Mental health professionals perform several roles on the Collaborative team. They act as process facilitators to assure that meetings go smoothly and that the group is making progress toward completing the case; they are consultants who help clients develop and focus on what interests they would like to have satisfied as they move through their Collaborative divorce; they also serve as negotiation facilitators who help clients reach agreements on child-related or other specific issues.

The neutral mental health professional can help parents create a parenting plan for making decisions and spending time with their children after the divorce is completed. Neutral mental health professionals do not perform therapy for either client or the couple. Instead, they help the parties while the remainder of the team works at their optimal level. Divorce is almost always a difficult and emotionally-challenging experience. The parties' feelings range from anger to sadness to frustration to depression to confusion - to name just a few. Having a mental health professional on the team to help the parties deal with those feelings allows everyone to attend to the business decisions that are required to finish a case. Mental health professionals serving as team members are engaged at the beginning of a Collaborative case and generally attend all joint meetings. They often meet with the parties, individually and/or together, at various times during the process between joint meetings. They work toward resolution of specific issues or to intervene if communication becomes difficult.

Having a neutral financial expert as part of the Collaborative team benefits both parties in several ways. Typically, the financial professional helps the parties analyze historical spending and predicts individual household expenses after divorce. The financial professional gathers and verifies information about each party's marital property and any separate property that might exist. A divorcing spouse who has little experience with managing money can look to the financial neutral for education about his or her finances and how the financial future might look, given specific settlement options. If there are complicated tracing or valuation issues, the neutral financial team member may perform the necessary calculations or oversee getting the required information from a third party. A financial professional can help the parties integrate a plan for child and/or spousal support, tax planning, and asset and debt division. Other experts like the ones listed below can be brought into a case to provide specialized information.

When there are minor children, a neutral child specialist may be asked to help parents learn and implement co-parenting skills and to perform or oversee evaluations and make recommendations about what arrangements would be in a child's best interest; and help parents ease the children's transition from one household to two.

Experts in specific fields Family law cases in New York often include issues involving other areas of law. Bankruptcy lawyers, estate and probate lawyers, and insurance professionals, for example, can provide critical information to divorcing couples. The benefit of the system is that clients receive customized information specific to their case and nothing more. Appraisers If there is a need for information about the value of real property, businesses or specific items of personal property, neutral appraisers can be hired to give opinions of value. Therapists are sometimes hired to work with children or one or both of the parties, if there are specific needs to be addressed.