People often ask how Cooperative Family Law came to be. The honest answer is that it grew out of frustration, and a conviction that there had to be a better way to help families through one of the hardest moments of their lives.

It is worth saying at the outset that this was not an attempt to avoid litigation. Both of us have spent years in courtrooms and neither of us is uncomfortable there. The adversarial system exists for good reasons and does genuinely necessary work. The problem we kept running into was narrower: it was being applied by default to families who did not need it, and the damage that caused was substantial and largely avoidable.

What We Kept Seeing

Between us, we've spent decades in courtrooms. We watched too many divorces turn into wars that left both spouses poorer, more bitter, and, worst of all, left children caught in the middle. The traditional adversarial model too often took two people who simply needed to separate and turned them into opponents. We knew the damage that did, and we didn't want to keep being part of it.

The pattern had a shape to it, and once you have seen it a few dozen times it becomes impossible to unsee. A couple would arrive still able to talk to each other. Each would retain counsel, as everyone advised them to. Communication would shift from direct conversation to letters between lawyers, each taking days and costing both households. Positions would harden because positions are what the format produces.

By the time it concluded, the couple who had been civil at the start could no longer be in the same room. They had spent a large sum reaching that state. And if they had children, they now had to co-parent for another decade from that position.

The Question Nobody Was Asking

What struck us was that nothing about this was anyone's fault in particular. The attorneys were doing their jobs competently. The rules were being applied correctly. The couple had made the choice everyone told them to make. The damage came from the structure itself, which meant no amount of professional decency inside that structure would prevent it.

That reframed the problem. If the format was producing the harm, the answer was not better behaviour within the format. It was a different format.

The Idea

We asked a simple question: what if one neutral firm could guide both spouses, bringing real legal knowledge to the table, while they committed, in writing, to resolve things respectfully and out of court? Not mediation, where a neutral can't give legal advice. Not the collaborative model, where each spouse hires their own lawyer and both must withdraw if it fails. Something that gave families real legal guidance while removing the needless conflict, cost, and risk.

Both existing alternatives got something right and gave something up. Mediation removed the adversarial structure but left couples negotiating without knowing what the law provided, because a mediator cannot tell them. The collaborative model preserved legal advice but reintroduced two attorneys and added a disqualification clause that made leaving the process expensive.

What we wanted was the legal guidance without the second lawyer, and without the clause. One neutral firm, attorneys rather than facilitators, able to explain the law to both spouses at once, with nothing forcing anyone to stay if the process stopped serving them.

Why Courtroom Experience Mattered

This part is easy to overlook and it is central. A process that steers people away from litigation is only credible if the people running it know what litigation actually produces. Otherwise it is a preference dressed up as advice.

Ashley has served as lead counsel in more than fifty jury and bench trials. Misty has practised in state and federal court in Montana and holds a Certificate in Mediation. When we tell a couple what a Montana judge is likely to do with their facts, that assessment comes from having stood in front of those judges rather than from theory.

It also means we can say honestly when someone should litigate, which happens and which we cover in when cooperative divorce doesn't work. A firm that only knew one process would have no basis for that judgement.

Building It in Western Montana

We developed that structure into Cooperative Family Law and began offering it to Missoula and Bitterroot Valley families. The results spoke for themselves: faster resolutions, lower costs, and, most meaningfully, parents who could still co-parent civilly when it was over. You can read how the process works on our How It Works page.

Western Montana turned out to be a good place to build it. These are communities where people encounter each other afterward, at school events, at work, around town. A divorce that ends with two people unable to be in the same room is a heavier burden here than it might be in a larger city, and families understood the appeal of an alternative without needing it explained.

What We Learned Along the Way

The model changed as we used it. A few lessons stand out.

