Collaborative

Collaborative Family Law

Lynn is a founding member of the Central Kansas Collaborative Family Law Practice Group. This is a group of attorneys in the Wichita, Kansas, area, who have been specifically trained to handle divorce cases in a collaborative format. For more information about the practice group, please visit its website at www.kscollab.com.

Lynn is also a member of the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals (IACP). For more information on IACP and collaborative family law, please visit www.collaborativepractice.com.

The heart of Collaborative Family Law (also called “no-court divorce,” “divorce with dignity,” “peaceful divorce”) is to offer the parties to a divorce action the support, protection, and guidance of their own lawyers without going to court. Lynn has handled twenty-four (24) cases in which the parties utilized Collaborative Family Law.

Collaborative Family Law (CFL) is a revolutionary approach to divorce that has quickly spread throughout the United States and Canada. CFL is a continuation of the trend to empower participants in the divorce process that began with, and shares many of the principles of, mediation.

By definition, a CFL case requires that a husband and wife are each represented by counsel who have been trained in interest-based negotiation, the choreography and structure of CFL, and interpersonal conflict resolution skills. Counsel and clients execute a contract, called a Participation Agreement, which mandates that both attorneys are precluded from representing their respective clients in the event the case reaches impasse or in the event either party chooses to withdraw from the CFL process. The roadmap of the process requires that the participants focus on the interests of both clients, gather sufficient information to insure that decisions are made with full knowledge, create a full range of options, and then choose options that best meet the needs of the parties. The structure, along with the skill of counsel, creates a problem-solving atmosphere with a focus on interest-based negotiation and client empowerment.

See the attached article from the Wichita Eagle newspaper featuring parties who handled their cases using Collaborative Family Law. article (Adobe Acrobat format). NewspaperArticle.pdf

Lynn gratefully acknowledges the contributions of fellow collaborative lawyer and mentor, Sherri Goren Slovin, to content of this page.

Conference Room – Ward Law Offices