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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.
===Emotions and dispute resolution optionsalternatives===
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.
For people involved in this sort of separation, negotiation may be all that's required to resolve their legal disputes. Mediation or collaborative negotiation may be necessary when there's a genuine difference of opinion. 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.
====The "distant separation"====
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.
For people involved in this sort of separation, collaborative negotiation will often be the best option. First, the lawyers who work in a collaborative way are committed to finding a settlement and are more likely to continue trying to find compromise even when emotions run high. Second, the process allows other people to be brought in to help, including counsellors who work with each party to process the difficult emotions resulting from the end of the relationship and from the dispute resolution process itself, and child specialists who provide neutral opinions about the parenting arrangements that are in the interest of the children. However, when an issue simply cannot be resolved despite everyone's best efforts, arbitration can be used, as needed, as a less-adversarial alternative to litigation.
====The "angry separation"====
Angry separations are the sort that lawyers most often wind up dealing with. The epic battles of people engaged in an angry separation can barely be described, and involve repeated trips to court, hiring expensive experts and trials that often last longer than ten days. The legal issues arising from their separation are rarely concluded in less than three years, and, when there are children, can run for six or more years! Making things worse, trials rarely provide a meaningful conclusion to the hostilities, as high-conflict people often find themselves back in court over and over again afterward.
Arbitration and litigation are the dispute resolution processes most likely to be used by people engaged in an angry separation.
===Anger===