What Does a Collaborative Case Cost?

A question that everyone asks, or wants to ask, when considering Collaborative Law is “what does it cost?”  That’s a natural and legitimate question.The simple, but not-too-useful answer is:  somewhere between cheap and the cost of protracted litigation. On top of that, cheap is not defined (it’s relative, after all) and the sky (or maybe the extent of one’s bank accounts or credit cards) is the limit  for protracted litigation cost.

Unfortunately, the answer is that we don’t know in advance what a divorce case will cost.  Attorneys and other professionals normally charge by the hour and we can’t tell in the future how many hours will be required.

Why can’t we be more specific?  Because each case is different.   Some issues are usually harder to deal with than others.

Your case may involve one or more of the following issues and we rarely spend equal time on every issue.
Post-divorce support
Career training or retraining
Health limitations
Allocating investments between the parties
Retirement planning
Child care
Ownership and management of a small business
College expenses
Unique visitation circumstances
Tax planning
One parent moving away
Mental health issues
Keeping both parents involved with very active children
A professional practice of one or both spouses
Dealing with teenagers
Dividing, sharing or allocating a family business

There are varying degrees of difficulty between issues and between cases.  We can’t predict ahead of time how much time we will need to devote to each issue.  What will be clear is that your team of professionals will allocate their efforts in gathering information, identifying issues and creating solutions in the most efficient manner to deal with what’s most important to you.

You can get some specific information on what to expect in a Collaborative case by talking with a Collaborative attorney.  Be sure to explain what’s important to you and what outcomes you would like to see.  That could give you useful information to help decide how to handle your case.