Collaborative Family Law in Action
The collaborative family law movement provides families with a great alternative to the traditional divorce with kids. The goal of the collaborative family practice is to help reduce conflict as you work towards your end goal. Collaborative cases can be very beneficial to children because they can help to keep conflict to a minimum. Additionally, after the divorce is finalized parents can be setup to have a better, more communicative relationship with each other. This may be attributed to less overall animosity throughout the process.
A great tool for the collaborative approach is the OurFamilyWizard website. The site can act as conduit for all parties involved to share important family information and schedules. The different levels of account access can provide each individual family with the flexibility they need. Everyone involved can be kept in the loop in a safe and documented environment.
Families who have recently separated face a great deal of the challenges related to effective communication and information sharing. Simple and honest mistakes, omissions and oversights can lead to needless conflict and disagreements. Having an organized, documented and shared repository for family information and schedules can help to avoid any potential confusion and “he said/she said”.
The OurFamilyWizard website is very different than email. Family members and the professionals they work with can have shared access to:
- Calendar with parenting time responsibilities, activities and holidays clearly outlined
- Secure messaging with actual read receipts so you know that your message has been received
- Journal for keeping both shared and private entries
- Information bank containing well organized sections to store everything from immunization histories to shoe sizes
- Shared expense tracking for things like unreimbursed medical, you can even submit electronic payments through the site using OFWpay.
Using the OurFamilyWizard website with a collaborative practice family can empower the family to work proactively than reacting constantly to new things that come up. Instead of making plans for New Year’s Eve on December 25th, parents can iron out the details months in advance. This can greatly reduce the stress around the holidays, birthdays and other special events.
The best part is that if there is an issue that the parents can't resolve on their own (i.e. two weddings on the same weekend one for each parent) the professionals can jump in via the professional account. They can see the messages, events and other pertinent information and leave a recommendation that gets recorded as coming from the professional, so there is no confusion. For the professional, not having to be cc’d on hundreds of email messages that may or may not have relevance is a huge benefit.
The OurFamilyWizard website has been shown to be so effective helping families with communication issues that courts throughout the USA and Canada have ordered its usage in contested cases. If the site can be so helpful to the most high conflict families, just imagine what it can do for the collaborative practice family.
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