Divorce Tool Box for Professionals

FOR ATTORNEYS

How many hats are you wearing today? Family law attorneys often find themselves wearing too many: counselor, mediator, financial advisor and co-parenting educator. Divorcing clients have many needs, and attempting to meet them all can be draining and detract from your ability to fully focus on the legal issues at hand.

At Divorce Tool Box, we understand that divorcing clients can be so emotionally overwhelmed that they lack the ability to partner with you in proposing good solutions for their family. You may be asked to coach them through the maze of grief, offer financial planning advice, and educate them about good co-parenting practices, all while supplying expert legal advice and services. Sound familiar?

If the answer is yes, try changing one approach: Allow Divorce Tool Box to offer support and education to your client so you can get back to the practice of law.

Here’s how:

After the initial consultation, you can offer Divorce Tool Box to clients as part of your retainer agreement. With the help of our web-based video sessions, your clients can regain emotional perspective, begin gathering and organizing the documentation you need to serve them more effectively, and make more informed decisions. Our educational video sessions are focused on improving outcomes for individuals, families and the legal professionals who serve them

How using our platform can help you, the professional:

• Higher client satisfaction rates, and better referrals. Clients who approach divorce with a reasonable understanding of the process and realistic expectations are often more satisfied with the outcome.  By helping your clients to become educated, you mitigate fears related to the unknown, and demonstrate that you care about them and their family.
• Greater practice efficiency. Divorce Tool Box allows you to take off the hats you never intended to wear (mental health counselor, financial advisor, etc.) and focus on what you do best: offer expert legal advice and services.

FOR MEDIATORS

Do you ever feel as if you are suggesting options and attempting negotiations with a couple unprepared for successful mediation?

• Couples overcome with animosity for one another
• Parties unclear about what they each need from the divorce agreement
• Individuals unable to sort through the multiple emotional and practical aspects of the divorce process

If so, you know that an educational platform which equips parties to walk through the process with informed, reasonable expectations could be invaluable!

Allow Divorce Tool Box to help your clients become educated, organized, and prepared by using our template. When the template is completed, it enables the client to supply the information needed to put together the puzzle of the family’s post-divorce life.   This helps you, the mediator, to negotiate between spouses, as each spouse has identified individual priorities and desires. When you know each person’s perspective—and why they desire certain stipulations—before mediation, you’ll have a greater opportunity to achieve compromise and craft a successful agreement.

As a Divorce and Family Mediator, your goal is to help couples reach an agreement concerning issues and/or reduce the issues to be litigated. This is difficult to do without having had sufficient time to evaluate unique personal and family needs, or without the information needed to formulate reasonable suggestions for their changing family. Divorce Tool Box guides the client through the divorce process and helps them to determine and express what they most desire from the divorce agreement.

Individuals who have the opportunity to become educated early about divorce requirements, consider multiple options prior to mediation, and create a list of proposals to negotiate have a greater chance of a mutually beneficial, positive outcome. Having well-informed clients makes your job easier. Our goal is improving outcomes for individuals, families and mediators.

FOR COURTS

Do you want to reduce your court’s docket while improving outcomes for divorcing families? Divorce Tool Box can help! You may find that your docket is filled with issues that could have been resolved outside the court system. But when parties are emotionally crippled and unable to clearly offer workable solutions, they look to you to decide even the simplest of matters, clogging the docket and slowing down the divorce process.

Divorce Tool Box is an educational platform that helps individuals to be emotionally prepared for the process, and equips them to play a positive role in deciding what the future should look like for their family. Our goal is improving outcomes for individuals, families and the court.

Here’s how Divorce Tool Box can benefit your court:

• Mandating Divorce Tool Box Online Sessions may decrease your docket and future modifications:
  Many life changing decisions are required during the divorce process, and are often made without an understanding of the long-term ramifications. Our web-based educational video sessions and Divorce Planning Template help families with current and future planning, and enable them to make thoughtful decisions. Uninformed decisions often lead to unsatisfactory outcomes for parents and children, and lead everyone back to court for modifications which might have been avoided. 
• Divorce Tool Box is the place to start before mediation or any other court ordered service:
  Mediators are often asked to assist couples who don’t understand the issues on the table, and haven’t adequately evaluated their personal and family needs. Divorce Tool Box guides the individual through preparation for the divorce process, helping the client prioritize items for the divorce proposal, develop feasible solutions for the family, and increase the chance of mediation success. If mediation isn’t the answer, Divorce Tool Box assists parties in partnering with their attorneys to expedite and streamline the process of litigation.

FOR COUNSELORS

As a counselor, do you feel trapped in a maze when working with divorcing clients? Do you find yourself working overtime to help them sort through the overlapping emotional, relational and practical issues a divorce brings boiling to the surface? Is the time required to help the client out of balance with the compensation you receive?

If the answer is yes, change one approach: allow Divorce Tool Box to help your clients work through complex issues in a manageable, systematic way, so that your time with them is more ordered and psychologically beneficial.

Divorce Tool Box provides a much needed “checklist” of areas to consider when going through a divorce—items that can easily be overlooked in the stress of the moment. Our educational web-based video sessions, combined with the invaluable assistance of a professional like you, is the perfect combination to help clients and their families achieve better, healthier outcomes.

Divorce Tool Box online sessions allow the client to spend time alone, outside of the face-to-face counseling environment, giving thought to immediate and future needs. This facilitates a reality-based perception of how one’s personal life and family will be changed by divorce. The client then decides what is important to incorporate into a customized divorce action plan using the template provided.

The support and accountability you provide throughout the divorce decision-making process will be crucial in helping the client achieve satisfactory outcomes.

Divorce Tool Box also helps you, the professional, by adding value to your practice.  You can provide access to the educational online sessions for your clients in two ways:

• Include the cost of the program in your initial professional fees.
• Allow the client to purchase the program independently.

Either access offers flexibility while providing support, structure and accountability. This comprehensive approach to meeting your client’s needs will communicate that you care about the issues they face, and will enhance counseling sessions in a positive way. Our goal is to make the experience easier and more productive for all.