Marriage Story – in real life, not the movie

Collaborative Law Divorce is an excellent option for divorcing couples struggling with emotionally fraught issues like custody or asset distribution. For instance, the 2019 movie “Marriage Story,” a divorce tale that was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture and is now available on Netflix, probes how quickly a relatively amicable split can move from trust and verbal agreements to litigation. No wonder the movie was so popular. The scenario truly can happen to anyone.

While Hollywood is best at painting in broad strokes the emotional lines of a fracturing relationship, Collaborative Law, a legal process where both parties hire their own attorneys but agree to stay out of court, offers a real life antidote to the misery we see on the big screen. What would have happened if actors Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson, who play Charlie and Nicole the divorcing parents, had participated in a Collaborative Law divorce instead?

For starters, there would have been no movie. In Collaborative Law, your personal divorce story is 100% private, even to close friends and relatives, unless you share it. There would have been no public documents for a writer to follow the inner lives of the combatants. Remember how every custody filing of Angelina Jolie became a news headline during her divorce from Brad Pitt?  In Collaborative Law, the interim steps of asset and custody negotiations remain forever private. Only the final agreements are signed and filed with the court, and in Pennsylvania, those filed documents can be removed from easy public access.

The Collaborative Law divorce process also deflates the protagonist/antagonist casting of Spouse against Spouse, Parent against Parent. It is a team approach wherein each party has a vested financial interest in settlement at the negotiating table. In Collaborative Divorce, the attorneys cannot later act as litigating attorneys should the process fail, so all parties are motivated to avoid duplication of legal costs. Even the tone set at a Collaborative Divorce meeting is goal-focused and the issues recast as joint problems to solve together.

In the movies, divorce litigants speak at each other, not to each other. I can think of numerous movies or television shows where aggressive divorce lawyers cleverly undermine their opponent’s arguments to score a point. It makes for great drama, but bad family theater.

So, another key element of the movie “Marriage Story” that Collaborative Law Divorce can solve is this: the fictional Charlie and Nicole would have spent a lot more time across a table, looking each other in the eye. Collaborative Law is an in-person process since its purpose is to keep two people talking to resolve issues. It can’t be phoned or teleconferenced in. There are times when custody reports, therapist’s comments, and financial planners’ input are introduced to clarify the legal and emotional issues, but such experts are typically hired jointly by both parties to explore multiple scenarios.

Of course, who would pay to go to a movie theater to watch a divorce take place behind doors closed to the viewer, the numerous tiny agonies and indignities of a family falling apart hidden from view? No one, of course.

So keep your family and your divorce private and call my office today at 215-345-5259 for a free first consult, and let me explain how a Collaborative Law Divorce can protect your privacy and dignity.

– Elissa C. Goldberg, Esquire