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Managing Partner/Lawyer Accredited Family Mediator (OAFM) Accredited Intergenerational (Elder) Mediator (OAFM) Child-Inclusive Roster Mediator (OAFM/NavOn) Certified Collaborative Practitioner (OACP/IACP) ODR Specialist - Certificate in Online Dispute Resolution (FDRIO) Integrative Law Practitioner & Conscious Contracts® Practitioner
Connect(he/him/his)
Aubrey J. Sherman draws upon over 19 years of practical and hands-on experience in family law and divorce dispute resolution for the benefit of his clients. He is a Harvard-trained negotiator and mediator, a strong communicator, and an empathetic lawyer who advocates for wholistic and integrative legal practise, which focuses on peacemaking, problem-solving, and healing. Aubrey knows that court proceedings can be damaging to families and values the importance of finding peaceful ways to talk about difficult issues and resolve disputes. |
Aubrey has advanced understanding of the complex issues that often arise in matrimonial matters. His extensive experience provides insight into how the court may respond to certain issues, including parenting, financial support, high-net-worth and large asset property division, and related issues in high-conflict and complex litigation.
He assists clients in Waterloo Region and across Ontario in-person and online by Zoom. Aubrey welcomes all modern families, including blended families, same-sex spouses and partners, and LGBTQ2S+.
Aubrey understands that it matters that we have good relationships with others. As an insight approach mediator and conflict resolution specialist, he sees his role as helping parties to gain more insight into relations with others. Aubrey focuses on creating an environment for conversations that allow for learning. He combines his legal, business, and social science background to assist families to reduce conflict and settle disputes. The focus of Aubrey's practise is resolving disputes peacefully through consensual dispute resolution, including collaborative divorce and mediation.
Aubrey facilitates important and sometimes difficult conversations in situations of conflict in mindful ways that help to settle disputes and build stronger relationships. These conversations often include "listening to understand", which allows for insight, awareness, and a deeper understanding of the reasons why people find themselves in situations of interpersonal conflict.
Aubrey's many years of experience advocating for clients in litigation before the court, and frequently resolving complicated disputes without the need for a trial, has allowed him to gain first-hand knowledge that when families are no longer in conflict they are able to resolve disputes, find values-based solutions to their problems, and create durable agreements.
Aubrey carefully and strategically advances the interests of his clients while seeking timely resolution of disputes. He suggests a wholistic and interdisciplinary approach to family law that resolves disputes and allows his clients to have the opportunity to seek the advice of the best professional experts in related fields. These experts frequently include family professionals, financial professionals, forensic accountants, tax specialists, financial planners, social workers, mental health professionals, and child psychologists.
Aubrey had the opportunity early in his career to mentor with and learn from internationally recognized senior family law, corporate, and estates counsel. He understands the complex issues that often arise in family law, including corporate, trust, and estates issues, joint family ventures, business valuations, division of family run businesses, employment matters, constructive and resulting trust claims, unjust enrichment, and succession planning for corporations.
Aubrey is a Conscious Contracts® Practitioner who offers clients the option of having separation agreements and marriage contracts co-created based on value alignment of the participants that put relationship at the heart of agreements. This model provides a process for creating sustainable, relational, and values-based agreements that reflect the parties' desires to come together for a shared purpose. Discussions include authentic communication, connection, clarity, and relationship design. Focus of contract drafting includes use of plain language, creative design, creative thinking, and embrace of visual aids.
When appropriate, Aubrey advocates for his clients before the family court and provides knowledgeable and highly-skilled litigation services, including conferences, motions, trials, and appeals.
Aubrey is a fellow of the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals. He advocates for collaborative practice as a better way to separate and divorce than traditional adversarial litigation. He offers collaborative divorce and family law services for those couples seeking to resolve their family law and divorce problems outside of court in a dignified, respectful, wholistic, and non-adversarial manner. Separating couples work with a collaborative team of legal, family, and financial professionals who help to resolve disputes, reduce conflict, and improve communication without ever having to go to court.
Aubrey has had the opportunity to learn at the IACP Global Virtual Institute from several preeminent authorities and international collaborative practitioners, including Nancy J. Ross (Los Gatos, CA) family professional and co-founder of the Collaborative Divorce process, Pauline Tesler (Mill Valley, CA) lawyer/author, and Stephen Sulmeyer (San Francisco, CA) lawyer/mediator and clinical psychologist.
He is a proud member of Collaborative Divorce of Waterloo Region (Best4All) and Collaborative Practice Hamilton Halton.
