From the desk of My Collaborative Team President, Edward S. Sachs, ACP
It is always troubling to me when I hear of Collaborative communities who still don’t utilize a mental health professional in their cases.
I know that one of the tougher things to convince clients of is the need for the mental health professional in a Collaborative matter. I am here to tell you they are a MUST!
I’m reminded of the time we had a team meeting in a new case that proves that point.
Unfortunately, despite an income of around $200,000 the couple has no net worth and balked at using an MHP due to the cost. It was hard to argue. They had no money. They scraped up just enough money to hire me to give them some help. However, the couple was fighting like cats and dogs and we had to figure a way to do this. There was just enough money in one attorney’s trust account to pay for an MHP for a two-hour team meeting. We had to give it a shot.
The session began with the MHP meeting individually with each of the clients. Then we began the team meeting. With the guidance of our mental health professional extraordinaire the team was able to guide this couple to a realization of financial and lifestyle changes they would need to make immediately. They left the team meeting with a plan and with goals for settlement.
As the couple got ready to leave the meeting, the husband commented on how great the synergy of the team was during this meeting. They couldn’t have been more satisfied with the Process.
One thing that was very clear both to the professional team and the clients. We couldn’t have done it without our MHP.
Thankfully, most of the Collaborative attorneys I work with won’t do a Collaborative matter without an MHP. Divorce is an emotional upheaval and clients come to us in distress. Possibly the most important member of the team is the person with the professional qualifications to handle those emotional issues.
I agree with this post regarding use of an MHP but one thing is missing. What do you do when the clients absolutely refuse to hire an MHP? Some clients say under no circumstances are we hiring an MHP ever, period, end of story – do we send them off to court (or to another collaborative attorney willing to work without an MHP) or do we give in and take the case anyway? Personally, I don’t like it, but in those cases I have opted to still take the case collaborative since I feel parties need to avoid court in most cases and I cannot risk them going to court. I have had my share of “tough” collaborative cases in which you wonder whether the parties should have started down the collaborative road. However, all those “tough” cases eventually reached a settlement in less than a year so I feel it was worth it. I know most of those cases would have taken 2-5 years to go through the court system and much more damage would have been done to the family. On a positive note, I recently heard an analogy that may be used to help parties rethink their concern with the cost of an MHP. If you are about to have major surgery and are concerned with the cost, would you opt to forgo anesthesia to make the surgery less expensive? Can’t wait to try that out the next time a prospective collaborative client complains about the cost of adding an MHP. David Miller