[liber8]

I enjoyed how her profile danced around Wevorce's raison d'etre, without actually coming out and saying it: acrimonious divorces are fueled (or created entirely) by lawyers.

As a lawyer with many colleagues practicing family law, I don't think this is terribly fair. Divorces are acrimonious because the overwhelming majority of divorcees have fundamental issues with their spouse that they can't even verbalize, let alone work out. The underlying feelings that trigger the explosive fights about nothing (think toilet seats or dishes in the sink) are only magnified when blame for failure of the marriage and the dividing of assets/children comes into play. In other words: divorce is acrimonious because people going through divorce literally go crazy.

I would bet Wevorce is successful because it integrates counseling/communication into the divorce process, something that is basically prohibited when both sides are represented by counsel. That alone sounds like a substantial improvement.

[samstave]

As someone who went through a bitter, totally unfair, divorce - I agree that lawyers can be POS in these situations.

I was belittled, laughed at, threatened and completely farked over by my ex's lawyer. They drew out the process an incredible amount. Why? Because I was paying all of her legal fees.

Every single court appearance they had a different attorney show up - if they bothered to show up. I am still extremely bitter over the whole process and pray I never run into any of those lawyers in person on the street.

Nothing has made me so close to extreme actions as has those complete thieves. I still hold a special place in my heart for revenge against that company.

[vishaldpatel]

Was it a personal or legal that you paid for your ex's fees?

[id3331k]

liber8: you are correct about Wevorce's raison d'etre. If you look more at their website (www.wevorce.com), you will see that the model does clearly integrate counseling/communication/financial aspects into the process. In fact, those features are the basis of the model. This is precisely the reason it has been successful in its beta phase. I should know, I went through the process.

The model provides a space for spouses to verbalize their issues in a neutral space, without attorneys getting in the way with sometimes overly zealous advocacy.

As an attorney myself for the past 10 years, I have grown weary of the restricted legal system and its outdated modes of advocacy that silently espouse that the only way to deal with conflict is by battling in the courts. Slowly, but surely, mediation, I believe, will gain more traction into the mainstream of the legal system; however, the main hurdles of that happening are the lawyers enjoying success in "battling" for their clients' dollars, rather than seeing the forest for the trees.

Here's to the possibility of the legal community embracing, or at least willing to accept, an alternative way to handle divorce without fearing the inevitable change to the legal culture it brings.

"If may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad." C.S. Lewis