The power of creativity is having the ability to be original and unique in your thoughts, ideas, and designs. Those same words are words we would use to describe the families we serve in the Collaborative Process. Each family we help is unique in the way they think, filled with their own ideas on how they should operate, and often many of them have a different design structure as to how it relates to the family makeup. The parallels between creativity and family are greater than we may even realize.

One of the driving Standards for the Collaborative practice is the “clients agree to use good faith efforts in their negotiations to reach a mutually acceptable resolution.” As many family law professionals have experienced, the law is not written for the uniqueness of individual families and limits the creativity on how families can move forward after divorce. While weeks like this current World Creativity and Innovation Week allow for us to highlight the Collaborative Process as a creative solution for families dealing with conflict, we must not limit ourselves to just this one week.

Creativity is the driving force for evolution and pushing the boundaries. By advocating creativity to those who are facing one of the toughest challenges of their lives, we can help to evolve how the world approaches divorce.