Unless there is a pressing and desperate urgency, in my opinion, negotiation, mediation, and arbitration are generally to be preferred over litigation. Curiously, this view is shared by a lot of other family law lawyers. The Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family published [https://prism.ucalgary.ca/bitstream/handle/1880/107586/Cost_of_Dispute_Resolution_-_Mar_2018.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y a study] in 2017 examining the views of 166 lawyers from across Canada on the use of mediation, collaborative negotiation, arbitration, and litigation in family law disputes. These lawyers said that mediation, collaborative negotiation, and arbitration were all faster, more efficient and cheaper than litigation, and that mediation, collaborative negotiation, and arbitration were all more likely to produce results that were in the interests of their clients, and in the interests of their clients' children, than litigation.

In ''The Truth about Children and Divorce'', Dr. Emery describes three general categories of divorcing couples: the ''angry divorce'', the ''distant divorce'', and the ''cooperative divorce''. While these categories are not exactly exhaustive and are drawn from an American legal context, they are useful in discussing the impact of a highly emotional separation on negotiation, mediation, arbitration and litigation.

People engaged in a cooperative separation have usually worked out a lot of their emotions and resolved much of their grief. They recognize their emotions for what they are, and avoid acting out of spite or tearfully reminiscing about the lost relationship. These people attempt to work things out between themselves, with or without help from lawyers, mediators and arbitrators.

Cooperative separations usually result in a separation agreement or an order that they agree the court should make, called a ''consent order''. Often, whatever litigation occurs is limited to the court processes that are required to get a divorce order.

People involved in a distant separation are able to keep their conflict from their children, but are still dealing with feelings of hurt, resentment, anger, and pain. While there is plenty of intense anger, this emotion usually fades over time to dislike or simple indifference. These people have done a lot less work on their feelings, and their recollections of the relationship are characterized by bitterness rather than sadness.

These people are not friends with each other but know better than to become enemies, perhaps because of the children or past experiences with the court system. They deal with each other minimally, without a great deal of either warmth or demonstrated anger.

This, of course, is the type of separation to be wary of. These separations are also known as ''high-conflict separations'', and parents in elevated levels of conflict are estimated to make up between 5% and 20% of family law litigants, depending on which research you read. People in an angry separation have trouble letting go of their relationship, and feel intense pain and anger about both the relationship itself and its end. Their emotions are usually quite raw as neither person will have done a great deal to manage their feelings.