There are two ideas in the title: trust and opinion. In litigation, the parties sign a verification in their pleadings saying that their statements are true based upon their knowledge or information and belief. Knowledge is based on direct facts. If you are standing outside and rain is hitting you, you can say you have knowledge it is raining based on facts. But if you are in your house with the blinds closed and you hear water hitting the window, you can say it is raining or it could be that the sprinkler that waters the flowers along the house turned on. Your statement that it is raining is a belief based on information (water hitting the window). So, you could say it is an opinion based on facts but not knowledge. Let’s move on to trust. When you board a commercial jet you have to trust that the pilot and crew know what they are doing. I have a friend who spent his long career repairing and maintaining commercial jets. We would fly together on group ski trips. Based on his work experience, he had no apparent fear of flying on a commercial jet. Like most everyone else, I have always had some fear of flying. However, based on his apparent lack of fear of flying supported by a long career working on commercial jets, my fear of flying is minimal. Here is another example to illustrate. We see a doctor for a medical condition and they give us their opinion on the diagnosis and treatment. We are not a doctor so we feel we have to trust their opinion. Years ago I broke my left leg and ankle. I was on crutches for almost six months. My lower left leg from the knee down to my ankle was hideously swollen and multiple shades of green and blue. It looked like a rotten piece of meat. The doctor said I would be fine. With gallows humor only a doctor could pull off, he said I would be buried with the rod, plate, and screws in my leg. I trusted him. What else could I do. Low and behold, six months after surgery the crutches were gone and shortly after that I was golfing. A year after surgery I was skiing. And now, for the last 25 years since the injury, I have had no limitations with use of the leg and ankle even though all the metal and screws are still in place. In my opinion, the collaborative law process is the best process for resolution of most family law disputes. That is an opinion based on decades of family law litigation experience and, more recently, the last seventeen-plus years of handling collaborative cases and studying the collaborative law process. You can ask your neighbor, relative, friend, or even a divorce litigation lawyer what they think about the collaborative law process. Just keep in mind that their answer is an opinion. An opinion, in many cases, based on little (one or two examples that did not meet someone’s expectations) or no experience with the process. If a collaboratively trained lawyer gives you an opinion against using the process, ask them why they are against it. You may simply find they do not have the patience needed for the process or they had a few difficult experiences in a collaborative case. As I discuss in another blog article on patience, it may be that they just prefer the old way of doing things, plodding along through the court system using hundreds of pages of statutes, procedural rules, and case law. Think of the collaborative law process as whitewater rafting and the litigation process as a paddleboat ride down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to the Gulf of Mexico. The former is moving fast and everyone on the raft has an oar to help guide the raft through fast moving and ever-changing waters to the destination. The latter is moving slow guided by a captain and crew following whatever rules there are to steering a paddleboat down a river. Most family law dispute resolution processes are difficult and they can be harmful to family relationships, including the collaborative law process. But the collaborative law process is less difficult and definitely less harmful than the other process options. When selecting a process option for resolving a family law matter, I respectfully suggest that you trust a professional opinion based on decades of experience and try whitewater rafting, i.e. the collaborative law process.
