Mediation & Collaborative Divorce Attorney in Irvine, California
How does mediation work in divorce cases?
How does mediation work in divorce cases?
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Mediation’s always like a very important
talk topic to talk about in any divorce
or domestic violence or custody case.
Your first thought should be is how do I
resolve this this amicably. It’s better
for everyone to resolve it amicably. No
one benefits from going to a judge who
is going to be not going to know you,
not going to know your family, not going
to know your kids, and is only going to
have a brief moment of time to make a
critical life decision for you. So, it
is a thousand times in your best
interest to resolve it through some kind
of mediation method. And there are many
different kinds of mediation methods. So
when a case is very simple, usually the
mediation is between the two
professionals who represent the parties
or even going to one mediator person who
can sit the parties down, go over what
the issues are and kind of give a path
of what that looks like to kind of
compromise and get the case done. When
the case gets a little bit more complex,
um that solo mediator person isn’t
necessarily the best fit. And not to say
that they don’t or wouldn’t be a good
job, they’re just not necessarily the
best fit. And you need some level of
professionals to deal with kind of what
happens. And so again, you can just have
your professionals talk and hopefully
settle the case if everyone’s
reasonable. You can then have and bring
in your experts. So let’s say both sides
hire a forensic accountant to help them
in their case and maybe work up a
balance sheet or a cash flow. And then
everybody sits down together. And then
what I see most often is a retired
judicial officer kind of acts as a
settlement officer or a private judge
and they’ll come in and everybody will
have their professionals on one side and
they’ll act as a mediator because the
issue is complex. And I see most cases
resolve with complexity in that way
where they have their professionals,
there’s some level of working up the
case, they go to a settlement officer
and that’s kind of the difference to get
the case done, get it resolved, um, and
get it done amicably. And the benefit of
doing that is multiffold. One, you know,
you’re saving a ton of fees by going to
court. um you are doing it through an
amicable pro amicable process where
you’re not another cog in the wheel in
the superior court. And one of the
biggest ones, if you don’t settle and
the other side is being unreasonable,
you now have a real take from a judge
about how this would present in court
and what this looks like and how strong
your case is and you can make a better
decision about how much money and time
and energy you’re going to be putting
into fighting this into court or going
back and trying to compromise or settle.
And that is a huge factor in dealing
with divorce. If you really understand
how much time, energy, and money is
going to go into this, you can make a
much better and more informed decision
if you’re going to fight it or not.
Irvine, CA family law attorney Marc Garelick talks about how mediation works in divorce cases.
