Collaborative
Law: Survival Guide for the New Millenium
Originally written as one
article, we have broken into parts for easier reading on the web. Reprinted with
permission of the author.
Victor T.
Tousignant
Mediator, Arbitrator, Collaborative Lawyer
Calgary, Alberta Canada
toyo@home.com
Ph. 403.220.9550
Fax 403.220.9552
Life is a Canoe Voyage
Think of life as a canoe trip down a meandering,
sometimes treacherous river. You’re born
and begin your passage downstream with one or more other passengers. Helpless, you trust
the larger beings in your craft, whom you refer to as parents, to negotiate obstacles you
don’t even know exist.
Your family may enlarge and soon take up more that one vessel,
but you all continue your voyage together. You
help each other out. Each occupant has a role
to play.
As you grow older, you eventually strike out on your own, and
will probably take on a partner to share the trip. Your
canoe may come to be shared by little ones who depend upon you for survival.
Odds are that you and your partner will come to a decision to
continue the voyage separately. You must then
reorganize your lives. You will have to
divide your equipment and supplies, decide when the little ones will travel with whom, and
determine how much help one will provide to the other.
This readjustment may go smoothly but chances are it won’t.
You’ve heard about partners whose story ends in tragedy.
Unbelievable as it may sound, there are cases where the parties
continue downstream in continual conflict, each trying desperately to sink the other,
refusing to provide assistance to the other, blind to the fact that the children are
traumatized by the venom hurled back and forth by the skippers.
The stupidity can be endless.
One refuses to let the little ones spend any time with the other, who retaliates by
refusing food and clothing. He tries to
maneuver the other into colliding with rocks or other obstacles.
She tries to alienate the children. Neither
sees itself as the culprit.
What neither also sees is that waiting downstream is a
treacherous rapid. They can avoid the rapid
by portaging or negotiating around it. If
they don’t, they will tumble out of control through the cascade, only to be spit out
downstream in disarray. Maybe they and their stuff will be intact, maybe not.
Once past this rapid, they will face more rapids downstream,
which they can again portage, negotiate, or spill through.
The first rapid in this metaphor is the turmoil of the judicial
system. Once in the rapid, one's fate is
decided by an entity over which the individual has no control.
The experience will surely be draining emotionally, and the outcome uncertain.
The portage trail represents a negotiated agreement.
It enables both parties to avoid the rapids. It
rewards reasonableness, and in cases where the parties have children, promotes the
possibility of future portages together. Like
it or not, the lives of such parties will be inextricably bound together through their
children.
Throughout the voyage, the parents provide a role model for the
children to emulate.