Mediation is a new concept in CALIFORNIA, designed to help you resolve your divorce or other family law matter without going through the stress and expense of litigation. Mediation is a voluntary settlement process emphasizing informed decision-making and mutually acceptable agreements.

Mediation provides an alternative to the win-lose approach of the adversarial legal system. It is practical, informal, highly focused on the issues to be resolved, and involves mutual problem solving.

The Traditional Approach

Traditionally, people in divorce have each hired their own lawyers and begun the cumbersome process of trying to work out the terms of their final order through their lawyers. The husband talks to his lawyer, his lawyer talks to the wife’s lawyer, the wife’s lawyer talks to the wife, then the whole process plays back in reverse. Not only is this procedure expensive, as both parties are paying their lawyers substantial hourly fees for these communications – but messages get garbled, misunderstandings arise, and everyone gets angrier as hostile letters fly back and forth. By the time each side has gathered all of the information it needs from the other about property and children (called “discovery”), many complicated official documents have been exchanged and hours of attorney time transpired. Often court hearings are also needed to resolve some of the conflicts.

If, after all of this, the parties cannot reach an agreement, a trial is held. The hostilities developed up until that point are minor compared to the damage done by the trial. Too often, both sides are inappropriately doing their utmost to destroy the character and reputation of the other, leaving scars that may never heal.

Children, when involved, are well aware of their parents’ growing anger and estrangement. Children suffer the most from the traditional adversarial process.

In the traditional method of handling family law matters usually attorneys are involved in the adversarial court system. As Thomas Jefferson said: It is the trade of lawyers to question everything, yield nothing, and to talk by the hour.