Divorce Options

Options available to you and your family

Separation Agreement: 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 conversations 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 spouse, the parties and their attorney work through their legal issues outside of court through respectful discussion. In addition, neutral, third-party experts, such as a financial planner, mental health professional, or child specialist, may be brought in to assist with the process.  The resolutions that result from your Collaborative Divorce are drafted into a Separation Agreement drafted by the attorneys.

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. Fortunately, you can work through a divorce and all the legal issues surrounding it in North Carolina without stepping into a courtroom. This allows you and your spouse 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 is, 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 more control over the cost and outcome.