That’s right! This coronavirus pandemic has drastically affected
all of you wanting a divorce! But as a very skilled divorce attorney and
psychologically-trained mediator I can tell you, there is a welcome solution.
It’s called Mediation.
My unique divorce mediation process requires no court appearances and it
will save you money, time and pain. Many of my divorce clients are calling
my mediation process a welcomed solution to sanely addressing how they
can divorce, while saving money, in the midst of this emotional and financial crisis.
Here’s how Divorce Mediation works: The divorcing couple hires one individual, instead of two opposing divorce
lawyers, to help them resolve their differences. The divorce mediator
is an independent, unbiased individual, trained in mediation (usually
a lawyer or a mental health professional), whose job is to facilitate
an agreement on all issues between the husband and wife. The results are
astonishing, and are achieved often in hours and weeks, instead of months
and years.
How does this happen? The answer is in the process, and in the skills of the divorce mediator,
which include a good knowledge of negotiating, creative problem-solving,
and psychology. What happens when divorcing couples use the traditional
adversarial system? Each spouse hires a divorce lawyer, often paying from
$5,000 to $ 25,000 as an initial retainer for each gladiator. This down
payment will be used up at the rate of from $150 to over $700 per hour,
for the lawyers’ time, depending on the location (state, city),
and the expertise and reputation of the lawyer.
Since it is the divorce lawyer’s job to represent a client “zealously”
within the bounds of the law, the divorce attorneys usually embark upon
their mission enthusiastically, with the intent to “win” for
their client, whatever the definition of “win” might be in
the situation. This creates instant conflict, even between couples who
may have disagreements, but are not necessarily adversarial. The nature
of the legal system requires the participants to be adversaries.
The name of the game is to make things as difficult and uncomfortable as
possible for the other “side.” (Even the nomenclature is adversarial).
This is done by such methods as refusing to pay family bills, like the
mortgage and utilities, refusing to supply needed spending money to a
dependent spouse, and/or refusing to allow the other parent to visit freely
with the children. This behavior does not always happen, of course, but
it happens often enough, fueled by anger and hurt as to why the marriage
is ending, that it has become infamous for the pain it inflicts. The goal
of sparring divorce lawyers and clients is to make someone so vulnerable
that they will settle the entire matter on terms advantageous to the other side.
Not every divorcing couple starts out wanting to hurt each other by withholding
money or children.
Ultimately, judges will make decisions about who gets what, but not until
many months or even years go by, and thousands of dollars with delays,
adjournments, the slowness of the bureaucratic system, until justice delayed
is justice denied, with enormous financial and emotional cost to the entire
family, especially the children, who are sometimes used as pawns. Control
is no longer with the couple, but in the hands of strangers – the
judge and the divorce attorneys.
As a divorce attorney and mediator when couples come to see me, they have
a strong tendency to talk about their grievances during the marriage –
what happened in the past. There is plenty of blame and name-calling to
go around. I tell them talking about the past does not result in an agreement.
In fact, it often prevents agreement. Part of my role as a divorce mediator
is to direct the couple to talk about what they want for the future. This
feels sort of strange to the couple who is used to arguing about past
behavior. I will often summarize for them, emphasizing useful information
and ignoring irrelevant and emotional comments. I also use a “normalizing”
technique where I reassure couples that their problems are not unique,
and that other people have struggled with the same issues before and have
successfully resolved them in mediation.
If you decide to try mediation during our sessions, I will give you the
tools and the resources to strategically navigate your divorce with legal
understanding, identifying psychological issues, addressing anger, and
skillfully helping you choose a healthy path to ending your marriage,
and arriving at an agreement you can both live with!
We will discuss how to productively interact with your spouse, budgets,
income, assets, property, a family business, spousal support, child support,
life insurance, health insurance, and in some cases addiction, mental
health issues, cheating, your spouse hiding assets, and sadly in other
situations, abuse. We will discuss it all and together navigate a healthy
path for you to divorce with sanity, dignity and without having to go to court!