Choose a More Respectful Divorce
We help divorcing and separating clients resolve conflict so they can move forward. Divorce involves restructuring your family and finances. We assist clients reach agreement in their divorce and separation in a respectful and cost-effective manner and where the clients make their own decisions about their futures. Experience shows that divorcing clients make better decisions for themselves than strangers can do, and that reaching common ground can be challenging without professional facilitation, guidance, and assistance. Divorce attorney and mediator J. Mark Weiss provides  facilitation, guidance, and assistance to help you reach consensus. For a consultation, call (206) 622-6707 or email us at info@mark-weiss.com.

A Divorce Court Has Limits in Its Ability to Restructure Families
We do not view our lawyer's job as going to court to try to “win” a divorce, because all too often even the “winner” loses. Courts are simply not well-suited to the task of restructuring families. In divorce court, intimate details of a couple's finances and other matters are presented to a judicial officer who makes life-altering decisions based on arguments made by the divorce lawyers and a limited amount of evidence that the lawyers can present. No one wins and the outcome may not even fit anyone's needs. There are much better ways: instead of turning over their most important decisions to strangers, divorcing and separating couples can make their own decisions and divorce in a manner that better preserves their relationships, dignity, and privacy. By resolving the conflict inherent in divorce, each spouse can move forward with their life. This can be done through Collaborative Divorce and divorce mediation with the assistance of a divorce lawyer who focuses exclusively on helping couples in conflict come to agreement.

Family Law in Addition to Divorce
Besides divorce (dissolution of marriage), we also work with couples in other family law matters, such as legal separations, parentage/paternity, domestic partnership, unmarried couple, and modification of child support and parenting (custody and visitation) matters. We also provide second opinions and assist other attorneys to get difficult cases back on track. We are conveniently located in Seattle, and serve the greater King County area.

A Divorce Settlement Is Better for Couples Who Divorce
When divorcing clients reach resolutions that best suit their values, goals, and needs, the resolutions are not just better but also more durable. We help clients reach divorce resolutions by listening to our clients and helping them identify what is most important to them. We then help our clients create a reality-based divorce settlement that is in alignment with their own priorities, goals, and needs. In our experience, only Collaborative Divorce and interest-based mediation are able to consistently help clients reach that level of divorce resolution.

A Divorce Resolution Helps Protect Your Privacy
Collaborative Law and mediation in divorce are especially well suited for protecting privacy. Instead of placing personal information in a public court record, negotiations in Collaborative Divorce and divorce mediation are  private and confidential. Unlike a court decision, many of the details of your divorce settlement may even remain confidential in Washington by placing them in a contract. In Collaborative Law cases, everyone signs an agreement at the start that all of the divorce discussions will remain confidential. Similarly, in mediation, everyone signs an agreement that the divorce negotiations will remain confidential. No other divorce process offers that degree of privacy protection as an inherent part of the structure from the beginning to end.

A Divorce Resolution Is Better for Children
By helping divorcing parents preserve a working relationship, Collaborative Divorce allows parents to reach better solutions for their children and to build a new and better co-parenting relationship for their future. In our experience, parents rarely work better together after a child custody or visitation fight in court, and the children are often victims of a court battle in their parents' divorce. We all know that children learn from their parents, including lessons drawn from how they observe their parents handling their divorce or separation. Collaborative Divorce is family-focused divorce, and allows the opportunity for parents to work together to build a healthy and cooperative parenting partnership and to model for their children how to best resolve conflict.

Collaborative Divorce and Mediation
We believe that Collaborative Divorce in particular often results in a higher quality outcome with less stress than going to court. Collaborative Divorce is a process that is optimized to help couples reach well-informed agreements with full legal support from trained attorneys in a manner that helps preserve relationships. With skilled help and support, divorcing couples are usually able to reach their own resolutions in a manner that is right for them. The divorcing couple's agreements are placed into legally binding divorce settlement documents. Mediation is another effective process where a neutral mediator assists the divorcing couple reach agreements, and where the parties often also have attorneys to advise them. Additional information about Collaborative Law, mediation, and divorce is on the Family Law and Divorce Options and Collaborative Divorce pages of this website, and HERE.

