Arizona divorces, probate cases and nasty family business rivalries will benefit this year from the adoption of the Uniform Collaborative Law Rules by the Arizona Rules of Court. This means that after January 1, 2016, any licensed Arizona family law attorneys can engage in an Arizona Collaborative Law case, whereas before 2016, attorneys had to have training to practice as collaborative lawyers.

Collaborative law has always been available in Arizona. However, before January 1, 2016, attorneys had to be licensed to practice law and be trained and certified as Collaborative Law attorneys to offer this service. Now, any lawyer, whether they have become certified or trained, can participate in collaborative law cases.

Anytime a law changes, there is potential for confusion. The benefit of this change is that lawyers who were not trained may have steered their clients and members of the public away from using the collaborative law model. There is too much potential benefit available to Arizona families and businesses not to make it available to everyone.

In Maricopa County, there were 33,394 Family Court cases, including divorces with children, filed in 2014. For the fresh crop of filings and those people who were stuck in litigation but are now returning to court for new orders, there is access to a new brand of legal relief. As January typically sees people re-evaluating how they are running their business and personal lives and litigation can result, this change is timely.

Collaborative Law is great for any case involving a business or family relationship. Everything people do in Collaborative Law is out of court, reducing the chances of hurt reputations, loss of important relationships or other common challenges of divorce or business dissolution. The real benefit of collaborative law is that people have a conservation of resources and relationships that can get destroyed in litigation.

The hallmarks of collaborative law require the participants to:

Commit in a written contract with their lawyer and the other side not to go to court – or not to go back to court if that is where they have come from. Fully and promptly disclose all material information. Most people are actually willing to fully disclose. Strive for a resolution as a family or business. The dynamic may be changing, but innocent bystanders including children, employees or an ageing parent don’t deserve to get caught in the crosshairs of a lack of cooperation.

Collaborative Law cuts attorneys’ fees in one important area: Discovery, the process by which each side gathers information from the other side. But the process also has a valuable and less tangible quality, which is that both sides resolve their personal relationship differences. Emotional issues are entirely ignored in traditional litigation. When people have a shared business, an ageing parent, young kids – they may need to air grievances but can’t afford the long-term fallout of court. These are situations where the clients need to cooperate to minimise the conflict’s ripple effect. This process allows for privacy at a time that a person can become his own or someone else’s embarrassment. It is the legal equivalent of a padded wall.

Collaborative Law sets a lawyer or Collaborative Family Law Attorney free to be really creative in helping clients find solutions. The average judge is assigned about 20,000 cases, so it will be impossible for the judge to get the nuances of each case. When people are allowed to create their own solutions, because they know their own “nuances,” they can be so much more creative.

We have handled collaborative divorces, business dissolution’s, custody cases and even adoptions. The solution is almost always available, whereas in court it can be a roll of the dice to depend on an overworked judge.

The available statistics support the use of Collaborative Law. A 2012 International Academy of Collaborative Professionals study of 933 cases confirmed 87% of collaborative law participants are “very satisfied” with the outcome. 84% of the cases involved kids.

Further, the median Maricopa County family income is $65,438 per year. A 2003 Utah State University Study,”Costly Consequences Of Divorce”, found that the average divorce back in 2003 cost $18,000.00. That was thirteen years ago. The family that can’t afford to litigate their divorce may be able to afford a collaborative law divorce. A 2010 study by International Academy of Collaborative Professionals (IACP) found that eighty-one percent (81%) of clients considered the attorney’s fees that were charged for their own lawyer as very reasonable or somewhat reasonable.

With Collaborative Law, the participants control their outcomes, making it much more likely that everyone will abide by court orders. In her book “Missing Peaces: The Missing Pieces to the Co-Parenting Puzzle,” Amy Snapp-Hayford observes that kids will always try to divide and conquer, but the child’s goal is easily realised in divorced parents’ homes because the parents aren’t aligned. One way to avoid this parent trap and give kids a healthy boundary is to give kids the sense of consistency long after parents stop sharing the same home.

Right now, the Collaborative Law rules are only adopted for the family court, but this may be only the beginning. Not long ago, the court rules for family law and civil litigation began to look very similar. The civil rules co ver gaps in the rules of court for probate as well, so it may be only a matter of time until collaborative law is adopted for every kind of case.

Jennifer K. Moshier is licensed practice law in Arizona and California. She is a trained, certified collaborative lawyer and handles family and probate cases ranging from divorce, legal separation in Arizona, to adult adoptions and every family mediation services. Ms. Moshier is also an advance family law mediator. She graduated from Pepperdine Law School in 2000 and received her Bachelor’s degree from Arizona State University. She is the founder of Family Lawyers of Arizona, peacefulfamilylaw.com .