Florida Collaborative Divorce Step By Step

Here is a step-by-step overview of Collaborative Divorce in Florida (modified from the About Collaborative guide from the Collaborative Family Law Group of Central Florida). Your family has specific goals, interests, and facts that make your divorce unique. Your Collaborative Team will customize the process to fit with your goals, interests, and family’s circumstances.

Step 1: How Collaborative Divorce Starts.

Each divorcing spouse hires a trained collaborative attorney. The attorneys consider professionals who’d best fit the couple’s needs. They suggest a collaboratively trained neutral facilitator, typically a mental health professional. A collaboratively trained neutral financial professional completes the team. Each spouse talks with the proposed neutral professionals. When they’re comfortable, they jointly hire them to work on the Collaborative Team.

Step 2: Signing the Collaborative Participation Agreement.

The spouses and their team sign a joint commitment known as a “Collaborative Participation Agreement.” That’s when the matter becomes a collaborative family law matter. The Collaborative Participation Agreement frames the Collaborative Process. It expresses the team’s commitment to full disclosure, honest, respectful, and open communication, confidentiality, and not to fight in court during the process. If a case is already pending before the clients sign the Collaborative Participation Agreement, they agree to suspend it and notify the judge they’ve chosen the Collaborative Divorce Process.

Step 3: Interests, Goals, Team Meetings, and Work In Between.

The spouses and their team all meet together. Team meetings may take place in person or by Zoom. At the first team meeting, the team sets ground rules, identifies each spouse’s individual and joint goals and interests, and assign tasks for each team member. There may be a notetaker or “scribe” who volunteers to keep meeting notes.

The team decides what information is needed and a plan for getting it.

Between meetings, each spouse meets with their attorney. Each may meet with the neutral professionals. For example, they may work on financial affidavits and budgets to quantify income, expenses, assets, and debts.

Step 4: Working on Getting Information about Property, Income, Expenses, and Children.

Individual and group meetings based upon the spouses’ needs continue. The neutral financial professional will gather information and begin sorting out property and money issues. At this collaborative step, this professional typically prepares a preliminary spreadsheet to reflect the couple’s financial picture.

The team reviews the information exchanged and constructively and respectfully works through differences.

When there are children, the collaborative neutral mental health facilitator may spend time working through challenges with parenting, scheduling, or other child issues.

Step 5: Exploring and Developing Options for Resolving Issues.

Team meetings and individual meetings continue. The spouses and team identify issues. Together they explore, develop, and consider options and consequences of selecting them. The spouses have power to reach creative solutions in the Collaborative Process. The spouses decide on best options to achieve their most important individual and joint goals and to meet their family’s interests.

For special issues (special needs trusts for dependent children, tax planning, property valuation, business valuation, property appraisals, trust and estates considerations, substance abuse), the Collaborative Team may bring in other professionals known as Allied Professionals.

Step 6: Preparing Written Contracts to Express Agreements on Issues.

The attorneys draft all agreements needed to express the spouses’ decisions resolving the issues. Florida favors settlement agreements. Further, if the spouses have children, the mental health professional works with the parents and prepares a detailed Parenting Plan.

Next, the spouses carefully review the drafts with their attorneys. Each attorney makes sure the documents precisely express the client’s decisions. The spouses sign an agreement, known as a Collaborative Marital Settlement Agreement (CMSA). If there are children, the parents also sign their Parenting Plan.

Step 7: Court Review and Approval of Collaborative Divorce Agreements and Entry of Final Judgment.

One collaborative attorney will let the court know the spouses successfully resolved their issues in the Collaborative Process. Then, the matter proceeds to an uncontested final hearing. Some judges will allow clients to file final papers electronically and will finish the matter with no hearing.

The judge must review agreements regarding the children (such as the parenting plan and agreed child support). If the judge finds the agreements to be in the children’s best interests, the judge approves them and enters a final judgment of dissolution of marriage.

Step 8: Follow-Up Items to Implement Agreements.

After final judgment, the spouses may need to take steps to implement their Collaborative Marital Settlement Agreement. For example, they may need to set up new autopay instructions for the mortgage or utilities. Or, they may need to sign account transfer documents.

Likewise, to transfer ownership of assets like a home or vehicle, they may need to sign deeds or papers. If they’ve agreed the ex-spouse will be redesignated as beneficiary under life insurance, the insured may need to sign new beneficiary designation forms. A former spouse may need to enroll in a new health insurance plan or adjust coverage.

For retirement accounts being divided, like a 401(k), an attorney may need to prepare and the judge may need to sign a separate Qualified Domestic Relations Order (QDRO). The Collaborative Team professionals will help with these steps.