Caught up in the battles of litigation divorce, both spouses can start to behave in a way that is seen as unreasonable,
or worse. Mediation Divorce provides an alternative procedure in which the spouses negotiate in a businesslike way to reach
mutually acceptable agreements.
Problems confronting a litigated divorce are made worse in Southern California because of congestion in the famly courts
. . .
Divorce mediation process can only work when the spouses make their own voluntary decisions, based on adequate information.
In traditional haggling ("position-based" bargaining), the parties begin by stating their respective positions.
. . .
A different approach is "interest-based" bargaining, where the parties, instead of taking and defending extreme positions,
sit side-by-side and list the issues to be decided.
It would probably come as a surprise to a person unfamiliar with the vagaries of the California Family Code, to learn
that the court must order child support payments based on the number of hours the child spends with either parent (which includes
sleeping hours).
In mediation when final agreement is reached on all issues a Marital Settlement Agreement (MSA) is prepared, reviewed
and signed. The MSA is an enforcable contract and consists of carefully worked out agreements on each issue.
Retirement benefits are a form of employment compensation like earnings. Therefore benefits earned during the marriage
and before separation are community property. For certain pensions federal law requires a certain type of court order
to be used to divide these benefits, known as a Qualified Domestic Relations Order (QDRO).
Parents facing a custody dispute are presented with two basic alternatives, to go to court, or to go to private mediation.
Fighting custody disputes in court has a misleading allure, but the wiser alternative is facilitative mediation
The two basic approaches to Mediation are Evaluative [position-based] and Facilitative [interest-based]. The latter is
better for divorce mediation, and more likely to lead to a "wise agreement."
