Collaborative Divorce For High Net-Worth Families In Florida
Benefits Of Collaborative Divorce
One benefit is employing a neutral financial professional, typically a forensic accountant, to analyze the financial problems in the case- debts, assets, expenses, and income; compared to the expense and time of every party retaining individual accounts with clashing reports and different expert opinions. Divorce cases with significant valuation issues retain separate valuation experts, but in a collaborative divorce things can be streamlined.
Another benefit is avoiding expensive trials. In a contested high net-worth divorce, when there are significant financial issues to be disputed over, a trial can drag on, involving days of evidence and testimony, and weeks of advance preparation by you, your attorney and experts.Issues are resolved around a table in a collaborative divorce, and while an attorney can never guarantee a result, success rates for collaborative cases lie in the 90% range.
Litigation Is Expensive
Costs for collaborative cases are significantly lower than contested litigation matters, particularly in high asset cases. Litigation expenses can easily go over $100,000 per party for accountants, attorneys, and valuation experts. Moreover, litigation case costs include the expense of formal discovery, which can involve producing thousands of pages of documents, back and forth correspondence, multiple objections to discovery, hearings, and argument.
In a collaborative case, there is only one financial neutral compiling and reviewing accounts, statements, and coming up with schedules of income, assets, expenses, and liabilities. While your collaborative attorney will still review all of these, the review level of original source materials (statements, etc.) will typically be much less, since both parties are hiring the financial neutral towards a common goal. During a litigated case, your attorney will have to work to cross-examine the other spouse’s expert about their opinions, which are all essentially additional costs that come from preparing for an adversarial process.
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The above reasons, along with a few other components all drive the cost of litigation to high costs. There is also the additional threat of what you may lose if you don’t get the proof you need or the result you want at trial. This is why a collaborative divorce, whenever possible, is always the best-case scenario. Swickle & Associates is a top family law firm in the Fort Lauderdale area. Call Swickle & Associates today to schedule an appointment with an expert divorce attorney today.