Collaborative Divorce The Best Way To Divorce In California

You have decided your marriage is not working out. You want to divorce, but your friends have told you horror stories about dragging your divorce through the court system. You remember reading an article about Gwyneth Paltrow’s “conscious uncoupling” and her decision to use mediation instead of litigation. Where do you turn?? To collaborative divorce mediation at Peace Talks!

At Peace Talks, we do collaborative divorce: a non-adversarial approach to dissolution. We avoid the litigation over property, parental rights, and pride that destroy families. Peace Talks’ collaborative divorce is the preferable way to dissolve your marriage because it is 90% less expensive than litigation. It is confidential and private. Your discussions, disagreements and decisions are never public knowledge. Peace Talks makes divorce mediation a sane, sensible, and affordable alternative.

Practically speaking, collaborative divorce mediation involves a series of meetings between your partner and yourself, tailored to help you reach agreements in as amicable a manner as possible. A team of interdisciplinary specialists, an attorney, a therapist, a financial expert, and potentially other experts provide you with information to help you make excellent decisions that are in the best interests of your children and your family.

Collaborative divorce also demands another important factor: complete honest and full disclosure by both sides. A collaborative mediated divorce cannot be successful if facts are hidden from the other person. Thus, one of the first steps at Peace Talks is to voluntarily exchange all financial information. This enables our financial specialist to analyze your economic situation and present you and your partner with an accurate analysis of your financial situation. This information becomes the starting point for discussing the division of your household. An advantage of collaborative divorce is that you do not have to comply with mandated court rules. The two of you can come up with a solution that respects your shared goals.

During divorce, your life can seem chaotic, overwhelming and spinning out of control. At Peace Talks, together we develop a clear and systematic plan to keep the level of emotional strain to a minimum. While the process can be shorter than litigation, approximately 4 to 6 months, we work at your pace.

An additional benefit is that meetings at the Peace Talks’ offices are arranged to fit your time schedule, not an outside party like the civil court’s.

Another significant asset is that our mediators give you an opportunity to develop communication, self-management and negotiation skills that will help you during the divorce mediation process and beyond. The skills you achieve at Peace Talks allow you to be involved in the decision making process each step of the way. It also enables you to create a mediated settlement that attains the goals you mutually designed at your first meeting.

In our opinion, the most important reason to choose Peace Talks is that the well being of your children is protected. At Peace Talks, our team of mediation specialists ensures your children’s needs are paramount. With your input, we work to create a parenting plan that is in the best interests of your children. Not only do we consider your present situation, we discuss the developmental stages of your children and devise a plan that looks to the future while remaining flexible.

As you can see, at Peace Talks, the cooperative nature of collaborative divorce mediation can reduce the emotional stress caused by a break-up of the family and lead to a settlement that works for you and everyone involved. We believe by selecting this process you are ensuring the success of your future co- parenting and providing a safe family environment for your children to flourish.

Give Peace Talk a call today and schedule your complimentary consultation. See how collaborative divorce mediation can bring peace to your world. Call us at (310) 301-2100.

Divorce Mediation: Mediator Styles

I have a 25 hour beginning family law mediation course on DVD which I sell on my web site and Amazon.com.

As a result, I get questions about how to mediate from some of the "students" of this taped course.  One in particular, a lawyer up north, is my new pen pal of sorts.

I'm delighted he's using the materials. But I was a little surprised when he said that he feels like the "evaluative" style of mediation is best and helps people reach better agreements faster.

The evaluative style of mediation is how I was originally taught to mediate back in the 90's in a court sponsored mediation program.  Basically, an experienced lawyer or judge will evaluate your case and tell you what the most likely outcome in court is, and then try and talk you into doing that.

What I found was that this method worked in the moment; parties reached an agreement. But because the parties hadn't had much input into the process, these agreements tended to fall apart pretty quickly because the outcome was what the lawyer thought (or in the case of this particular mediation program, what I thought) and not what the parties wanted (or at least what they could live with).  And the people landed back in court.

Over the last 13 years in our mediation-only practice, I've learned the value of hearing the parties' perspectives and goals, and I do a lot more listening than I used to do.  The agreement that is reached needs to work for the parties---the people who are living with the outcome---and not necessarily for me or my ego.

So while I'll offer a suggestion if the parties are stuck, and I'll educate them about the law, my days of starting the discussion off with "here's the law and here's what would happen in court" are over.

And each year that I mediate, I listen more and push less.

I think that the evaluative style is adopted by attorney-mediators, particularly early in their mediation careers, because it's what we're used to as attorneys:  back when I represented individual clients, I told them what to do. I told them what I thought would happen in court.  So when I became a mediator, I did the same thing. I just had 2 people in the room instead of one.

This model was comfortable to me. What I was missing is that a mediation is not about the mediator.....it's about the parties.

When it's all about the mediator and not about the people involved, it's easy to alienate one of the parties...the person who's "wrong," so to speak. And then what happens? The mediation falls apart. And let's face it, who likes to be told what to do?

As I've gotten more comfortable mediating, I've also gotten much less evaluative.

What I've found is that most people are pretty sensible (yes, even the people who are behaving kind of wacky because divorce is a crazy-making time), and that they'll  make a good decision if they have the right information, time to think about it, and emotional support as well as professional support.

So we do a lot of educating in our office.  We reality-test each of the possible choices people can make.  Is it feasible? Can you afford it? Can you really adjust your schedule to honor the parenting plan you're thinking about? Does it fit with your short and long term goals? If it doesn't feel fair, does it feel fair enough?

And if the answer to any of these questions is no, then we keep working.

I miss trial work. Doing trials was fun. It indulged my inner actress and let me show off everything I learned in law school (which was mostly that if you prepare like crazy, you usually win). But it wasn't so good for clients and their families. Even if your client won, by the time they won they'd alienated their former spouse, spent most of their savings on attorneys fees, and often they'd put themselves and their kids through an emotional wringer.  Not much of a win, huh?

What I've learned as a mediator is that couples who are divorcing have more in common than they think they do. Most of the issues that cause trouble aren't legal questions. They're relationship issues, or money issues, not so much something I need to research in a law book.  And that given the right kind of information and an opportunity to discuss and think about the situation, they can come up with a solid, sensible, and fair decision that works for everyone.