Fortunately, in North Carolina, you can work through a divorce and all of the legal issues surrounding it without stepping into a courtroom. This provides you and your spouse an opportunity to work together to decide what custody, child support, spousal support, and equitable distribution of your assets and debts will look like for your family, rather than having a judge make those decisions for you.
ROAD to RESOLUTION aims to help you understand the various processes through which you can come to an agreement. Each path has varying degrees of help from an attorney (or two), and varying degrees of contact between you and your spouse. No matter what your decision, it’s important to remember that there are a lot of variables within each of these options. We offer tools and methods that fit individual families and allow for more control over the cost and outcome.
Separation Agreements
A Separation Agreement is a legal, binding and enforceable contract between you and your spouse that puts your divorce resolutions into writing. You and your spouse can create the terms of a Separation Agreement through mediation, collaborative divorce, or some form of negotiation.
Negotiation
With or without the help of an attorney for you and your spouse, you can come to an agreement on how your family will transition from one family unit to two. These negotiations can be in the form of “kitchen table talks” between you and your spouse, or a back-and-forth of drafts with the help of an attorney or two. The resolutions that result from your negotiations are drafted into a Separation Agreement drafted by an attorney.
Mediation
With or without the support of attorneys, you and your spouse sit in a room together and work through all legal issues with the guidance of a third party neutral mediator who is trained to make difficult conversation possible. After a series of discussions, the resolutions that result from your negotiations are drafted into a Separation Agreement drafted by an attorney.
Collaborative Divorce
With the support of a collaborative-trained attorney for each party, the parties and their attorney work through your legal issues outside of court through respectful discussion. A financial planner or mental health professional may be brought in if needed. Unlike mediation, here you and your spouse are represented by a collaborative-trained attorney. The resolutions that result from your collaborative divorce are drafted into a Separation Agreement drafted by the collaborative divorce attorney.
Court
With or without attorneys, both parties go to court to tell their “side” of the story to a judge, and a judge issues an Order resolving all of the parties issues. This is an adversarial process with a neutral judge. We are fortunate to live in a state where we have the option to divorce in or out of court.