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Family Law Services include:
• Arbitration
• Adoption
• Child support
• Cohabitation agreements
• Collaborative family law
• Common law relationships
• Court proceedings
• Divorce
• Marriage contracts
• Mediation
• Parenting arrangements
• Pension division
• Property division
• Same sex relationships
• Separation agreements
• Spousal support
Contact a Brampton/Mississauga area family lawyer:
Noel da Silva Contested Court Proceedings/Collaborative Family Law: noel@sdslawfirm.com
Tonya Davey Contested Court Proceedings/Agreements: Justin Clark Contested Court Proceedings/Agreements
What is Collaborative Family Law?
When couples decide to separate, they have a number of available process options:
• Adversarial negotiation and court - the spouses retain traditional lawyers to negotiate for them. If negotiations break down, the lawyers can go to court to have a judge resolve the issues.
• Mediation - the spouses retain a neutral third party to facilitate effective communication and negotiation. Any agreements reached in mediation are taken to lawyers for independent legal advice before the agreement is completed and signed.
• Collaborative Family Law - the spouses retain collaborative lawyers as their legal advisers and negotiation coaches. The lawyers are retained solely to help the parties create their best possible settlement. If either party wishes to go to court, both clients must retain new lawyers.
How Does Collaborative Law Work?
Each spouse retains a specially trained collaborative lawyer. The couple and the lawyers sign a written agreement called a Participation Agreement, that all will negotiate in good faith, make full disclosure, put the children's interests first, act with integrity, and seek solutions that work for each party and the family as a whole. The Participation Agreement provides that the lawyers are retained solely to help the parties reach a mutually acceptable settlement, out of court. When necessary, parenting coaches, child specialists and financial specialists are brought into the team to contribute to creative problem solving. If either party decides to go to court, the services of both lawyers, and all professionals involved in the case are eliminated. This rule ensures that everyone at the table is focused on only one thing - achieving the best possible settlement.
After each client meets with his or her own lawyer individually, the couple and the lawyers meet in a series of face to face settlement meetings during which they decide the issues to be settled, resolve immediate issues regarding financial and parenting arrangements, exchange all important information, share interests, goals and values, develop an array of settlement options and choose the settlement option that provides the best outcome.
The number of meetings depends upon the complexity of issues and the emotional dynamics between the parties. Often negotiations can be completed in 6 to 8 settlement meetings, although the number will vary depending on each case.
The collaborative process is dignified and cost-effective. The parties generally find that their ability to communicate with each other for the sake of their children is improved over the course of the collaborative negotiations. The result is a customized settlement tailored to the needs of each family.
Benefits To You:
• Both parties are fully involved throughout the process and retain control of decisions affecting the family.
• Communication and negotiation is respectful and efficient.
• The parties themselves determine the timing of the process.
• Each person makes full and complete financial disclosure.
• Other professional advice and input is available when needed from parenting coaches, child specialists, mediators, financial specialists, accountants and tax experts. Experts are retained jointly at shared cost to work in a balanced and reasonable way for both parties.
• The process affords both parties complete privacy and confidentiality.
• The children's wellbeing is a primary focus in all discussions.
• The process allows for a comprehensive resolution that addresses all of the interests of the spouses, including financial, legal and psychological interests.
• The settlements reached in the collaborative process tend to be highly satisfactory and durable.
• The collaborative process leaves control over all decisions to the parties themselves.
• The collaborative process provides an efficient, cost-effective mechanism for making changes to agreements from time-to-time when needed.Please Call us at 905.457.1660; Our collaborative lawyers are at the forefront of collaborative law in Canada.
Noel A. Nolasco da Silva is one of the founding partners of Simmons, da Silva & Sinton and has been practising law since 1971. He concentrates his practice in the area of Family law.
Noel represents clients in all aspects of Family law including Collaborative law, contentious custody and child support cases, division of property, adoption, marriage contracts, separation agreements, pension and business ownership division and other related court proceedings. He has successfully litigated Family law disputes all over Ontario. He has a reputation for getting results. He is a pragmatic, strategic thinker who stays current with the latest Family law developments and who can quickly demystify the legal process for his clients. His common sense approach and experience allows him to cut through the complexities of hotly contested cases and occasional destructive opposing arguments, to provide leadership and clarity of vision. He is respected, and enjoys an excellent reputation with the courts, other lawyers and his clients as one of the leading Family law lawyers in the Region.
Recognizing that many Family law disputes can be resolved before resorting to court action, Noel has built a successful track record in full disclosure and good faith negotiation and collaborative family law. He is among a new wave of Family lawyers changing the approach to separation dispute resolution through a collaborative process that allows for an equitable, dignified, efficient and cost effective severance of a couple’s matrimonial affairs and assets out of court. Noel guides clients in making informed decisions that will lead to their best possible settlement. However, when necessary, he will act swiftly, decisively, and with significant force in court.
There is very little that Noel has not been involved in on behalf of his clients or has encountered in his practice in this area of law. His attention and compassion reflect an understanding of the real personal impact of the separation and divorce process on everyone involved, especially the children.
Noel received his B.A Honours from Loyola College (University of Montreal), his LL.B. from Queen's University and was called to the Ontario Bar in 1970.
