The Tension of the Pressure

          Over the weekend, I attended an all day seminar on how to talk about support (also known as alimony and child support).  It was put on by my fabulous co-trainers at the Collaborative Practice Training Institute.  I had never seen it before, so I was excited when they asked me to role play the divorcing wife and get to attend at the same time.  It was a great seminar.  At one point, they asked us to talk to someone at our table about when you talk about the law of support, why, and what effect it has.  I think the purpose was to get us to consider how  and when we talk about support affects our clients at the collaborative  table.  The way it's discussed can influence client expectations and also affect how clients feel about their agreements surrounding support.  Clients feel a lot of pressure and a lot of uncertainty in this area, largely because the law of spousal support is so amorphous.  They want to know what could happen if they go to court, so they have parameters for their discussions of amount and duration.   The law creates an artificial pressure on clients which subtly influences their agreements, even if what they think is right and fair runs counter to the law.  What was actually very surprising to me was how much pressure the law also places on their attorneys.  In Maryland, where I practice, if you don't ask for alimony/spousal support at the time of the divorce, you can't get it later.  A reservation of the right to alimony is very difficult to get in this state, so the stakes at time of divorce are very high, and the client who thinks they may not need alimony now or the client who foregoes alimony for a property transfer, may find that they either need alimony or the property they receive instead of it isn't enough.  In Maryland, that's too bad.  That creates a lot of pressure on the attorney advising the client to make sure enough is enough.  In Virginia, a reservation of alimony is a matter of course (at least that's what the person at my table told me), so you'd think the pressure is off of them.  But wait, adultery is an absolute bar to alimony, so the attorney in the case needs to be careful if their client has committed adultery.  This is especially true in a collaborative case, where an affair is something material that should be revealed.  Wow, what a tension that creates for the lawyer - the adultery needs to come out, but if the case falls out thereafter, their client can't receive any alimony.  What's a lawyer to do, and how do they advocate effectively for their client if the law is contrary to what is best for this family?
      What it comes down to, in the collaborative world and in the Trenches in general, is that the law is not just another piece of information to help our clients make decisions, as much as that is what we want it to be.  It is also the elephant in the room about which the attorneys don't wish to talk.  We tell ourselves it's because we're afraid the information will cause our clients to take positions and forget to focus on what everyone needs.  That's true, but what is also true, and unacknowledged, is the pressure the law exerts on us as advocates in the collaborative process.  How do we help our clients create a solution that is acceptable to them within a world of laws and rules that doesn't take into account their families and their particular needs?  How do we help them make decisions in the collaborative process that may be at odds with what might happen in court?  Helping the client negotiate for their needs,  while keeping in mind the limits of the legal system, that's the pressure exerted on the lawyers in the collaborative process.  It's what we navigate every day, and that we do it seemingly seamlessly is part of the tension and the art or what we do - here in the Trenches.