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760 - How Does Divorce Mediation Work?The idea of mediation is that you and your spouse would sit down in the same room with each other and with a neutral mediator and work through all the issues you need to resolve so the two of you can get through your divorce. Mediation is flexible and confidential. It gives you and your spouse a way to settle the conflict between you, which is natural and inevitable, in a way that helps you to work together as parents after your divorce. A divorce mediator would be neutral between you and your spouse. This means the mediator cannot give advice to either party and cannot act as a lawyer for either party. What the mediator can do, though, is to point out in open session to both spouses things that each of them should be aware of about what they're trying to accomplish. That open and free exchange of information frees up both spouses to negotiate with each other in confidence. Because all three of you are working with the same base of information, it usually takes far less time to negotiate a resolution that makes sense to both spouses. You're welcome to take your lawyer to mediation if you want to, or you can use your lawyer as an advisor between sessions. Mediation is voluntary. It continues only for so long as all three of you want it to. Either spouse can withdraw from mediation at any time, for a good reason, a bad reason, or no reason at all. Mediation works. We know from years of research that when you compare couples who have mediated their divorce with couples who go through an adversarial divorce, mediating couples are more likely to be satisfied with the process and the results, likely to take less time and spend less money, and are less likely to go back to court later to fight about something. If you have access to the internet, you can find out a great deal more about mediation and about divorce in general from my web site, Divorceinfo.com. Alabama Family Law Center serves clients who need to get through divorce and who are able to be reasonably cooperative. The goal is for both spouses to survive divorce and move on with their lives with some money in their pockets and their dignity intact. No representation is made that the quality of the legal services to be performed is greater than the quality of legal services performed by other lawyers. If you'd like to make an appointment with me, call 205-979-6960. Or you can click here to return to the Divorce Line. |
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