Mediation Services
Mediation Services
What Is Mediation?
The time spent on each layer will depend on your family's situation. For the mediation process to work, you each need to openly discuss what you think is fair and be willing to listen to the other side. You should always be guided by what's in your child's best interests.
Many divorcing couples use mediation to help settle their divorce-related issues, such as support, property division, and child custody. In divorce mediation, spouses hire a neutral third party (the mediator) to help them discuss and resolve their disagreements. Most divorce mediators are experienced family law attorneys, who have completed specialized mediation training. Unlike a judge or an arbitrator, a mediator doesn't make decisions, but rather helps couples reach their own agreements.
Preparing for Child Custody Mediation
There are several important steps you should take before you start child custody mediation:
- Consider getting legal advice from an attorney: It's best to walk into mediation with a solid understanding of your custody rights and responsibilities.
- Write out detailed daily schedules for you and your child.
- Prepare your own custody and visitation proposal.
- Gather all relevant records regarding your child, including important medical records, report cards, and any letters from your child's therapist.
- When preparing your custody proposal, be sure to consider any special circumstances like holidays and birthdays. Also, remember to plan for exchange locations and transportation details, such as which parent will drop off or pick up the child for scheduled visits.
Initial Meeting
Come to mediation ready to listen and make some concessions. Custody mediation is not the place to hash out old fights about what went wrong in the relationship: The focus should be on getting to a good place for your children, and your custody plan must be tailored to meet your child's best interests (not your own). Whether or not you walk away from mediation with an agreement will depend in large part on your ability to work with your ex and compromise, where appropriate.
The mediator will sit down with both parents (and their attorneys in some cases) and explain the grounds rules, including rules about confidentiality. With some limited exceptions, everything that's said during mediation is supposed to be confidential and cannot not be used later, for example, as evidence in court. Remember that the mediator doesn't represent either of you and can't give you any legal advice. The mediator's only job is to help you reach a custody agreement you can both live with.
Identify and Organize the Issues
The mediator will help you determine the child custody issues that need to be resolved in your case. These issues will normally be categorized in terms of priority, such as issues that need to be resolved right away (kindergarten applications are due) and those that are more complex and may have global implications for the family (one parent is planning to introduce a new romantic partner). Sometimes, it's better to tackle the easy issues first, so that a few early successes in the beginning of the process might lead to better cooperation with the difficult issues later.
It's useful to have the custody issues divided into five layers:
- The regular custody and visitation schedule;
- The list of exceptions that override the regular schedule, such as holidays and vacations;
- How the parents will communicate with each other about the children;
- Special issues, such as religious training, medical care, extracurricular activities, and private school, and
- The method for changing the custody agreement in the future.
The time spent on each layer will depend on your family's situation. For the mediation process to work, you each need to openly discuss what you think is fair and be willing to listen to the other side. You should always be guided by what's in your child's best interests.
