Collaborative Divorce allows you to move through separation using a process that focuses on solving real problems, honoring your values, and creating agreements you will live with rather than having decisions imposed on you. This process helps you address property division, co-parenting, and financial arrangements in ways that fit your family, reduce stress, and minimize conflict, giving you greater control and clarity over the outcome.
What’s Most Important to You Both?
When you come to us, you have made the decision to separate. Before anything else, we need to understand what matters most to you. Imagine you get through this separation and did it well. What values guided that success? What do you hope for yourself, for your children, and even for your spouse? I want to know your goals and your concerns. We start there with what is important and what the actual problems are and work toward solutions that reflect your life and your family.
How Collaborative Divorce Solves Problems
Collaborative Divorce is a problem-solving process. It is very different from litigation, where a judge makes decisions for you based on general legal standards. Many people do not fully realize how significant this difference is.
Litigation is structured around a judge deciding the outcome, not around helping you create solutions that fit your family’s needs. When decisions are made for you, the result often does not feel right for your family, even after the time and expense involved.
In Collaborative Divorce, by contrast, you and your spouse work together to create solutions that reflect what matters most for your family.
A Different Way of Communicating
Collaborative Divorce training focuses on interest-based negotiation. That is a different language than traditional legal systems. In an adversarial model, lawyers present the strongest possible legal arguments, and the other side responds a back-and-forth of attack and defense.
With Collaborative Divorce, we begin with you:
- What is important to you?
- What are your concerns?
- What do you hope for your future?
By asking these questions, we help you design a legally enforceable agreement that fits your family.
We work together to identify the issues you need to resolve:
- How will you divide your property?
- How will you co-parent effectively so that your children thrive?
- How will you divide finances in a way you both will live with?
You Both Make the Decisions
You and your spouse make the decisions, not a judge. We help you think through your positions and uncover the reasons behind them. For example, a client may say, “I need the house.”
Instead of stopping there, we ask:
- What is important about the house?
- Why does it matter to you?
- How will it support your family’s life moving forward?
Maybe it’s because of proximity to family who help with care of the children. Maybe it has deep sentimental value. Whatever your reasons, understanding them lets you design solutions that fit your real life.
This leads to agreements that last, not ones you will want to revisit later for modification.
Co-Parenting That Works
If you have children, you want a plan that supports their well-being and reduces conflict, not one that sends you back to court for every disagreement.
We work with you to uncover what will help you co-parent effectively:
- What routines and structures support your children’s stability?
- How will you communicate and make decisions together?
- What issues might arise and how will you address them together?
Your co-parenting plan will reflect your shared goals and your children’s needs, not a judge’s decision.
Contact McNeill Family Law
McNeill Family Law helps couples have meaningful, respectful conversations about planning their future together. Our team focuses on collaboration, transparency, and solutions that reflect your shared goals. To schedule a consultation, call 587-956-9300 or contact us online.
McNeill Family Law is located at #200, 638 11 Ave S.W., Calgary, Alberta T2R 0E2.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is the difference between Collaborative Divorce and litigation?
Collaborative Divorce focuses on solving your unique problems and tailoring agreements to what matters to you. Litigation leaves decisions to a judge and follows generic legal rules. - Will I have control over the outcome?
Yes. You and your spouse design your own agreements in Collaborative Divorce. You will live with the decisions you make. - What issues does Collaborative Divorce address?
It addresses property division, co-parenting arrangements, financial arrangements, and future planning with the intention of creating workable, personalized solutions.
Beryl McNeill is a Calgary divorce lawyer who strongly believes mutual respect and understanding go a long way toward resolving family law matters. As a Registered Collaborative Law practitioner in Calgary, she has dedicated her firm to amicable, cooperative negotiation as a means for settling divorces. Furthermore, throughout her law career, Beryl has seen the costs of adversarial negotiations, both financial and emotional. In emphasizing the collaborative approach, Beryl offers her clients a more efficient model that preserves personal and monetary assets alike.
More and more individuals are attracted to resolving their family law matters in a civil, respectful way. Therefore, they come to Beryl from many walks of life—as professionals in the oil and gas industry and their spouses, business owners, and working spouses with children. Clients say that even after a single consultation with Beryl they feel less stressed and more clear about the way forward.
Beryl understands the often fearful, emotional early stages of divorce. Incorporating skills developed from her training as a life coach, Beryl helps clients move beyond their stress response to more logical, creative thinking. Once there, she works with clients to discover what’s truly important to them in attaining divorce. Furthermore, she encourages clients to picture what a successful settlement would look like a year or more down the road as a means of focusing on their goals. By educating and empowering clients, Beryl seeks to transform the way they resolve family disputes—in a more constructive, intelligent and amicable way than would be possible otherwise.
Finally, Beryl is very active with the Family Bar and the Collaborative Law Community. Her involvement provides her clients with the assurance that she has her finger on the pulse of Family Law in Alberta, offering them a distinct advantage in their quest for equity and civility.