The end of the eighties showed us, in the emblematic American film “The War of the Roses”, how a divorce can literally devastate the lives of those who, before, were united in marriage.
The same decade was the scene in which the family lawyer Stuart Webb, after practicing for more than twenty years in the Minneapolis courts, began to develop a system based on alternative methods of conflict resolution that aimed to achieve solutions related to the particular circumstances of each specific case, in such a way that, through a purely extrajudicial work, it is possible to generate agreements that contemplate the particularities of each conflict, leaving aside the limitations that the judicial framework proposes.
More than thirty years have passed and reality continues to surpass fiction; We continue to witness divorces and separations in which those who, one day, swore eternal love, on many occasions, turn out to be strangers fighting to win or die in battles that no one wins.
Justice is declared insufficient to respond to disputes that, even having a clear legal framework, usually develop their roots in unsatisfied needs and interests that find renewed discussions carried out in endless lawsuits as a channel of expression.
The idea of the lawyer Stuart Webb, who in the United States was the origin of collaborative law, has been replicated with different variants in almost all the countries of the world, even though we still have not managed to get away from the courts to work in depth in the search for solutions. peacemakers.
The entire world has courts that fail to respond to human conflicts that require another type of treatment.
In our country, mediation and conciliation are conflict resolution alternatives designed as a mandatory prior instance that invites the parties, accompanied by their lawyers, to find a prejudicial solution to the conflict that binds them.
In recent years, the new Civil and Commercial Code, among the many modifications that it has introduced, eliminated divorce with cause and incorporated unilateral divorce; that is to say, there are no guilty parties when it comes to divorce and it is not necessary for both parties to want to end the relationship for a sentence to declare the end of the union.
In parallel, we are witnessing an era in which this liquid modernity that has us as its protagonists invites us to walk lighter, to link ourselves affectively with sex in a reiterated flow in which the lightness of the ephemeral coexists, with different degrees of success. with the responsibility that we owe.
We have learned to be more flexible, to adapt to the changes that life proposes, to become aware of the finitude that inhabits us; We no longer talk about “lifelong” relationships, but we still haven’t learned to separate in peace.
Everything changed and nothing changed.
What is the reason why divorces continue to show, in many cases, the greatest human miseries?
Are we lawyers the real cause of the exacerbation of the problems that they bring us?
Is it perhaps that, at the moment of truth, we still have a much more solid vision of what we thought we had abandoned?
Perhaps we have assimilated new ways to live with the permanent change that the current reality offers us, however it is likely that we still need to distinguish what the real meaning of lightness is and, surely, we have not yet acquired sufficient resources to efficiently manage the conflicts that have us as protagonists.
Every conflict has a rational edge and an emotional one; Until we are able to take charge of the emotions that are at stake in the issues that we have to resolve legally, we will not be able to find real solutions.
We may be able to acquire judgments that agree with us or grant us a defeat and with this we will have the end of a dispute, however, we will still be far from obtaining a solution to the underlying problem.
It is time to understand that conflicts are inevitable; It is impossible to live in a society in which there are no disagreements given that, logically, as many views of the same situation always come together as there are people involved in it.
Legal conflicts, still framed within a norm that brings objective data, need to be addressed in the integrality that composes them.
Only if we assume that no sentence is going to be better than the agreement reached by the parties that have generated the conflict, we will begin to value the work proposed by a new trend in the legal profession.
Every time we affirm that advocating is pacifying, we are opening a path in which the approach to the interests and needs of the parties is the philosopher’s stone on which it will be possible to carry out a respectful negotiation of the different perspectives, in such a way that Those who have created a conflict have the opportunity to also be the builders of the way to end it.
This society that has made permanent change its own has not yet been able to promote a new perspective to face legal conflicts: we continue to contemplate wars in which the parties cling to material goods, the past, children, hatred or fear and lawyers do not know, cannot or do not want to generate innovative alternatives that make it possible for their clients to be encouraged to let go of what ends up anchoring them to a situation that brings more harm than benefits.
This millennium requires us to take charge of designing the future that we want to live, which challenges us to act in this present in a way that is consistent with what we want to become our new reality.
If we really want to live in a more peaceful society in which it is possible to enjoy greater interference in the matters that concern us, it is urgent that we begin to take responsibility for the conflicts in which we intervene.
Conflicts are not something foreign to us; they are not a fact that happens to us, they are the result of our actions or omissions.
Being responsible is giving an answer without waiting for a third party to decide for us, it is assuming the commitment to look for professionals who know how to accompany and guide us on a path that leads to the peaceful solution of the conflict.
Then, those of us who practice law will have the task of encouraging ourselves to unlearn the litigation paradigm that we have been taught and acquire new skills and knowledge to be able to be good advisors to our clients, effective negotiators and makers of possible and sustainable compliance agreements in the future. time.
Society has changed, we are not the same but we continue to fight in the same way for the same reasons.
The time has come to abandon confrontation to begin an era in which cooperation, collaboration, respect and good faith are the pillars when it comes to dealing with family conflicts.
Until we generate that new look, we will continue to be trapped in an incongruous soliloquy that only contradicts a reality that we dare not change.
by CEDOC