This article serves as the second installment in a series dedicated to distilling practical, actionable wisdom from three pioneers in the field of family conflict resolution. These experts, through decades of high-stakes mediation and intensive training, have earned international reputations as master peacemakers, reshaping how families and divorce professionals navigate the most difficult transitions of life.
The landscape of modern family law is shifting, particularly regarding what is now commonly referred to as "gray divorce"—the dissolution of marriages involving couples aged 50 and older. These cases often present unique, entrenched challenges where family members find themselves mired in complex conflicts, struggling with communication breakdowns that seem impossible to bridge. It is not uncommon for adult children or extended family members to feel pressured to pick a side, creating deep rifts that persist long after the legal proceedings conclude. When individuals lack the capacity to listen for the purpose of understanding, the resulting emotional volatility—manifesting as outbursts, profound pain, and lingering anger—often leads to total estrangement.
In honor of Conflict Resolution Day, which is observed globally on the third Thursday of October, and in anticipation of the holiday season—a time typically reserved for gratitude and the promotion of peace—I sat down with Jacinta Gallant. A Canadian family lawyer, mediator, and conflict educator, Gallant has dedicated her career to transforming the way families experience the legal dissolution of their relationships. Her approach, rooted in curiosity and insight, stands in stark contrast to the traditional, adversarial litigation model.
To understand the core of her philosophy, one must look at her evolution from a traditional legal advocate to a mediator. Early in her career, Gallant experienced the standard trajectory of a family lawyer, measuring her worth through a binary lens of "wins" and "losses." She soon realized, however, that even when she secured a legal victory for a client, the family itself often lost in the process. The adversarial nature of the justice system, she noted, was fundamentally ill-equipped to handle the delicate relational dynamics of a separating family.
The Shift Toward Collaborative Practice
"I decided I could no longer use my talent to make things worse," Gallant explained during our conversation. This realization prompted her to transition into mediation, a role that allowed her to look past the superficial grievances of the parties and explore the underlying needs essential for healthy co-parenting and long-term stability for children. This change proved to be the most significant turning point in her professional life, leading to a profound sense of satisfaction and purpose.
The final piece of the puzzle for Gallant was the integration of interdisciplinary collaborative practice. By bringing lawyers and mental health professionals together under a shared mission, she found a way to truly meet the multifaceted needs of a family in crisis. While she admits that many legal professionals struggle to shed the competitive, "team-of-one" mentality, she finds the collaborative approach to be the most rewarding path, emphasizing that supporting the health of families and their wider communities must always take precedence over individual legal posturing.
When asked what she wishes the public understood about the nature of conflict, Gallant was emphatic: the choice of professional and the chosen legal approach will dictate the trajectory of a family’s health for years to come. While she acknowledges that there are rare, specific circumstances—such as cases involving domestic abuse or significant safety concerns—where the protection of the family court system is necessary, she maintains that for the vast majority of families, the court is the wrong venue.
"Most parents don’t realize the harm that will come to their family in an adversarial court proceeding, and soon after they decide to separate, they ‘lawyer up,’" Gallant said. She confessed a strong aversion to that common industry term. The family justice system is built on an adversarial model that applies facts to the letter of the law; it is inherently ill-suited to managing the messy, emotional realities of human relationships or the specific, nuanced needs of children.
Prioritizing Therapeutic Support Over Zealous Advocacy
Gallant argues that the best family lawyers should be the first to suggest that therapeutic support is more critical in the early stages of separation than traditional legal maneuvering. Often, a lawyer cannot provide firm, relevant advice at the onset because the information is incomplete and the emotions are too high. Despite this, many traditional practitioners revert to a style of "zealous advocacy" that prioritizes the protection of their specific client’s interests above the well-being of the family unit as a whole. This, she contends, is a failure of service.
Her desire to change these systemic patterns led her to shift her focus toward training other professionals. She believes that because most family lawyers and judges are motivated by a genuine desire to help, they are capable of adopting a more effective, insight-based approach if given the right tools. In 2018, Gallant immersed herself in the study of the "insight approach" to conflict, developed by Dr. Cheryl Picard and Dr. Kenneth Melchin. This framework changed her practice entirely, and she has since made it her mission to bring these principles to the broader legal and mental health communities.
The effectiveness of this approach was recently validated for her in an everyday setting. A former client, spotting Gallant in a grocery store, approached her with a message that encapsulated the success of her methodology. "It’s happening!" the woman exclaimed. "You said we would meet someday in the future, and I would be OK. And I am."
That brief interaction, filled with genuine appreciation, was the result of Gallant’s shift in technique. She had learned to drop the "know-it-all" mentality—an occupational hazard for many attorneys—and instead harness the power of curiosity. By listening with the intent to understand rather than to advise, she created a space where her clients felt grounded and capable of finding their own way forward.
Empowering Families Through Preparation
This philosophy of curiosity now permeates her work, including her well-regarded workbooks, Our Family in Two Homes and Our Family in a Few Homes. When she surveyed her clients in 2019 to better understand their experience, she found that while they appreciated the non-legal, deeper conversations, they often felt unprepared for the stages of the process and worried about the escalating costs of professional time.
In response, Gallant developed preparation tools designed to elicit the client’s own discoveries. These tools allow individuals to engage in self-reflection on their own time, which Gallant notes is vital because most people in the midst of a divorce are too stressed to maintain their own curiosity. By providing a safe, self-guided learning experience, she helps clients enter their professional consultations with a clearer, more grounded perspective.
The response to these resources has been overwhelmingly positive, leading to the development of public versions that any family can access, even before they formally engage a legal professional. Ultimately, Gallant’s goal is to ensure that when families do seek help, they are moving toward collaborative lawyers and mediators who share her commitment to preserving the integrity of the family unit. Her work serves as a reminder that divorce, while painful, does not have to be a destructive force if those involved are willing to trade combat for curiosity and advocacy for insight.
