The field of Collaborative Family Law is of the utmost importance to author and attorney, Ashley-Nicole Russell. Her efforts were highlighted by Southern Bank, an award-winning bank with 60 locations throughout North Carolina and Virginia. Russell was featured in the company’s Better Business Brief series because of her commitment to keeping divorce and family law cases out of the courtroom. In turn, this saves divorcing spouses money and time.

As a child of divorce, divorcee, and divorce attorney, she knows know how divorce impacts people nationwide and around the world. She owns AN|R Law: A Negotiated Resolution, where she became the first practicing Collaborative Law attorney in the Greenville, North Carolina area. With three North Carolina law office locations in Greenville, Raleigh, and Beaufort, Russell has dedicated her career to helping spouses divorce in a healthy manner.

“I want my clients to have a better way of life and the way to do that is to make a decision that you can be proud of every day.” – Ashley-Nicole Russell, Esq.

Collaborative Law is a form of alternative dispute resolution which is an out-of-court settlement method. It’s known as a healthier way to divorce since those involved are not subject to litigation, which often includes combative tactics creating an adversarial experience. During a collaborative divorce, each spouse has a separate collaborative law attorney. All involved meet to discuss the best options for their agreement and work together to reach a mutually-acceptable resolution. This method can also involve the expertise of financial specialists. These experts, many of whom are financial planners, advisors, or accountants, have collaborative training. They play a unique role in the Collaborative Process and are able to assist in the following ways:

• Help assemble marital property and Cash Flow spreadsheets that reflect the financial information provided by the spouses
• Work with one spouse or the other to provide adequate understanding of the current and future financial situation
• May identify positive and negative tax consequences, insurance regulations, and retirement account regulations, business or pension valuations
• May discuss and counsel the spouses on their retirement picture

As cited in the documentary film Divorce Corp, divorce and family law in the United States is an industry that profits $50 billion each year. Divorce Corp exposes the appalling waste and shameless collusive practices seen in family courts across the country. Even though collaborative law isn’t as well-known, many experts consider it a better option for divorcing spouses and their families. It’s also becoming a preferred way to divorce from a bank’s perspective since it is handled as a mutually-beneficial agreement. As a result, when couples need to produce banking statements, it happens in an organized and cooperative way rather than someone spending hours with a bank teller trying to pull their own records and statements to take to their litigation attorney. Ashley-Nicole Russell is proud to be an attorney featured in this Better Business Brief series as she showcases a better way to divorce and a better way to do business nationwide.