From Combative to Collaborative: Key Negotiation Principles for a Successful Settlement

Learning how to effectively communicate, negotiate, and understand your spouse's needs can be key in coming to an agreement during your separation.

Understanding a few negotiation principles can better prepare you to reach an agreement.

Good communication is the key to good collaboration

Poor communication is often one of the primary reasons that couples decide to separate or divorce. Even for those who communicate fairly well, it can be tough to talk about these sensitive issues, let alone come to a mutually beneficial agreement. Fortunately, there are some key negotiation principles that can help you stay on track and achieve a fair agreement for everyone involved.

No. 1: Ensure Emotional Readiness Before Making Important Decisions

It's completely normal to feel angry and hurt during the beginning stages of your separation. In fact, you may need to take some time to process your emotions before you're even mentally ready to think about your next chapter, and it’s okay for you to take that time. Whether it's talking it out with a trusted friend or working with a professional counsellor, taking this time can help clarify your thoughts and your feelings.

However, when you're ready, you want to focus just on creating the agreement. Here's why timing matters: making decisions too early can be emotionally charged and sometimes volatile, while making decisions too late can be overwhelming and stressful. Therefore, you want to find the right balance for your unique situation.

You can still productively use the early stages to gather important documentation, input your information into platforms like Divii, start reviewing educational videos, and thoroughly explore your options.

No. 2: Maintain a Limited Scope to Avoid Overwhelm

Once you begin negotiations, you might discover that there are still numerous points of disagreement and tension between you and your spouse. However, at the beginning you’re not here to resolve every single issue. The only topics that you should be focusing on are specifically the points around parenting (if you have children) and property and financial distributions. That's your scope - nothing more.

One very important statistic that comes from the Gottman Institute is that 69% of conflict in a relationship is unresolvable. It's often conflict relating to differences in personality or differences in your values.

When you encounter a point of tension or disagreement, try using the collaborative communication sheet included with Divii. This approach is based on non-violent communication principles and provides you with a structured framework to focus your communication.

If you get to the bottom of the communication sheet and you find that you can't come up with a concrete action to propose - like something specific, active and future-oriented that you or your spouse can do as part of the agreement - then you likely have an unresolvable issue that falls outside the scope of this process. In this case, park it for the time being.

The Gottman Institute reports that 69% of conflict in a relationship is unsolvable. Focus on what you can resolve to an agreement.

Remember, you can always keep a running list of annoyances and grievances and all the things that you need to get off your chest to talk about later with your counsellor or your closest friend. These issues just may not be something that's part of the critical discussion that you need to be having right now with your spouse.

Principle 3: Recognize That Successful Divorce Negotiation Requires a Joint Plan

In professional mediation, understanding your partner's needs is frequently overlooked. Typically, we tend to focus exclusively on our own goals, our own priorities, and our own objectives, while those are all absolutely important because they're essential to creating a personalized plan, they represent only half of the equation.

Most critically, you must recognize that you both need to agree to the final outcome and that you both need to sign the actual agreement. This means that you need to listen to each other, actually understand what the other person truly cares about, and genuinely consider how to meet those objectives.

Here's the key insight: the trick in effective divorce negotiation is to figure out how to tailor your proposal to something that the other person highly values while at the same time meeting your own needs. The best negotiators are often the best listeners and the most creative when coming up with solutions that can work for both people.

Ultimately, when you're able to come up with a strategic combination that meets the essential needs of your spouse and your own core needs, then you'll have your agreement.

All content on Divii is meant to serve as educational and informative. This is not a substitution for or considered legal advice. It's always highly recommended to seek independent legal advice from a lawyer during your separation.

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