Once your client brings to you a tentative agreement with the spouse, you can explore alternative trade-offs that might enhance both parties' interests. You and your client could start by preparing alternative hypothetical settlements, transferring certain items from the wife's side of the ledger to the husband's and vice versa.

For example, assume the parents have worked out a parenting plan which involves your client keeping the children with him on Wednesday nights and dropping them off at school on Thursday mornings. You ask the client if the mother would like to consider altering the week night to Tuesdays. (It doesn't matter to your client, but the client previously informed you the mother would rather not take them to Boys Club meetings on Tuesdays). You suggest to the client that he offer to take the children on Tuesday nights instead. He does so, and she accepts, expressing appreciation for your client's thoughtfulness with the implicit promise that she will do him a similar favor later.

Of course, this requires candor between the parties and a very high level of communication between you and your client. Sometimes you can increase the client's personal satisfaction through this technique, and he loses very little if no mutual gains are achieved. Remember, though, that in order for this cooperative phase to work, your client and his spouse must be willing to disclose whether alternatives are more or less beneficial to each of them.

Illustration: In the above example, the negotiations were successful because the wife was willing to inform her spouse, after they had already settled on a tentative parenting plan, that she really did not relish the idea of taking the kids to Tuesday night Boys Club meetings. She preferred to be with the children at home, helping them do their homework on Wednesday nights. The parents adjusted the parenting plan accordingly.

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