Choose a More Respectful Divorce
We help divorcing and separating clients resolve conflict so they can move forward. Divorce involves restructuring family and finances. Almost all divorces start out with conflict, but even deep conflict can often be resolved. 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 and their children. Although divorcing clients generally make much better decisions for themselves and their children than strangers can ever do, reaching common ground that meets the needs of all can be challenging without professional facilitation, guidance, assistance, and education. Divorce attorney and mediator J. Mark Weiss provides facilitation, guidance, and assistance to help you reach consensus in your divorce instead of an imposed outcome. For a consultation, call (206) 622-6707 or email us at info@mark-weiss.com.

Working Towards an Agreed Divorce Settlement Is Better for Families and Children
When divorcing clients reach resolutions that best suit their values, goals, and needs, the resolutions are not just better but also tend to be 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, Collaborative Divorce and interest-based mediation are the only processes that are consistently able to help clients reach that level of divorce resolution. When the needs of divorced parents are addressed in a manner that is respectful and preserves their dignity, they are usually also better able to co-parent their children together.

There Are Better Ways to Divorce
There are better ways than divorce court. Instead of having a stranger make what may be some of the most important decisions in your life, divorcing and separating couples have the option of making their own divorce decisions. When supported by divorce lawyers and other professionals who are trained in non-court methods of arriving at divorce settlements, couples can often get a divorce that better preserves relationships, dignity, and privacy. By resolving the conflict and addressing some of the pain that is inherent in divorce, each spouse can move forward with his or her 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. 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.

A Divorce Settlement 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 by placing them in a contract. In Collaborative Law divorces, everyone signs an agreement at the start that the divorce discussions and proceedings will remain confidential and that the lawyers' only role can be to focus on settlement. No other divorce process offers that degree of privacy protection that applies to all professionals as an inherent part of the structure from the beginning to end. Similarly, in divorce mediation, everyone signs an agreement that the divorce negotiations will remain confidential.

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.

Divorce Court Has Limits in Its Ability to Restructure Families
Most divorce lawyers and judges will tell you that courts are not ideal for the task of restructuring families. In divorce court, intimate details of a couple's finances and other matters are presented to a judge or court commissioner who makes life-altering decisions based on the law as guided by arguments made by the divorce lawyers and a limited amount of evidence that the lawyers may present under court rules. To the extent divorce laws provides clear guidance (often the law does not), the law may not fit your family's unique circumstances. Divorce court proceedings are expensive and the outcome is often uncertain and unpredictable. Often, no one wins. Even when there is a divorce settlement, the legal maneuverings that preceded the settlement can often cause unnecessary pain and resentment and contribute to future problems.

Collaborative Divorce and Family Law Mediation
We believe that Collaborative Divorce in particular often results in a higher quality outcome with less stress and greater control 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 that helps preserve relationships. With skilled support, divorcing couples are usually able to reach their own resolutions that are right for them, where the needs of both are addressed. 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.

Suitable for Many Divorce and Family Law Cases
Collaborative Divorce and divorce mediation are both highly effective processes that have been successful for many 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 or divorce mediation can work well for many divorcing couples, no process can be right for everyone. We encourage you to review this website and others, and to read and explore to learn more. 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 for yourself whether Collaborative Divorce, divorce mediation, or another divorce process is best for your unique circumstance.

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 basis from a Seattle family law attorney who is highly experienced in litigation, but whose sole focus is now on settlement and resolution of divorce and family law matters.

Over 20 Years of Expertise as a Divorce Attorney
Rated among the 25-best 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. Mark has 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 inside and outside the courtroom, he is now entirely focused on non-adversarial family law dispute resolution. He also trains other attorneys, financial specialists, and mental health professionals in the Collaborative Divorce process. For more background information, click the “About Us” tab above.

Family Law in Addition to Divorce
Besides divorce (dissolution of marriage), divorce attorney J. Mark Weiss also works 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.

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

Divorce is a major life change and a major decision. The impact of divorce will be life-altering for you, your spouse, your children, your family and your spouses' family, and your friends. While few would recommend staying in an unhappy or unhealthy marriage or relationship, it is well worth being absolutely certain about the decision to divorce. Just thinking about it or talking with friends is probably not enough. Additionally, consider active participation in a marriage reconciliation process with a trained professional before making the decision to divorce. Doing so will allow you to be sure in your mind that you made the right decision. Studies show that a large percentage of divorced couples (on the order of 45%) had second thoughts in the months and years following their divorce. To make certain you are not part of that statistic, isn't it better to take the time and effort to really be sure that a divorce is the right decision for you? Once you or your spouse visit a divorce lawyer, it is unlikely that marriage reconciliation will be on the menu of options offered. In fact, most divorce lawyers are even not comfortable talking about reconciliation because it is not within their training or experience. Divorce attorneys are trained as legal experts to get the paperwork done for the legal divorce. Lawyers are not typically trained in exploring the viability of marriage or emotions with their clients and, because a divorce lawyer's professional life consists of working with failed marriages, that steady diet can subtly bias the view of even the most well-meaning lawyer. (This phenomenon is a form of "recency bias" that in divorce is closely connected to "emotional contagion.") A divorce lawyer's office is therefore probably a very poor place to explore marriage reconciliation. A much better place would be with a qualified mental health professional. For more specific issues, marital mediation is another option instead of divorce. Marital mediation is mediation with a mediator who might otherwise conduct divorce mediation, but with the objective to help couples resolve conflict and remain together instead of divorced. Marital mediation can often be successful. If you are considering marriage reconciliation, do consider your goal. What we suggest is that the goal for marriage reconciliation not be to learn how to put up with what is an unbearable situation; instead, we suggest that the goal be to change the relationship into a happy and fulfilling marriage or committed relationship. You will not know if that is possible unless you try. If reconciliation is not successful, a divorce remains available as a next step. But if reconciliation is successful, then you will have saved yourself and your family the expense and grief that a divorce almost necessarily entails. While a good divorce (a Collaborative divorce or mediation) is much better than a bad divorce (a litigated divorce), no divorce is best of all. All that would be lost is the time spent exploring whether or not divorce is truly the right choice for you. Why not know the answer for sure before making a decision to visit the divorce attorney?

>> Prior Divorce Tips of the Month

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