Divorce Mediation
Cheaper, faster, and altogether less unpleasant.
Divorce is, for many people, the hardest thing they’ve ever had to do. Deciding that a marriage is over is very hard, and the fact that a conventional divorce filing can costs tens of thousands of dollars and take years makes everything harder. Particularly for couples with children, the parties often would prefer something faster, and something that would leave more assets in place to be divided, but don’t always know that there are other options.
Fundamentally, marriage in California, and in the vast majority of places in America, is a legal relationship, and ending that relationship requires showing the court that the parties have a permissible agreement covering financial matters, both assets and debts. This is, sadly, much harder than it sounds. Any experienced family law practitioner, including those that work for Far River, has horror stories about having an agreement entirely sewn up and signed by both parties in a divorce, only to get rejected by a filing clerk, often for reasons that are unclear to the parties. This means that everyone has to try again, and there is always the possibility that the agreement will unravel, and all the work of going back and forth to reach an agreement will be lost.
Further, the process of getting to an agreement in a divorce case is hard for some frustration reasons. If you consider some of the arguments that you’ve had in long term romantic relationships, you can see why. Often a couple is fighting over who failed to empty the dishwasher, but in fact, one party feels taken for granted and the other party feels like they sacrifice too much time to the joint household already. The dishes just happen to be a convenient excuse. This sort of argument becomes much, much more common in divorce, and the expense of those sorts of arguments goes up dramatically. Imagine having to fight about the dishes, but not really about the dishes, through a game of telephone with 4 people, two of whom charge $400 an hour for each conversation.
Enter mediation. In the beginning of mediation, the parties work out which things they already agree on, like how much of a marital estate exists to be split up, or how many debts there are that both parties should pay something on. Next, we get to the disagreements, and we can go as slowly or as quickly as makes sense to get a roadmap for agreement. At the end, we often have a complete agreement that both parties are happy with, and both parties helped write.
The Process
Like normal mediation, divorce mediation is confidential, voluntary, and your mediator will be neutral. The process of getting started is simple: you tell us what your goals are, and we work with both parties to get there. Specifically, we’ll ask about your shared finances, kids, if any, and what kind of major assets and debts exist in the marriage. California, like many places, creates a marital estate, meaning the assets and debts that are owned by the marriage instead of by the parties, and getting a divorce approved is largely a process of making sure the agreement deals with the entire estate.
We’ll contact you and your spouse to see where the parties agree on the basic facts, and then the real work begins, as we help both parties move towards a complete agreement. Agreements in divorces have to be very personalized to work; our goal is to have an agreement that’s realistic and which both parties feel good about, so you won’t have to come right back or, worse, go back to court. For some couples, defining who uses the vacation home when is crucial, other couples are going to sell the vacation house ASAP and split the money. If there’s kids, we find that both parties are very well served by having a custody agreement that’s not only detailed but has fall-back provisions. What are you going to do if one parent is transporting the kids to Christmas with the other but the car breaks down? Being actually finished with a divorce means settling these issues once and for all.
If this sounds good to you, please fill out this form, and we’ll get right back to you to let you know what we can do to help. All submissions are of course confidential.