Suitable for Many Divorce and Family Law Cases
Collaborative Divorce and divorce mediation are both highly effective and have been successful for a large number of divorcing couples. Collaborative Divorce is well-suited for complex divorces, such as cases involving complicated property and business issues, special needs children, and unique parenting issues where preserving post-divorce relationships is critical even when the conflict is significant. While Collaborative Divorce and divorce mediation can work well for most divorcing couples, no process is ideal for everyone. We can assist you in evaluating your options, so you can find the divorce process that is best suited for your unique situation. Part of our job is to help you identify the factors so you can decide whether Collaborative Divorce, divorce mediation, or another divorce process is best for you.

Divorce Mediation, Consultation, and Settlement Lawyer
In addition to Collaborative Divorce and facilitative divorce mediation, we also provide consultation services both to separating and divorcing clients and to attorneys, including second opinions and consultation on divorce negotiation strategy. We can provide the benefit of an outsider's perspective to your family law case, focusing on what is most important to you. Our significant experience, skill, and advanced training allows us to provide these services on a cost-effective and low-profile consultation services from a Seattle family law attorney who is highly experienced in litigation, but whose sole focus is now on amicable settlement of divorce and family law matters.

Over 20 Years of Expertise as a Divorce Attorney
Rated among the finest family law attorneys in Washington State by Washington Law and Politics magazine, lawyer J. Mark Weiss has for the last 22 years helped couples divorce, with his extensive divorce litigation, mediation, negotiation and Collaborative Divorce experience. Mark received the “Attorney of the Year” award from the Washington State Bar Association Family Law Section, was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, and has continuously been on the “Super Lawyers” list of Washington Law and Politics Magazine since 2007. Having retired from divorce litigation after more than two decades of experience both inside and outside the courtroom, he is now entirely focused on non-adversarial family law dispute resolution, and trains other attorneys, financial specialists, and coaches in Collaborative Divorce. For more background information, click the “About Us” tab above.

Convenient Seattle Law Office - Serving Bellevue, Kirkland, Mercer Island and Surroundings
From our convenient Seattle location, we serve clients from throughout King County and beyond, including Bellevue, Kirkland, Mercer Island, Redmond, Everett and surrounding areas.  Mark provides guidance, insight, skill, and support to help guide you through your divorce or separation, or other family law matter. 

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DIVORCE TIP OF THE MONTH

Whenever children are part of a divorce, legal separation, or dissolution of a domestic partnership, the law requires that child support be addressed. The purpose for child support is to ensure that children's needs are met in the post-divorce family. Child support is intended to address all the expenses associated with child-rearing after divorce, from housing and food to clothing, education expenses, and extracurricular activity costs. Every State has its own child support laws, and Washington's child support laws will be quite different from those in other States. In Washington State, divorce attorneys will typically talk about how our child support law has two separate components: the first component is the so-called “transfer payment” which is ordinarily a fixed dollar amount; the second component is the sharing of additional expenses by the parents, usually on a percentage basis. Divorce lawyers will ordinarily describe the shared expenses as possibly including child care expenses, education expenses, long-distance transportation costs, extracurricular activities, and health care expenses (including medical insurance). For the first time since 1997, in April the Washington State Legislature has passed a major update to the child support laws. The new law goes into effect on October 1, 2009, and divorce lawyers throughout King County and Washington State have been studying the new law. The new child support law brings with it many changes. Unchanged is the four-step process for determining the child support transfer payment, which are: (1) Determining the proper numbers to be used in the child support worksheet calculation, (2) running the worksheet calculations to arrive at the preliminary “presumed” child support figure, (3) determining whether there should be a deviation from the presumed number, and (4) making an allocation. It is best to consult with a divorce lawyer about this process, especially steps (1) and (3), which can be easily misunderstood. The new child support law increases the amount of the transfer payment for many (not all) children of divorce, gives needed guidance to lawyers and divorce courts in how to apply the law more consistently. Both divorce lawyers and many families will welcome be the updated higher limit for allowed retirement contributions, and also the simplified way of treating the sharing of health care expenses between parents. Because the new law does not go into effect until October 1, most every divorce lawyer is grappling with how to address child support prior to October 1, especially since the new law may have a major impact. Some divorce attorneys feel that it is important to address the new child support provisions immediately, because existing child support orders do not automatically change with the new law. In other words, divorced parents who have an existing order will need to get it changed if they want the new law to apply to them. It is best to consult with a qualified divorce lawyer to investigate the options, including agreements that may be appropriate in light of the new law.  

>> Prior Divorce Tips of the Month

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