How, she wondered, do I end my marriage?

After 19 years with her husband X, she felt the relationship had become toxic and could not go on. But the stakes seemed overwhelming – the loss of the house their two children had always called home, and the uncertainty of a financial situation that meant her husband was, effectively, her employer.

"I knew we needed to separate," she says, "but I had no idea how to do it. I thought it meant getting a lawyer and fighting it out."

Nearly 18 months later, the separation has worked out better than she could have hoped. She is still in the family home and still works at her former husband's company. He lives nearby and they work closely together to give their children as much stability and normality as they can.

"People think we're still friends," she says. "We're not, really, but we're not enemies either. It's functional and it works for the kids."

The key, she says, was the involvement of "collaborative divorce" practice Melca, one of a new breed of organisations dedicated to helping the one in three couples whose relationships end well before death does them part.

Melca is the brainchild of Marguerite Picard, a lawyer who spent years in the battle zone of the Family Court before coming to believe there had to be a better way.

"The emotional and financial cost for the people I represented was awful," she says. "Even when you had a win it wasn't really a win. Yes we might have won the property, but what about the kids?

"It's not possible to go through the Family Court without having disparaged your partner in some way, and it's a huge challenge to put all that to one side and be good parents afterwards."

Her answer was a service that provides legal, financial and relationship counselling for both parties, with the aim of getting a result that benefits the entire family unit, not one of the warring parties at the expense of the other – in Sandra's case, it meant she was able to trade her superannuation for rights to the house. Melca's program is not cheap, but comes at a fixed cost that is a fraction of a full-blown court action.

"I have a fundamental problem with the fact that when families break down we characterise it as a legal problem," Picard says. "Mostly the problems families have aren't legal.

"We're focused on the things that families really need, and we try to do it with optimism and compassion. There is a lot of grief and anger associated with divorce, and how you go about it is a major factor in how you recover."

Tamara Kay is another former lawyer who spent years watching couples tear each other apart before deciding there had to be a better way. Two years ago, she too decided to do something about it.

"I think what I do is unique in that I'll see a couple together and give them the same advice under the law," she says. "I'm more pitched at helping the average couple who can't afford to go through lawyers and want to work it out for one or two grand.

"It's not been without its hard parts, but the clients all love it. The best thing is working it out quickly. Court dates are now being fixed for 2017, and that's a long time for their lives to be on hold."

Kay is cautiously hopeful that as a culture we are getting better at handling divorce in a less damaging way, a view shared by Relationships Victoria counsellor Paul Wiseman. He thinks parents are more aware of the damage that can be done to their children by a bad break-up, and are more willing to try to prevent that.

Relationships Victoria has long been involved in family law mediation – changes in 1996 made it mandatory for couples in dispute – and runs post-separation workshops. Even having one parent striving to protect children makes an enormous difference, he says.

But with all that's changed, there are still those hopelessly mired in conflict. "Sixty-five per cent of applications to the court come from 9 per cent of couples," he says. "There is a small group who make multiple applications – the most extreme lodged 56 applications over eight years.

"So there's a shift around how the community generally thinks about it, but there is that difficult population, and no one really knows what to do with them."

And even under the best conditions, splitting up is a raw and painful business. Sandra wasn't prepared to use her real name, nor appear in a photo, and she agreed to speak only because she'd found the help she needed through an article in her local paper and wanted to pay it forward.

"I don't know what would have happened without them. I just want people in that situation to know there's someone who can help."

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