  • Sequence matters. Opening with the most contested issue stalls everything. Momentum on the straightforward questions makes the hard ones tractable.
  • Disclosure is not negotiable. Every attempt to work around an incomplete financial picture produced an agreement that failed later.
  • Most disputes are smaller than they look. Couples routinely arrive believing they disagree about everything and discover the genuine list is short.
  • Precision in drafting prevents years of trouble. Vague terms are the reason people return to court over things they thought were settled.
  • Saying no is part of the work. Turning away cases that do not fit protects the process and the people in it.
  • Both spouses hearing the same thing at once dissolves more suspicion than any amount of separate reassurance.

Why We Call It Cooperative

The name gets questioned occasionally, usually by people who hear it as a euphemism, as though we were describing a divorce where everyone is pleasant to each other. That is not what the word is doing.

Cooperative describes the structure, not the mood. It means both spouses are working within one process toward a shared document rather than through two opposing processes toward competing positions. Whether they feel cooperative on a given afternoon is beside the point; plenty of our clients are furious throughout and still complete the process successfully.

We considered other terms and none of them fit better. Neutral divorce sounded clinical and suggested nobody was advising anyone. One-lawyer divorce was accurate but sounded like a corner being cut, when the whole point is that you get more legal guidance than mediation provides, not less.

What We Deliberately Left Out

Some of the design decisions were about what not to include, and those took as much thought as the rest.

We left out the disqualification clause, which was the most significant call. It is the mechanism that keeps collaborative attorneys committed to settlement, and we could see the logic. But it also means that a couple who cannot settle lose everything they spent, and we were not willing to build that risk into a process families were choosing partly to save money.

We left out the requirement for a team of additional neutrals. Financial and child specialists are genuinely valuable and we bring them in when a matter calls for it. Making them standard would have added cost to every case, including the many that do not need them.

And we left out any commitment to reach agreement. Nobody signs anything promising to settle. A process that pressures people toward agreement produces agreements people regret, and the freedom to stop is part of what makes it safe to start.

The Standard We Hold It To

The measure we care about is not how quickly a matter resolved or what it cost, though both matter. It is whether the two people can still deal with each other when it is finished.

For parents that is the whole ballgame, because the relationship does not end at the decree; it continues through school years, illnesses, graduations, and eventually grandchildren. A process that saves money while destroying that capacity has not done its job. That standard is also why the model is built around keeping conflict away from children, which we discuss in how Cooperative Family Law protects children.

Why It Matters to Us

We're proud of the cases we've won in court, but we're proudest of the families who walked away from divorce with their dignity and their relationships with their children intact. That's why we built this, and it's why we keep doing it.

There is a version of family law practice that treats conflict as the product, because conflict is what generates hours. We understand the economics and we decided against it. The work is more satisfying this way, and the families are demonstrably better off.

What We'd Say to Another Firm

Attorneys elsewhere occasionally ask about the model, and the honest answer is that the hardest part is not the structure. It is the discipline of turning away work.

A neutral process only functions if both spouses believe the neutral will tell them the truth, including when the truth is that they should go elsewhere. The moment a firm starts recommending its own process to families it does not suit, the credibility that makes the whole thing work is gone, and the clients can usually sense it before the firm can.

The second thing we would say is that courtroom experience is not optional. Advising someone to stay out of litigation is only meaningful coming from someone who knows precisely what they are advising against, and who could competently take them there if the answer changed.

Where It Stands Now

The model has become the larger part of what we do, though we still litigate when a situation calls for it. Both remain necessary, and the judgement about which a family needs is itself a substantial part of the work.

What has not changed is the reason we built it. The adversarial system is the right tool for some families and the wrong one for many, and for years the wrong ones had no real alternative that included actual legal guidance. That gap is what Cooperative Family Law was designed to fill.

Learning More

If you want to understand the process itself rather than its origins, our Cooperative Family Law page is the place to start, and what is Cooperative Family Law covers it in depth. For how it compares to the alternatives, see cooperative versus collaborative divorce and cooperative divorce versus mediation.

You can read more about us on our about page and the profiles for Misty Gaubatz and Ashley Hurlbert, or get in touch if you would like to talk about your own situation.