Tom Behan brought families peace during turbulent times
Tom Behan, who was never sick and never missed a day of work, didn’t show up for work one Monday in June. He couldn’t. He died suddenly and unexpectedly over the weekend while planting roses in his yard.
More than 50 members of the Collaborative Family Law Group of Central Florida attended his funeral. Those colleagues came because Tom was as well loved in his professional life as he was in his personal life.
Tom, with his curmudgeonly bearing and sly sense of humor, was a founding father of the collaborative divorce movement in Florida. After a career in the trenches of divorce battles as the expert on money, businesses and taxes, Tom became a leader in collaborative divorce. He was committed to changing the culture of divorce so that families would choose a peaceful path to life after divorce.
Collaborative divorce offers a private, efficient path to breaking up that encourages couples to resolve their splits peacefully. It offers a structured process for walking families through divorce without going to court or engaging lawyers to do battle. In a collaborative divorce, each spouse has a collaborative divorce attorney who advocates for them, not with an “aggressive” or “win at any cost” attitude, but with an approach that considers the wants, needs and best interests of the whole family.
Couples fell in love, got married and made babies together before their divorce. This approach gives families the safe space and time that they need to process their anger and grief and move forward to a different, but hopeful future. Tom worked hard to help families retain some sense of why they got together in the first place even while getting divorced.
Each collaborative divorce includes a neutral financial professional and a neutral mental-health professional. Tom shifted to the role of neutral financial expert after decades as a forensic financial expert hired by one side or the other. He tired of seeing couples expend their resources on fighting, and he no longer wanted to be part of the process that involved attacking his colleagues and opposing lawyers. As the neutral financial professional, Tom gathered all economic information and explained it to both parties so there were no secrets, no surprises — just good information to make hard decisions.
Tom taught the collaborative process to law students, lawyers and financial and mental-health professionals at Barry University School of Law. He was a founding member of the Florida Academy of Collaborative Professionals and of the Central Florida Collaborative Family Law Group. He was also the financial expert on the Road Maps For Resolution team, an interdisciplinary collaborative training team that teaches the next generation of collaborative professionals.
Tom died just before the Florida Collaborative Law Process Act will take effect in Florida on July 1. There are thousands of children and families throughout Central Florida and the state who have been saved the trauma of a prolonged and bitter divorce battle because of Tom’s dedication and commitment to this peaceful process.
Tom was a true giant of collaborative practice, not just because he stood over 6 feet tall, but because of his leadership. Tom’s memory will be a blessing for all who practice collaborative divorce and for all the families who benefit from having peaceful divorce available to them.