For better not worse: a collaborative divorce aims to avoid strife. If you want to dissolve your marriage you are not alone -- at least in statistics: about 153,500 divorces were finalised in England and Wales in 2003 and almost 40% of all marriages in England and Wales will end in divorce.

Hopefully, you and your spouse can agree on one thing: that you don't want a bitter fight and are determined to avoid the ugly battles over property and child custody that you have seen friends, relatives and work colleagues endure. If you care about the economic and emotional wellbeing of your family and in particular the children, you and your spouse should both be willing to sign an agreement stating that you will not go to Court.

To that end, a 'collaborative divorce' could work for you. It would require you and your spouse to enter into a dispute resolution method called Collaborative Family Law.

In Collaborative Family Law, each party instructs and is represented by a specially trained collaborative family lawyer. Together, all four -- the two spouses and the two collaborative lawyers -- sign a legally binding agreement to remain respectful, to negotiate in good faith, to provide full and early disclosure of relevant information and to attend to the needs of each party. But perhaps most importantly, the collaborative agreement requires all four participating parties to agree to drop the threat of Court proceedings.

At the end of your collaborative process, the settlement that you agree is filed with the Court to approve and seal as an Order.

However, if you are not able to reach a settlement or there is a breakdown in good faith, both collaborative lawyers instructed must remove themselves from the case leaving you to start over divorce proceedings with new lawyers.

Although it is a fact that the majority of divorce cases in England and Wales handled by experienced family lawyers end up being settled out of Court, agreement to not do so is worthwhile in the majority of cases. By simply removing the threat of Court with all the attendant costs, risks and emotional turmoil, the atmosphere of collaborative meetings between spouses and their lawyers significantly changes into one where all present centre upon ways of finding solutions for each problem that will work for the two spouses.

As soon as the agenda concentrates on settlement and the sole measure of success is achieving an agreement that their clients can accept, a massive leap forward in resolving issues often occurs.

Whether the collaborative family law method can reduce the stress that children suffer during and after divorce is open to debate. One thing is sure, you will both be more in control and more open to reasoned argument with a collaborative agreement.