Lawyer Assisted Divorce Calgary

Get an Experienced Lawyer to help you with your Divorce

Traditional lawyer-assisted divorce negotiation is adversarial and takes place within the context of Court applications. You may bring them at any time, as long as they comply with the Alberta Rules of Court. Each side takes a position and argues for it in this negotiation style. They will whittle down each position until they come up with a compromise.

This negotiation style often creates a lot of “bad blood” between the negotiating parties. If both parties want to minimize the animosity, this lawyer assisted divorce style is not usually recommended. If you have to co-parent children after divorce, you should not use this negotiation style.

In traditional lawyer-assisted negotiation, lawyers take information and instruction from their clients. They will send the other spouse’s lawyer written demands for disclosure and settlement proposals. This is not an efficient process with the time it takes.

Only one spouse often provides information for these proposals. This results in the lawyer not having all the necessary information from the other spouse, leading to incomplete information.

The lawyer will contact their clients to schedule and review the proposal and information once they receive it. Then the receiving party will respond with their client’s information and instructions. The process then goes back and forth between the family law lawyers in Calgary.

This type of negotiation is not efficient, can be expensive, and often leads to misunderstandings, miscommunication, and delays.