Written by My Collaborative Team President, Edward S. Sachs, ACP

At Friday’s Happy Hour I raised the question of what to do when one of the clients does not want to divorce.  I described an initial team meeting in which the husband stated his first goal as “not getting divorced.”  It was clear to me as the financial neutral that we would not make any progress on the financial issues with that goal looming.  

On top of that issue is the fact that we have a very successful family business.  Both husband and wife work in the business and several of the adult children too.  The wife has made it very clear that she wants a divorce and does not wish to remain in the business.  The business is probably worth at least $10 million.  Therefore, we have very daunting issues for the husband to buy out the wife.  The husband is scared and almost paralyzed by the situation.

What do we do?

As is typical on our Friday Happy Hour I got some great advice from our esteemed participants.  Though I got some solid ideas from the mental health professionals, I have to admit that the best advice came from one of our Collaborative attorneys.  She described having a very similar situation and it became clear to her that the first thing to address was the emotional issue.  She showed empathy to her client’s situation and offered ways for him to deal with the emotional feelings, suggesting that he speak to a therapist to help him.  The fact that she recognized and embraced the need to help her client emotionally was met with enthusiasm by her client.  Only after dealing with his emotions could she then begin to set reasonable expectations and get him to a place where they could begin building options for settlement.

That is why, as Collaborative professionals, we must always deal with emotions first.  Only then can clients comprehend reasonable expectations for the Process and their situation.