arejudgesgettinganaccuratepictureofcoLLaBorativedivorce?
Marital & Family law Section Chair: AngieRosello – SessumsBlackP. A. whenthefullpictureisvisible, collaborativedivorceis definednotbythefewcases thatterminate, butbythe manythatresolvewith structure, dignity, andcare.
Judges do not make decisions inside the Collaborative Process, except whether to approve final agreements. Yet their influence over the future of Collaborative Divorce is significant. Judicial perceptions shape how lawyers advise clients, how professionals assess risk, and whether Collaborative Practice is viewed as a reliable option or an outlier.
A persistent challenge is that judges are far more likely to recognize Collaborative cases that terminate than those that resolve successfully. This creates a visibility problem, one that can unintentionally distort how the Collaborative Process is understood from the bench.
Successful Collaborative matters typically conclude quietly. Agreements are presented for approval without contested hearings or adversarial motion practice. Unless counsel makes the process explicit, the Court may never know that the matter was resolved Collaboratively. Terminated cases, by contrast, can transition into litigation and become visible to judges precisely because the Collaborative Process did not succeed.
Over time, this creates a skewed sample. From the Court’ s perspective, Collaborative Divorce can appear disproportionately likely to fail, even though the opposite is true.
Fortunately, outcome data helps correct this misperception.
Between 2014 and 2024, the Florida Academy of Collaborative Professionals collected data on Collaborative cases. Dr. Randy Heller of Nova Southeastern University and I analyzed nearly 300 reported Collaborative matters across Florida. 1 Approximately 85 percent of those cases reached full resolution without litigation. This finding closely mirrors a 2010 International Academy of Collaborative Professionals study of nearly 1,000 cases nationwide, which showed an 86 percent
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