Newly married couples swear that they will love each other “till death do us part.”

But for many couples, love ends far sooner than life. Half of first marriages and two-thirds of second marriages end in divorce.

Is a happy ending still possible after a divorce?

Collaborative divorce is a process of ending a marriage through cooperation and negotiation. Couples agree to work together with their respective attorneys to resolve differences and not go to court. Collaborative divorce usually includes the help of neutral third parties including a financial advisor and a mental health coach. Some of the advantages of collaborative divorce are that it is typically faster, cheaper and more amicable than traditional divorce.

Burlington attorney Nanci Smith was a typical adversarial divorce lawyer for 30 years — a “shark.” But her combative style made her feel that she was deepening the misery of her already unhappy clients. She decided to change her approach and now specializes in collaborative divorce. Smith is the author of the book, “Untangling Your Marriage: A Guide to Collaborative Divorce.”

“You have to come together to separate well,” insisted Smith. “You have an important primary relationship that was very, very valuable to you for many years and now it's not working anymore. So the question is, how do we untangle that? How do we move forward in a way that offers mutual respect and dignity?”

“A collaborative model is both a mindset and a process. The mindset is that you want to come to it with at least the hope that you could do this well and not screw up your children,” said Smith.

“You can set a new narrative, which is that we are going to be better friends and co-parents than we were a married couple.”

Collaborative divorce is not for everyone. Relationships where there is abuse or child endangerment, or cases in which a spouse is hiding assets may not lend themselves to collaboration.

Martine Antell of Waterbury Center is a mother of two children who recently went through a collaborative divorce with her husband. “You just get to the point where you see the other person as this human being and you just want the best for them, just like you want the best for your kids and you want the best for yourself,” she said.

Asked how she would characterize her relationship with her ex-husband following their collaborative divorce, Antell stopped to consider it. After a long pause, she replied, “I would call him a friend.”