|
|
Last
Modified on
Jun 26, 2026
Think about a movie or show where lawyers are negotiating. A lawyer slides a piece of paper across the table, names a number, and says the offer expires at noon tomorrow. Accept now, or lose it forever.
That is drama. It is rarely effective in family law.
There are two ways cases resolve: settlement, or trial. A settlement offer is simply a private path to resolving a case. The only alternative to compromise is a public trial, where a judge or jury decides your future.
Making a settlement offer does not mean giving up everything that matters to you. An offer can be strong. It can protect everything that you value most. It can ask for more than the other side wants to hear. Proposing resolution is not a sign of weakness. It is an effort to control the outcome, manage risk and expense, and, done properly, it is part of a holistic trial strategy.
A settlement offer is not necessarily the same thing as what you will ask the court to do at trial. An offer and a request for relief are two different documents, written for two different purposes, and they are not meant to match. What is acceptable in private to end a case today, with certainty, can look very different from the relief sought later in a courtroom if negotiation fails. Settlement is its own conversation. It does not reveal or limit what you might pursue if the case is tried.
Imposing a short response deadline is usually ineffective
Our firm prepares early and faster than the other side. They often have not caught up. They may not have gathered their financials or fully understood their own case yet. In some cases, the lead attorney on the other side has never even met with their client – they’ve put everything on a paralegal. Placing a short deadline on an offer in that moment and asking someone to accept a resolution that they cannot evaluate because they have not put in the work is a setup for failure. The deadline does not produce a yes. It produces a reflexive no, and the outcome you wanted becomes harder to reach.
There is a better way
We approch every case as though it may go to trial. Discovery goes out early. Witnesses and exhibits are identified disclosed. And a proposed decree is drafted way in advance, well before mediation. While trial preparation is underway, a settlement offer goes out, open, with no expiration, ready for the other side to accept and sign at any point along the way.
The paradox of trial preparation is that the readier we are for trial, the more cases settle. As the other side watches a real case take shape, they can measure what they actually face. They can weigh the cost and the risk of a trial against the certainty of signing what is already in front of them. Our offer is the way out, and it stays open the entire time.
An open offer is an escape hatch
Because the offer doesn’t expires unless it’s withdrawn, it serves as an available escape hatch during litigation. The other side can choose to respond to discovery, prepare for and sit through a deposition, and watch the case build, and the offer is still there, waiting. They could mitigate the expense and discomfort of discovery by engaging in negotiations, or they can continue to work on the case the hard way. This makes it very hard to call us unreasonable. We are not stalling. We are preparing, with an open path to resolution available the entire time.
That is how we practice. We are trial-ready, we look ahead, and we give the other side every honest reason to resolve a case on terms our client can live with.
