Episode 68: Collaborative Divorce with Andrea Vacca
The Divorce Survival Guide Podcast
Kate Anthony
4.4 • 574 Ratings
🗓️ 14 April 2020
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Last week we talked about mediation with Susan Guthrie. This week, as we continue Legal Month on the pod, we're exploring the concept of Collaborative Divorce with Andrea Vacca. Andrea Vacca is the owner of Vacca Family Law Group, a law firm in Manhattan that focuses exclusively on non-adversarial divorce and family law matters.
Andrea describes Collaborative Divorce as a team approach to divorce. And it is a legal process. The process includes creating a roadmap for your divorce and specifically details the jobs for each member of the team, including:
- How you will be working together
- The need for transparency and honesty
- How the process will come to an end
When you're getting divorced, you're looking to the adults in the room to help you through it. Many times, the adults are litigators who are committed to an adversarial process. When that's the case, they may not be looking for what's best for you or your family.
And here's the thing: just because your marriage is ending, your family can remain intact. It may look different, but it doesn't have to be fraught with anxiety, or animosity.
Collaborative Divorce offers a way to bring respect to the divorce process and work with professionals who model the behavior you wish to express. In the end, everyone's going to be better off; you, your spouse, and most importantly, your children.
Show Highlights
- Collaborative Divorce - what the hell is it? (7:37)
- The difference between mediation and Collaborative Divorce (10:25)
- How Andrea came to work in Collaborative Divorce (11:00)
- Collaborative colleagues offer a different mindset to divorce (21:00)
- How to know whether you should meditate or do Collaborative Divorce (15:26)
- Andrea shares the story of her parents' divorce and how it affected her family (30:04)
- How to start a conversation about Collaborative Divorce with your spouse (40:00)
- What is positive psychology and how it plays into Andrea's work as a Collaborative professional (43:16)
- Collaborative Divorce can help high-conflict couples through the divorce process (48:00)
Learn More About Andrea Vacca:
Andrea Vacca is the owner of Vacca Family Law Group, a law firm in Manhattan that focuses exclusively on non-adversarial divorce and family law matters.
After practicing traditional, litigation-focused family law for many years, Andrea's firm now works only with clients who want to keep their divorces out of court and want their prenuptial and postnuptial agreements negotiated in a non-adversarial manner.
Andrea regularly lectures, writes and blogs on the topics of collaborative law, mediation, and topics related to non-adversarial family law.
In addition to having a B.A. and J.D, Andrea also has a Certificate in Positive Psychology and regularly applies what she has learned to help her clients navigate their divorces, including having a growth mindset, being resilient and encouraging mindfulness.
Andrea is the author of the recently published ebook Divorce Without Court: A More Peaceful Solution and is a co-author of the book, Onward & Upward: A Guide For Getting Through New York Divorce & Family Law Issues.
Resources & Links:
Andrea's website
Andrea on LinkedIn
Andrea on Facebook
Sign up for Andrea's ebook, "Divorce Without Court" and my monthly newsletter
The Ultimate Divorce Survival Guide
Should I Stay or Should I Go Facebook Group
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Divorce Survival Guide podcast, where we have open and honest conversations about co-parenting, separation, divorce, and the hardest question of all, should you stay or should you go. |
| 0:17.7 | I'm Kate Anthony, your divorce survival guide, and I'm here to help you navigate |
| 0:22.8 | some of the roughest waters you've ever swum in and answer some of your toughest questions. |
| 0:28.5 | I've been to hell and back, and now it's my mission in life to help you get to the other |
| 0:33.9 | side of this process with your sanity and your heart intact. |
| 0:43.8 | Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Divorce Survival Guide podcast Home Edition. |
| 0:52.3 | You might hear birds chirping in the background because I have a huge |
| 0:58.9 | bush and tree outside my house that has a lot of birds in it. And I'm not recording in a booth. |
| 1:08.4 | So there you have it. I mean, hell. If they can do it on SNL, I can do it on the podcast, right? |
| 1:14.1 | So, how's everyone doing? |
| 1:16.9 | Quarantine. |
| 1:18.7 | It's been really interesting. |
| 1:21.7 | One of the things that we realized this week was that my pod, really, not my, not my podcast, but my pod, my quarantine |
| 1:32.4 | pod is really made up of my ex-husband and his wife, our kids, and then by extension, |
| 1:40.7 | my ex-husband's wife's ex-husband. Because all of our kids are sort of rotating through |
| 1:47.1 | these three houses. There's another house too, but we don't count that. Long story. We decided |
| 1:55.2 | yesterday for Easter to have Easter dinner together. Now, we only did this because we know that we've all been |
| 2:04.0 | super, super, super careful. Like my ex-husband's wife's ex-husband, he had been traveling |
| 2:11.6 | internationally. He came home. He self-quarantined for two weeks. Didn't see his son, didn't |
| 2:17.0 | see anybody for two weeks. |
| 2:19.1 | And, you know, so those are the measures that the entire family has been taking. |
| 2:24.5 | And we have these kids going back and forth and around and about. |
... |
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