How long does the Collaborative Divorce Process Take?
How long does the collaborative divorce process take? Well, this is a great question, one that we usually get at the beginning of the process.
What we typically tell people is that once the official big meetings get started, everybody's been hired, all the background work has been done. The mental health professional (collaborative divorce coach) has spent a few meetings learning about you, your family dynamics and your goals. If you have minor children they will have started helping you work through the parenting plan. Then once that foundation has been laid, we typically tell people they can plan on about five to seven of the “big meetings”. Big meetings are the ones in which everyone is involved, including both spouses, both attorneys, the mental health neutral, the financial neutral, if there is one involved, and then a child specialist, if there's one involved. Those big meetings are two hours long. We typically schedule them two weeks between each one and you can plan on five to seven of those.
Now, this range varies widely, depending upon the situation of your marriage. If there are complex financial issues that need to be managed, it can take longer. Here are some examples:
business valuations
division of all kinds of different types of properties
large amounts of debts or large amounts of retirement
difficulty pulling apart what was premarital asset versus what was obtained as a part of the marital estate, etc
And so, again, it really depends upon the couple, it really depends upon the situation, but our baseline is really about that five to seven big meeting range. This typically works out to around 4-6 months to get through the entire process.
