Sometimes I draft a Separation Agreement, send it to the other side, and receive a response that says “My client rejects your proposal.”

Or the other side will send me a proposal and my client says, “It’s ridiculous.  I don’t like anything about it.”

Both responses leave something to be desired in moving the case forward.  So my reply is always, “What, specifically, don’t you like about it?”

This simple question seems to disengage emotion and engage logic.  Once I get the other side, or my client, going through the document item by item, we can discuss options, concessions and counterproposals.  I put these in a letter to the other side and we can then focus only on the objections, which narrows the issues to be negotiated.

Tags: negotiation, objections, Separation Agreement, settlement

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Related posts:

1. Every Discussion Is a Negotiation
2. Don’t Try Your Divorce Case in Letters (Six Mistakes Lawyers Make)
3. Negotiation Tip: How to Persuade
4. Impasse
5. Letter from Opposing Counsel

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 7th, 2010 at 1:26 pm and is filed under Divorce, Divorce Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.