Bermuda has joined the trend growing worldwide of offering couples a chance to avoid confrontation and acrimony during divorces.

The new service is being offered by the Collaborative Law Alliance of Bermuda and its members include attorneys Jacqueline MacLellan, Venous Memari, Michelle Richardson and Myron Simmons.

The end of a marriage can often end with spouses seeing each other as adversaries and the divorce as a battleground but The Collaborative Model offers an alternative method of dispute resolution.

Divorce is a fact of life for about half of all marriages, unfortunately the personal turmoil that accompanies the end of relationships is equally widespread.

?By the time you come to decide about financial and custody issues you are so angry that reason doesn?t always prevail,? Ms Memari said.

?Combined with the fact that your marriage has broken down and you are very emotional, you are not in the best frame of mind to come up with plans of care for your children,? Ms MacLellan said.

Ms Memari said divorce is sad but need not be bitter and a couple should be able to exit a marriage with their dignity and integrity intact so that they and their children can move forward without as many wounds as they would perhaps sustain through an acrimonious divorce

?Divorce practice in a conventional way often creates wounds that may not necessarily have been there and it takes much longer for those wounds to heal, whereas with a collaborative approach all parties are forward looking as opposed to backward looking,? Ms Memari said.

She said this approach involves spouses and lawyers sitting around a table to find way that is both beneficial to husband, wife and the children if there any.

?If there are children, you want the husband and wife to able to continue communicating, not pitted so far apart that they can?t stand each other and never want to see each other. It?s a completely different mindset to how issues get resolved if you are going to get a divorce,? Ms MacLellan said.

?This is done without the court, the court is never an option if you are in the collaborative process.? Ms Memari said by using this alternative the parties are in control of how they divide their assets and how they will share custody.

?If you go to court and the spouses are fighting, neither of them have control over the outcome.

?If they can?t make a decision the judge makes the decision and you could be waiting for a long time waiting for someone else to make a decision about your life,? Ms Memari said.

Through The Collaborative Model all of the parties consent in writing to be part of a respectful process that leads to an out-of-court resolution.