Why mediate your divorce? For parents who are contesting child custody or visitation, mediation is mandatory in California.
But even if you are not ordered to attend mediation, you should consider this highly effective process for its many benefits.
Here are the top five reasons for mediating your divorce.
1. Alleviate stress
Divorce is stressful, but mediation can help reduce your stress.
Mediation takes place in a lawyer’s office or a conference room that feels less intimidating and formal than a courtroom.
Emphasis is placed on reaching an agreement rather than hashing out your differences and trying to win the argument.
Overall, you are likely to experience less anxiety, anger, concern, hurt, and uncertainty during the mediation process than during a divorce trial.
2. Finalize your divorce sooner
The California dockets are full and you may not be able to schedule a hearing for many months.
In the meantime, you remain in limbo.
In addition to worsening the stress of your divorce, the delay can increase its costs and prevent you from moving forward with your life.
Conversely, you can schedule mediation relatively quickly once you decide to take advantage of this process.
In most cases, you can reach an agreement after a single session. Even in highly complex cases, you may reach an agreement after one or two sessions.
3. Save money
Mediation tends to cost less than divorce trial.
You save in lawyers’ fees, court costs, and other expenses related to trial preparation and multiple courtroom appearances.
Instead, you and your spouse walk away from your divorce with the money you saved by engaging in the mediation process.
4. Control the outcome
Who knows more about your children, your finances, and your lifestyle than you?
Therefore, you are more equipped to make crucial decisions about your divorce than a judge.
Mediation allows you to decide how best to share childrearing duties and split time with the other parent.
You can also focus on keeping assets that are most important to you and negotiate for those that hold less value.
5. Develop cooperation with the other parent
Children benefit when their divorced parents cooperate with each other.
Mediation encourages you to work together to raise your children from the very start.
You learn to recognize common ground and make healthy compromises to reach an equitable decision. Mediation also gives you the forum to create the best parenting plan possible.
Conflicts are less likely to arise in a plan you helped create directly, resulting in its greater chance of success.
6. Mediation is confidential
What happens in mediation stays in mediation.
The mediator is held to a high standard of confidentiality and the agreement terms can be kept private.
Confidentiality may be especially important to high-profile individuals.
Learn why you should mediate your California divorce
You can benefit from mediation.
Consult with Fresno and San Diego divorce lawyer and trained mediator Rebecca Medina to find out how.