He is an active member of the Law Society of Upper Canada, the Ontario Bar Association – Family Law Section, the Peel Halton Collaborative Lawyers Association, and the Collaborative Lawyers Association of Toronto (Director)
Collaborative Family Law Training & Workshops
For most family law lawyers, the use of the collaborative model in resolving family disputes involves a radically different approach to negotiation than has been used in the past. With the emphasis on joint meetings and client ownership, lawyers are asked to be process managers as well as legal advisors. Similarly, mental health professionals and financial advisors approach the collaborative model in a new way.
Non-adversarial, Comfortable and effective
Rather than working in an adversarial, advisory or therapeutic capacity, or even on a parallel path, all of the professionals involved with the family are required to work as a single team with the clients. The CFL process invites clients to bring to the table all of their issues, whether they fit into a legal framework or not. In helping clients work through these issues, all of the team players must deal with difficult emotions, complex substantive issues, dysfunctional communication, and ingrained patterns of relating between their clients. Many professionals simply do not have the training or the skill set to be able to manage all of these difficult interactions, work with complicated fact situations and negotiate in a non-adversarial fashion comfortably and effectively.
Learning about CFL is focussed in two areas:
• the process of CFL and the shift in thinking that it requires; and
• the management of communication to facilitate interest based negotiation and problem solving.Both of these areas are essential for the effective practice of CFL. For lawyers who have also trained in and/or practised mediation and for mental health professionals, the skills based portion of the program will be new only in its application to this process. For those who have not received recent mediation training, the skills component of the training program is absolutely essential. It will enable lawyers and financial advisers to go from “I know what I’m supposed to do; I just don’t know how I’m supposed to do it!”. It will allow mental health professionals to explore the role of divorce coach and child specialist in a problem solving, rather than purely therapeutic context. It will assist all of these professionals to move to a level of confidence and comfort in managing collaborative negotiations.
For more information and details of our Collaborative Family Law training and workshops, please contact:
Noel da Silva noel@sdslawfirm.com
Contested Court Proceedings/Collaborative Family Law
Telephone: 905.457.1660
Notes from the I.A.C.P. Conference
by Noel da Silva
I was fortunate to be able to attend the I.A.C.P. Conference October 28 - 30, 2005 in Atlanta. One seminar attended on the last day presented me with wisdom straight from the clients’ mouths. Liz Ferris, our movements marketing guru, interviewed 7 people, 6 of whom were couples. All had been involved in the collaborative process. This memo to our group is a collection of the points they made. Sometimes we lawyers, financial professionals or mental health professionals may be guilty of using technical ideas or theoretical formulations that have resonance to ourselves as practitioners, but misses the mark for a potential client new to the process.One of the clients came to the process as part of a variation application. Do not therefore exclude this kind of client from consideration as both sides by then may have been fed up with traditional litigation. One of the couples actually reconciled and are still together today as a result of the respectful way the process brought out each of their interests. Attached at the end is an interesting update from the Public Education Committee. Please note page 2.
The reasons the clients gave are as follows in the order mentioned:
1. As part of the collaborative process and the use of related professionals, they thought it was cheaper to see one neutral “specialist” than two lawyers (referring to areas where psychologists, divorce coaches, parenting coaches and financial professionals can help).
2. Two hour sessions were the optimum manageable chunks of time for meetings.
3. They felt in this process, we were all working together for the good of everybody (parties and children).
4. They were fed every time.
5. They were helped to plan for the future.
6. Their greatest fear namely how to keep the family healthy was met.
7. The lawyers had a vested interest in making the process work because they could not go to Court.
8. It was not a process aimed at getting a piece of paper (Separation Agreement), but to lay out a process valuable for the next 20 years.
9. They came away with supports for the future such as a child psychiatrist.
10. Each spouse was afraid the other spouse has the power.
11. They were referred to the process by a friend of a friend.
12. A divorce coach helped to take the emotions out of difficult scenarios.
13. Participants need to be aware the decisions they are making now will be a 20-year decision.
14. The process helped to not let emotions be the reason to make the wrong decision.
15. The process is a lot less contentious and children are at the forefront of the process.
16. It can help to keep lines of communication open and the parties not wind up hating each other at the end.
17. Competition is not driving the process.
18. Participants were able to look at each other’s point of view and respect the other side’s point of view.
19. In collaborative practice, you can lose the war but win the peace and post divorce have a better relationship.
20. A party can model for their children how a responsible adult handles this situation.
21. In collaborative practice, it is approached as a problem to solve, not a battle to win.
22. It can help your children decide if marriage is “something I want for myself”.
23. It did not portray that a person had made the wrong choice by deciding to be a stay-at-home mom.
24. You are more likely to be respected as a woman with the process.
25. The lawyer had knowledge, obtained my trust and cared about me.
26. You go in with an open hand, not a clenched fist.
27. Bitterness is the poison I swallow when the other person dies (referring to the traditional Court process).
28. The value is we are still together as a family that just looks different.
29. Our children can be in either home with similar values and a united parental front. (These parents met weekly to inform and discuss child care issues after obtaining agreement.)
30. As a divorced (separated) person, you are lonely enough.
31. Someone is on my side.
32. The culture of romance is diabolical (an interesting aside made by one client).
33. I was not patronized as a loser, but received respect which helped my self-esteem.
34. Take advantage of a divorce coach early and often.
35. I needed more coaching prior to the low points in the negotiation.
36. I needed to learn and was told to slow down, as we are making progress (by my lawyer).
37. Both lawyers are working for the best and respecting each other.
38. There were no “nasty-grams”.
39. The collaborative process helped to untie the knot without unraveling the family.