Do I have to sue my spouse?
No — and this relieves a lot of people. In a collaborative divorce you can file a joint petition: the two of you filing together to end the marriage and divide things fairly. It doesn’t have to be you suing your spouse or your spouse suing you. The same questions still get answered; it just doesn’t start with one of you formally dragging the other into court.
How long does it take?
Most collaborative cases run somewhere in the range of four to six months, give or take, depending on how complicated the finances are and how much there is to work out. It moves in a series of meetings rather than one marathon day, so part of the timeline is just leaving room to think between sessions instead of being rushed into a decision.
Can I start cheaper and switch to collaborative later?
Often you can’t, and this is an honest thing worth knowing early. Once a divorce has gone adversarial — once people have said things they can’t take back and dug into positions — it’s very hard to pull it back into a cooperative process. If collaborative is something you’re even considering, it’s worth raising at the start, before the path narrows. Switching the other direction (collaborative, then to court if it fails) is built in; switching into collaborative after a fight has started usually isn’t.
Does child support still happen?
Yes. Child support is still calculated in a collaborative divorce — the financial neutral helps work it out, using the same framework a court would. Collaborative changes how you reach the agreement, not whether the kids are provided for.
Can we just use one lawyer together?
No — and this is the most common misunderstanding. Collaborative divorce requires each of you to have your own lawyer; in Texas the law requires it. One shared lawyer is a different thing (and not really a thing in a contested split). The point of collaborative is that you each have someone in your corner, working toward an agreement instead of a fight.