Joni Mar knew there was no way she could sit across kitchen table from her husband and negotiate a separation. He had argued that this would be the most civilized way to dissolve a 14 year marriage, and certainly the least expensive. Why leave money in lawyers' pockets that could go toward the children's future?

They saw eye to eye on at least one critical issue: the importance of their children's well being. But they couldn't agree on exactly what that meant in dollars and cents. Which why, in Mar's opinion, lawyers would come in rather handy.

"If we didn't have the skills to negotiate through our relationship," she told him, "how are we going to suddenly find them now?"

Not that she wanted to battle it out in court. She was thinking about a whole new legal paradigm something she'd read about called collaborative divorce, which only sounds like a contradiction in terms. Developed 12 years ago by a litigation weary family lawyer in Minnesota, it is an interdisciplinary, egalitarian version of the divorce process think alternative dispute resolution minus the dispute now practised in major centres across the continent.

One of the pioneering groups is based in Vancouver, comprising 30 lawyers from several family law firms who meet monthly to network, study current cases and promote training. They work in tandem with a dozen family therapists (known in this context as "divorce coaches") as well as child psychologists and financial consultants to offer clients highly customized guidance through the divorce minefield. In a wide detour around the courtroom.

It's considered a paradigm shift in law, because this new breed of family lawyers are trained specifically not to fight. And they expect their clients to follow suit. When you hire one, you have to sign a contract that says you will disclose all personal/financial information to all members of the group (there being no "other side" in collaboration) and if the process breaks down and you decide to litigate you'll have to do so with some other lawyer and without making use of any of the disclosed information.

In other words, you must promise your spouse: I will never see you in court.

Here's what it looks like in action: Mar and her husband talk with their two lawyers over tea not as two sides but as a collaborative foursome that meets monthly until the papers are all signed. This month it's in her lawyer's office, last month it was in his. Both clients have logged time between sessions with their divorce coaches, after last month over the issue of child care costs.

He had angered her by saying that her demand for a full time nanny didn't sound to him like she was putting the interests of the children first. Instead, it sounded like her career ambition talking. She shot back that holding out on support costs would stress her household: "That sound to me like the best interests of the children!" Sparks flew, including between the lawyers and their clients: "I think this is what he meant ..."Mar's lawyer Nancy Cameron ventured, prompting her client to shoot back, "You know, you're really making me angry. You're supposed to be on my side."

"There are no sides," Cameron noted coolly, and while Mar pulled outher hanky the lawyers called time out.

It's the lawyers' job to set the agenda, not to mend broken hearts. That's the coaches' work to chip away at their clients' wish lists, getting beneath the regrets and guilt and anger to uncover basic, bottom line needs that can safely be taken back to the legal conferences. Similarly, the financial consultants help couples interpret the nightmare of asset valuation. All of which costs money, but less than dragging your lawyer through endless panic attacks and much less than a court battle. A typical six month collaborative file might cost $6,000; litigation involving a custody dispute, at least 10 times more.

But the real difference between conventional forms of dispute resolution and the collaborative model is not the cost or the interdisciplinary approach. It's the shift of onus from professional to client to make the deal.

"Lawyers have to let go of what we think is the right answer in order to let an informed client come up with the right answer for their case," says family lawyer Sandra Polinsky. What we can do for them is say, "Here's what the law says, here's the range, here's what you might get in court, here's what you won't get, here's my best idea you take it from there."

"Because it's not my life, it's your life we're talking about."

This may sound a lot like mediation, to those who haven't beenthrough the process. But it isn't, says Polinsky, who is a member of the local collaborative group and also has a mediation practice. A mediator is brought into a dispute to act as a neutral third party, often as a result of litigants reaching an impasse in their efforts to settle out of court. They may leave their lawyers outside the mediation room, says Polinsky, but the adversarial spirit enters and often corrupts the negotiation.

"The threat of court is always hanging over the mediation process," she says. "You can have a lawyer talking to his client about getting court orders at the same time that the client is working with the mediator on a settlement. Of course the client feels insecure and is likely to listen to his lawyer. The collaborative process gives people more self confidence because they have their lawyers right there with them. You're together every step of the way."

Too together, some would say. As in, emotionally enmeshed. Nancy Cameron admits this is a hazard of moving the battleground from the courtroom to the heart. Entering into emotional combat entails facing your dark side and dealing with it and not just for the clients.

"I shock myself with what I learn about my personal assumptions, my judgments and my shadow self," says Cameron, who helped launch the local collaborative group three years ago and currently handles the most cases of this kind in Vancouver. Her Jungian language hints at the action of law and therapy in collaborative divorce: "Every time my shadow pops up across the table, I want to whack it. Now I try to look at it with some compassion and understanding. How can I expect to have the privilege of assisting someone else in their journey toward forgiveness without having travelled through some pretty dark territory myself?"

By which she means she has been twice divorced and as bruised by the process as anyone. In the old days, when litigation was the standard, Cameron relished the white knight role. "Harnessing all your anger and your biases is easy in litigation, it's a catharsis that's actually encouraged," she tells me, "because it makes you a better fighter."

