Negotiating allows you to have a lot of control over the process. Since you and your former spouse know your family situation the best, it makes sense that you have control over making decisions about the family moving forward. While you were together you probably negotiated a number of things when you made decisions together. However, now that you are separated you should approach negotiations with your former spouse in a more deliberate manner. 

Collaborative negotiations focus on understanding the issues and interests of both parties. The outcome is usually win-win.

3 Keys to Collaborative Negotiations

1. Understand your goals (ACL)

The first step is for you to figure out what you want and what range of possible solutions might be acceptable to you. 

Set your Goals:

Aspire to:  What do you hope for? What is the best possible outcome?

Content with:  Where is the middle ground? What would you say is not good, but not bad?

Live with: What is the minimum acceptable solution? Where’s your bottom line?

This classification is known as your ACL. It reflects your best case scenario, middle ground and your worst case scenario. For example, you may aspire to have the kids weekdays and every other weekend and during holidays, you’d be content with weekdays and shared holidays and could live with shared 50/50 parenting time 2 weeks on 2 weeks off.

It is important to understand and categorize your goals before negotiating. This will allow you to get a better understanding of your own limits. It will help you have a framework for establishing win-win solutions for both sides. Knowing your goals before you start negotiating also helps you avoid bad agreements. It helps you create good agreements that will last longer and work better for you both.

2. Understand positions and interests

There are two ways to negotiate; position-based or interest-based. Position negotiating tends to be rigid and adversarial. Eg this is my position, take it or leave it. The problem with positional negotiations is that you get too rooted into your position and lose sight of what’s important to you.

Interest-based negotiations tend to be much more creative and flexible. Interest-based negotiations help people create agreements that last longer and are followed because they meet the deeper needs of the parties. 

3. Collaborative language

When you’re collaborating you’ll want to use the language of collaboration to keep you on track and avoid misunderstandings.