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

A Divorce Settlement Is Better for Most Families and Children than Divorce Court
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, the Collaborative Divorce process and interest-based divorce 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 Several Ways to Divorce
There are many ways to divorce, and 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 the Collaborative Divorce process and divorce mediation with the assistance of divorce lawyers and professionals who focus 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 -- along with everyone else.

A Divorce Settlement Can Help 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 that can stay private. In the Collaborative Law divorce process, 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 far from 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 lawyers may present under court rules and laws. Even when the divorce laws provides clear guidance (often the law does not), the law may not be a good fit for your family's unique circumstances. Divorce court proceedings are often very expensive, the outcome is often uncertain and unpredictable, and the emotional toll can be great. Often, no one wins. A court fight (even on a motion for a temporary parenting plan (custody and visitation), alimony/spousal maintenance or child support) usually does not make divorcing spouses better able to co-parent after the court fight is over. Even when there is a divorce settlement after bartering-style negotiations, the legal maneuverings and positioning that preceded the settlement can often cause unnecessary pain and resentment and contribute to future problems. While the court provides a necessary service when needed, it is best to avoid court involvement in your divorce if possible.

The Collaborative Divorce and Family Law Mediation Options
We believe that the Collaborative Divorce process 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. The divorcing couple's agreements are placed into legally binding divorce settlement documents. Divorce 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 sections of this site.

Suitable for Many Divorce and Family Law Cases
Collaborative Divorce and divorce mediation are both highly effective processes that have helped many couples successfully resolve their disagreements to reach a divorce settlement. Collaborative Divorce is well-suited for complex divorces with conflict, including cases involving complicated property and business issues, special needs children, and unique parenting issues where preserving post-divorce relationships is critical. As a conflict resolution process, Collaborative Divorce may be appropriate 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 and it is important that you make the choice that is right for you. We encourage you to explore this site, and to learn as much as you can to make the right choice for you. 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 circumstances and your values.

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 ideas for divorce negotiation. We can provide the benefit of an outsider's perspective to your family law case. Our significant experience, skill, and advanced training allows us to provide these services on a cost-effective basis. J. Mark Weis is 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.

Domestic Partnerships, Nonmarital Relationships, and Other Family Law Matters
Besides divorce (dissolution of marriage), divorce lawyer J. Mark Weiss also works with couples in other family law matters, including legal separations, parentage/paternity, domestic partnership dissolution, 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

It is a truism that divorce can at times bring out the worst in people. The reason is because divorce is one of the most stressful things a person can experience, and among the normal emotions people have when they are in a divorce are fear and anger. While everyone has good days and bad days, you can count on people going through any stressful event, such as divorce, to have more worse days, often punctuated by intense fear or anger. Feeling and allowing yourself to move through these emotions can be healthy. And, we can all venture to guess whether people are more likely to call their divorce lawyer in a moment of panic on their good days or bad days. Research has shown that intense emotion can significantly change people's outlook; common sense would seem to support the research. Unfortunately, the legal response that a lawyer can provide does little to soothe intense emotion; if anything, the divorce lawyer's conventional tools when things get tough -- which essentially amount to making threats or going to court to try to achieve a result -- can have the unintended effect of exacerbating the anger or fear of both parties. The anger or fear of the lawyer's client gets reinforced by the conventional divorce lawyer's response, which treats the statements made in expressing an emotion as if they were thought-through rational determinations, rather than as expressions of fear or other emotions; this response also overlooks the often-important and useful information that emotions can contain. Moreover, conventional lawyers have basically only one tool -- a hammer, even though not every problem is a nail. The unintended consequence is that clients can easily stay stuck in emotions they would otherwise transition through. The other divorcing spouse (the "opposing party" in lawyer-speak) will often react to the lawyer's actions with his or her own anger or fear in response to feeling pushed around or facing a court proceeding. It is easy to see how this can easily become a self-perpetuating downward spiral which does nothing but increase the level of conflict. There is another response, and if you have a conventional divorce lawyer, you may need to assert it. The other response is to recognize that you or your spouse may just be having a bad day. When having a bad day, or reacting to another's bad day, it can be very difficult to maintain the perspective that bad days are normal in divorce and separation. Usually, nothing is lost by giving yourself permission to take a few days or a week to try to figure out if you or your spouse are having a bad day or time. Perhaps, instead of seeking a legal response from your divorce lawyer and starting the downward spiral, might it be a better response to try to find out what might be behind the fear, anger, or other intense emotion you are feeling or observing? The emotion itself is healthy; recognize that it may well be what you or your spouse should be feeling right now and, if you can, perhaps allow both of you time to move to a different place, preferably with qualified professional assistance.

>> Prior Divorce Tips of the Month

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