She no longer takes litigation files, choosing to work mostly in the alternative dispute resolution axis, like many lawyers in the group. A number of them continue to litigate, when required. But they don't like it because, as one of them told me, "it costs, it hurts, and it's as unpredictable as throwing the dice."

Not all lawyers agree with her assessment. Jeffrey Rose, a prominent Vancouver litigator, objects to the good lawyer bad lawyer cliché, pointing out that less than five per cent of all divorce cases actually end up in court. The term "alternative" dispute resolution is increasingly a misnomer, he says.

Mediation, arbitration and out of court settlements are now the norm. And so are collaborative processes, says Rose, who isn't impressed by his colleagues' proprietary use of the term.

"I'm professionally obligated to attempt to settle a case before it gets to court," he says. "Lawyers don't have to sign a contract to collaborate, which is their responsibility in any case."

Nor is he comfortable with the blurring of the line between lawyer and coach. "It's not the role of a lawyer to be a therapist. The only therapeutic part of a family law case is getting it over with," he maintains, and many of his colleagues agree. The collaborative process can be painstakingly slow because you can't rush someone along their journey of self discovery. You can "get it over with" a lot cheaper with mediation, says Rose, who frequently directs clients down that road.

Family lawyer Carla Lewis, who has one foot in both camps, agrees that mediation is a simpler process, and better for some clients. "Mediation doesn't necessarily heal emotional wounds as part of the process, but it does contemplate the parties working through their issues face to face," she says. "That in itself is salutary and sometimes healing."

Yet Lewis has taken the two day collaborative training offered by the Continuing Legal Education Society of B.C. because she believes there is room in family law for a different model of practice one that would allow her to focus on providing legal advice and avoid becoming a therapist by default.

Like all family lawyers, Lewis typically refers many clients to divorce counsellors, financial planners, child psychologists and other relevant experts, but it is up to the client to spend the time and money on such homework. When it's only half done, the lawyer has to pick up the pieces.

In collaborative divorce, the specialists are part of the team, which adds time and expense to the process. But, as Cameron points out, the cost of a divorce coach and child specialist is still less than the cost of a court ordered custody assessment and at least with the former you get to take away some tools to put your co parenting plan into action.

It's well worth the price, says Joni Mar, who spent all last year and about $10,000 just to complete a separation agreement. Getting to divorce will be easy from here, she says, given the depth of the couple's understanding on all the key issues. She paid for the separation papers and doesn't mind waiting for her husband to file for the divorce. Even, steven.

Which was her theme throughout negotiations. Mostly, the sticking points were financial. He has a secure income as a corporate executive while she's a self employed business coach (and former CBC TV news reporter). "A lot of women have fears about their financial survival," says Mar, "and I had moments when I was hit by that kind of panic." It didn't help when a business client a former family court judge, of all people told her she could "do better" in court.

"Nancy would constantly remind me: you don't know the outcome of going to court, but what you do know is that if you go there you're going to take your kids through it. This way, you're working with the guy you're going to be working with for the next 12 years and you're going to figure out how to do that. I mean, how valuable is that?"

Ron Jasper often asked himself the same question, and not rhetorically. The 49 year old single dad found it torturous, at times, plodding through more than a year of collaborative sessions with Nancy Cameron at his side, his wife Michelle across the table and her lawyer, Morrie Sacks, at her side. He bristled as he watched the combined lawyers' fees of $465 tick away with each hour it took the group to inch toward compromise.

He wanted to control the pace, and the agenda his mistake, he now realizes. It could have moved along more quickly if he hadn't gotten the ball rolling with the threat of litigation. Before hiring Cameron, he worked with another lawyer a classic litigation "shark" who urged him to go for custody, the family home and most of the assets. It was a slam dunk, said the shark, and they were well down the road to litigation (divorce papers already filed) before Jasper pulled the plug. It was happening too fast, even for his comfort. Michelle's back was way up. "Things can very quickly get out of your control."

He suggested mediation, Michelle agreed, but the lines had already been drawn and talks over the division of assets quickly stalled. Because he hadn't been sharing information with her, she suspected he had a hidden agenda regarding custody, and dug in her heels.

When she suggested they start over with collaboration, he agreed. Now he's paying the price for his false start. "It seems collaboration can only go as fast as the slowest member of the group," he says, admitting responsibility for setting up a lot of the emotional hurdles his wife would struggle to cross. His advice: "Don't wait for the papers to be filed. Collaborate from the start the earlier the better, the less chance of emotional damage."

He says they now have a workable agreement, with joint custody and division of assets that respect the spirit if not the letter of the pre nuptial agreement they'd signed. "What I like is there's not a whole lot of residual anger. Talking with everyone else who's been through divorce, they all have this anger."

Likewise, Mar talks of feeling clean. "Everything I had to say, I could , openly. I didn't have to keep anything from him in order to gain advantage," she tells me over herbal tea in the living room of the tiny Douglas Park area house she moved into last month. It is charming, but with rental suites upstairs and down it's definitely downmarket the old family home in Dunbar. Her soon to be ex husband has just moved to the same area, to make their kids' home and school life as smooth as possible.

"I love my life," she says. "I was so afraid of this I'd been married for so long. But I love the freedom. I'm a better parent. I'm a better person. I mean, it's not easy, I get angry and struggle sometimes, but that's life."