt its divorce law to accommodate the practice through legislation. In Louisiana, a family-court judge is using a $200,000 grant to promote the concept to both lawyers and clients.

W. Ross Foote led the campaign in Rapides Parish, La. After trying for 12 years to bring "dignity" back to family court, the district judge finally stumbled across collaborative divorce two years ago and has been trumpeting the idea ever since.

One recent example of its success: An Alexandria, La., couple called their collaborative lawyer to cancel an appointment, saying that they had stayed up all night talking (communication is a large part of the collaborative process) and decided to give their marriage another chance.

In fact, the number of couples who stay together after going through the collaborative process is about 10 percent nationwide - a much larger number than those who use the courts, studies show.

"If 10 percent of the people are reconciling though collaborative law, then the legal system is costing us 10 percent of divorces unnecessarily," says Judge Foote. "The problem with the court route is, there is no exit ramp. Once you start, you can't stop. People get more and more bitter and say worse and worse things."

Taking divorce out of the courts, he says, is key to creating healthy relationships after the split. "The difference is, collaborative law is client-centered instead of court-centered," he says. "We call it divorce with dignity."

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