Divorce Mediation or Custody Mediation
- Putting your children needs first
- You determine the schedule and issues
- You control the mediation cost, which is usually about 1/10 to 1/3 the cost of a typical divorce case
- You make the decisions in mediation that you’ll be living with
- You have the flexibility in mediation of taking time to consider how a decision will affect your family long term. You can try out agreements before you sign the final Divorce Agreement
- Mediation is Confidential
- You control the outcome in mediation, and because of this, agreements made in mediation typically work better than those negotiated in the courthouse hallway minutes before a divorce trial
- You can always go to court if mediation doesn’t work
- Cost-effective
- Faster
- Less stressful
- Healthier for your and your family, since part of mediation is learning to communicate better, which is especially important when children are involved
Divorce Courts
- Lengthy & time consuming
- Judges have little time to hear the details of your divorce case, often less than 5 minutes
- Scheduling conflicts between courts and litigants cause expensive delays
- You may only get a minute or two to testify about your case
- Unpredictable outcomes
- You may have to make decisions about your divorce settlement in a split second in a crowded hallway
- No confidentiality—all court files are public records. Soon, they will be available online
- Costly — each hour your lawyer spends waiting, you pay, even if no progress on your case ismade
- Stressful
- Courts by their adversarial nature encourage combat, which is not conducive to a healthy family life after the legal divorce proceedings are over