The following are Kulerski and Cornelison’s blog posts from their Chicago Tribune - Chicago Now – “The Way We War” blog.
The divorce court door is the best settlement tool we have.
Similar to logs traveling downriver, divorce cases drift aimlessly along for a year or two until the logjam bumps into the narrows of the courthouse door. The divorce you have long awaited suddenly becomes terrifying. The many months of posturing is now replaced by a mad scramble to settle before the trial starts.
Stepping through those courtroom doors signifies helplessness, your bargaining power is zero, you are about to let a stranger make decisions that are life changing.
People in competition are out to prove they are right and the other party is wrong. Meeting their adversary halfway is out of the question. This mindset is the villain; it produces a downward retaliatory cycle that depletes good will and pocketbooks.
Typically, well over 90% of all divorce cases settle before reaching trial, with many settling on the eve of trial. By this time, the parties have likely spent more of their spirit, energy, and money than they ever thought possible (on a trial that statistically, at least, is not going to occur).
We would be wise to concentrate on resolving our differences early on, and this is where mediation, collaborative law, and cooperative divorce law come in. These are anti-war settlement models that create a non-confrontational climate in which an early settlement may take place. They suppress the parties’ inclination to complete, and they make settlement a priority, just as the courthouse door does.
Competitors focus on winning and, quite simply, there are no winners in a divorce battle. Both parties lose. The legal system cannot give us more than we have when we enter it. No matter what we have when we enter the system, we leave with less. And this is before the lawyers get a dime.
