Are We Going to Negotiate Your Divorce?
Video Transcribed: Are we going to negotiate your divorce? I’m the Tulsa Fathers’ Rights lawyer and this is going to be a brief video on negotiation.
Are we going to negotiate? I don’t know. That’s your choice. You steer the ship in any lawyer/client relationship and so how much or how little is negotiated, it is driven by you. This is going to be a brief video on some of the tactics for negotiation. I think negotiation often yields cost-effective outcomes, but it doesn’t in all cases. You negotiate on a case by case basis.
In order to understand negotiation, you’ve got to take a look at objectives and there’s two ways to look at objectives. There are both positions and interests. People naturally talk in positions, positions are outcomes. People will say things such as, “I will have the house” or there’s a bottom line posturing. This is the thing that I want. Interests are broader than positions and are essentially linked to the needs of the person, so perhaps it’s not that house that they need.
They’re concerned about where they’re going to live after the divorce, and somehow a resolution between the two of you might accommodate that. Whether or not it is the marital home, if that needs to be sold, is a separate issue. And oftentimes the marital home will need to be sold to preserve your financial integrity and benefit the children going forward.
It’s interesting that once you break down positions into interests, you’ll often find that parties have very similar interests, because you know we all need food, housing, shelter, the like. And so parties are often able to address the negotiation more productively when they’re able to recognize the interests of the other side, understand them, and then be able to make counter proposals that they’re content with but that satisfy the underlying interests, while maybe differing from the expressed position of the other party. And that’s where you get them to move effectively and to settle the case.
The bottom line is, negotiation is only as good as you and the other side are. And as it relates to the circumstances, in some cases, negotiation is fruitless. In most cases, negotiation is an essential tool to save money for both people and get the thing done faster. Just because you negotiate at one stage, doesn’t mean you’re going to negotiate the final decree. Just because you negotiate property division doesn’t mean that there’s a conflict over their child custody. And so negotiation is always very unique to the circumstances involved.
If you’ve got any questions about negotiating a divorce, give me a call. Happy to help. Thanks.
