Most people do not always understand just how public their divorce can get.
Going to court for a divorce is a public process. Many of our court hearings are hybrids. Some are on Zoom, and in several counties, there has been a return to in-person hearings. The Texas Constitution states that the courts must be an open system, which since the beginning of the pandemic most court hearings will be streamed online. Anybody can find the information about the court docket to find out when your case is scheduled and they can watch it on television. During a court hearing personal information that you do not want other people knowing about will be made public. In a courtroom, the bad and the ugly come out, whether it is true or not.
The Collaborative Divorce process means that everything is kept private amongst yourselves and your attorneys.
You keep all your information to yourselves where nobody, including family members, will have any access to the information unless you give it to them. Your documents can be filed so that most of your personal information remains private. That fact that you divorced will be public information, but details about the divorce will be private.
For business owners, the public filings of financial statements sometimes can be something that competitors want to see and that are in the public court record. An advantage of the Collaborative Divorce process is that those financials are never made public. Also, in a business partnership, your other partners do not want to be dragged into your divorce. Collaborative Divorce helps to maintain the integrity and financial welfare of that partnership without them being dragged into the divorce.
Finally, a litigated divorce (going to court) is a public affair.
You do not need to see what’s going on in other people’s lives and they do not need to know what is going on with yours. By keeping things as private as possible, you build a greater level of trust between yourself and your spouse as you go through the divorce process.
