After 25 years of marriage, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver have announced their separation, and Schwarzenegger admitted he fathered a child with a household staffer more than a decade ago. Ann Arbor family law attorney Monika Sacks of Nichols, Sacks, Slank, Sendelbach & Buiteweg appeared on “The Lucy Ann Lance Business Insider” on 1290 WLBY and talked with Dean Erskine and me about successfully negotiating the dissolution of a marriage.

LUCY ANN: Has this whole arena of divorce and child custody changed in the 32 years you’ve been practicing law?

SACKS: Enormously. When I started, there was the presumption that Mom was the better parent and, of course, we’ve shifted considerably from that position and these days we’re seeing dads take a very active role in raising children. Dads are getting much more parenting time. We also have shifted from sole legal custody, usually to Mom, to joint legal custody in almost all cases except where the couple really just can’t get along even with a lot of intervention. And then we’re starting to shift from the knee-jerk reaction which is, “Well, if we’re going to get a divorce, let’s go to court and slug it out in litigation” to mediation and collaborative practice, which allows couples to resolve their disputes in the privacy of someone’s conference room and actually take the front seat in negotiating their own settlement.

LUCY ANN: When you do that, it remains private?

SACKS: Correct. Mediation and collaborative practice are two different modalities, but people think of them as easier ways to resolve cases and that’s not necessarily true. People are still very angry during this time and they have to get things off their chest. With Maria and Arnold, for example, I imagine Maria’s pretty angry about this new discovery and having to cope with the lack of trust and the incredible breach that that really represents.

LUCY ANN: How important is a prenuptial agreement? It’s almost like you’re going into this saying “We’re going to fail.”

SACKS: No. We really see them differently. This is really a very mature attempt by people to talk about what they anticipate happening in their marriage. Prenups aren’t for everyone, but if you’re in a situation where you really have different levels of financial holdings, say someone is really quite wealthy and another person is less so, you really want to make sure that you both are on the same page about how that is going to impact the marriage. The problem we often see is that people fall in love and we assume that we agree on everything because, after all, we love this person and so we don’t always take the time before we get married to talk about finances, about how decisions are going to be made, about communication styles, about a lot of very basic needs that the couple has in order to have a healthy marriage.

LUCY ANN: It has been reported that Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger do have a prenuptial agreement but after twenty-five years of marriage, it may not necessarily be good. Is that true? I thought that a prenup was there for the duration of the marriage.

SACKS: Really depends on how well it’s written and on what’s happened in the meantime. I just saw a case where the court determined that it was now irrelevant because so much had changed in the couple’s life. That was out-of-state though. In Michigan, the case law tends to be: You wrote it. You signed it. You’re stuck with it. What we really suggest to people is that they take a hard look at it. After ten years, does it make sense?

DEAN: Monika, talk about the workings of the court. It’s been described as a period of temporary insanity that people go through during a divorce, and some people bring in a lawyer who’s really fiery and just wants to fight and argue in the courtroom.

SACKS: The court really has very limited power to resolve issues, and what’s going on in most divorce cases is that people’s emotions are hurt and some people are feeling abandoned, they’re feeling betrayed. The court can’t deal with that. What they can do is divide the time the parents spend with the children, they can divide property. That’s about it. So what most people find when they go to court is that it doesn’t really address what’s going on for them and that’s why we’re strong advocates for using these other methods for resolving disputes and those even work with those fiery attorneys. In fact, two of the three family judges in Washtenaw County require that you try mediation once you’ve filed your case. Most judges take the position, “Don’t just bring me your problems. Bring me your solutions.”

LUCY ANN: How do you get two people who can’t stand each other to be in the same room and use mediation to come to an agreement?

SACKS: They have a self-interest. Probably both of them want this over. Both of them want financial security to move forward into their new lives. What we do is we build on that self-interest. They also don’t want to spend the money for their kids’ college education on me. One way to save money is to use these other methods.

LUCY ANN: What is collaborative practice and how is that different from mediation?

SACKS: Collaborative builds on this model of empowering people, but we actually build a team around the people. Maria might really benefit from having a coach; Arnold might benefit, too. This would be a mental health professional who helps them deal with the emotions of the break-up. Depending on how charged the couple is, they might come to the table to help them negotiate their situation. They actually work through their issues using these outside professionals.

LUCY ANN: If it still doesn’t work and you’ve decided to take this to a courtroom, can those professionals, the coaches, the parenting professionals, the mental health professionals who are attempting to help you through collaborative practice, can they be called into court to give their opinion?

SACKS: No. You raise an excellent point. What happens in mediation stays in mediation — it’s totally confidential and we require full disclosure in both processes and it’s intended to protect you. If you’re going to fully bare yourself, you’re not going to have a disadvantage if the process doesn’t work.

LUCY ANN: Monika, what percentage of marriages end in divorce?

SACKS: About forty-eight percent.

LUCY ANN: Divorce cases make up what percentage of civil court filings in the state of Michigan?

SACKS: Sixty-seven percent. It’s huge. And that’s part of why the courts really do favor these methodologies. The question is how much time are you going to spend in court, and are you going to let a judge dictate how your family is going to be run in the future, or are you going to make those decisions for your family between the two of you? I firmly believe that you know a whole lot more about how your family should be run than a judge can ever know.

Lucy Ann Lance and Dean Erskine own Lance & Erskine Communications, which produces “The Lucy Ann Lance Business Insider” (M-F, 8 a.m.-11 a.m.) and “The Lucy Ann Lance Show” (Saturdays, 9 a.m.-12 p.m.) on 1290 WLBY. The programs are live streamed at www.1290WLBY.com, and podcast on www.lucyannlance.com. The above interview is a condensed version of a longer conversation that is edited for print. The complete audio interview is posted online at www.lucyannlance.com.