Aubrey is an Accredited Family Mediator (AccFM) and Accredited Intergenerational (Elder) Mediator (AccIM) with the Ontario Association for Family Mediation. He is a child-inclusive trained mediator and maintains membership on the Voice of the Child/Child-Inclusive Mediator Roster with Navigating Onward. Aubrey works to get at the heart of the dispute quickly and focuses on developing mutually satisfactory resolution of disputes that allow for creative settlement opportunities.
Drawing upon over 19 years of litigation experience, Aubrey understands the complex issues that can arise in family law and he has insight into how the court may respond to certain issues. Counsel and their clients are able to draw upon his knowledge and experience to their advantage. He provides counsel-assisted mediation and case management for matters that are currently before the court. When appropriate, Aubrey identifies the strengths and weaknesses of positions and offers candid suggestions about how disputes might be resolved. Aubrey's mediation services include parenting plans, matrimonial disputes, intergenerational family conflict and issues of aging.
Aubrey is an alumnus of the advanced mediation, conflict management, and negotiation programs at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. He is a graduate of the conflict management and mediation certificate program through the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies at Conrad Grebel University College at the University of Waterloo. Aubrey obtained certificates in dispute resolution through the ADR Institute of Ontario with a focus on conflict and negotiation theory and the mediation process. He has completed advanced family mediation training through Family Mediation Training Canada in the insight approach (Picard) and the interest-based approach (Fisher/Ury) designed by Jennifer Suzor and Madam Justice L. Madsen of the Ontario Court of Appeal. Aubrey completed his intergenerational and elder mediation training with Elizabeth Sterritt.
Aubrey currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Ontario Association for Family Mediation. He is a member of the Family Dispute Resolution Institute of Ontario, and the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts.
Aubrey offers collaborative divorce mediation, which is an extension of collaborative divorce that involves a neutral lawyer-mediator and a family professional who work collaboratively with the couple to get over legal, financial, and emotional hurdles in order to reach mutually acceptable agreements. This consensual dispute resolution process offers the best of collaborative divorce and mediation by combining the most successful strategies of collaborative divorce with the
cost-effectiveness of mediation with outstanding success.
Aubrey is the first IACP trained collaborative lawyer-mediator in Waterloo Region to offer collaborative divorce mediation as part of his commitment to provide innovative legal options.
Aubrey's focus in his estate planning practise goes beyond a review of the financial capital and includes the intellectual, social, human and spiritual aspects when working with families of wealth. Once Aubrey has a clear picture of the people that are important to his clients and their goals, he works with each client to create a comprehensive estate plan that satisfies the financial and emotional goals while being purposeful and family-focused.
Aubrey prepares estate plans that transfer wealth in a way that energizes, motivates and creates opportunity for beneficiaries and avoids creating strife, anxiety, disharmony and bitterness. He assists clients in drafting comprehensive Wills and Trusts to meet their goals, protect their legacy, and to minimize taxation and probate fees. He provides clients with succession planning advice with respect to business and corporate interests working alongside their corporate lawyer and accountant.
Aubrey advises estate trustees through the process and challenges they face in properly administering estates, and assists them in the court appointment and probate process. He also provides legal advice and guidance with executor duties and distribution of estates.
Community Votes Kitchener-Waterloo awarded Aubrey two awards in 2024 - Platinum for mediation services and Gold for estate lawyers.
Divorce Angels recommends Aubrey as a trusted and vetted legal professional in Waterloo Region for those going through the uncertainty of a divorce and estate matters. Aubrey frequently writes legal commentary on family law that is featured by Divorce Angels.
ThreeBestRated consistently recognizes Aubrey as one of the top three divorce lawyers and estate planning lawyers in the City of Kitchener.
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Practise Areas
Education
Professional Accreditation
Professional Training
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Awards & Achievements
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Community Involvement &Speaking/Presenter Engagements
Year of Call2005, Ontario
A little bit more about AubreyAubrey attends weekly BodyPump classes and practices yoga and mindfulness. His passion for culinary arts and gastronomy inspired him to become a talented chef who enjoys preparing great meals and entertaining for family and friends. He enjoys travelling, day trips to antique markets, and planning home and interior design projects. Aubrey is an arts enthusiast with a keen eye for fashion and design. Aubrey frequently attends the Saturday Kitchener Farmers’ Market and believes in clean eating and supporting and buying from local merchants. When not in the office, Aubrey can be found enjoying the outdoors and tending to his perennial gardens.
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