Nolo's Essential Guide to Divorce - Emily Doskow [39]
What Does Mediation Cost?
Mediation is generally much less costly than a contested divorce case. It's certainly more efficient, and when professionals are being paid by the hour that makes all the difference.
Here's an outline of a scenario showing how mediation is more efficient and less costly than litigation. Mediator and lawyer fees vary a great deal by geographic area, but taking an average hourly rate of $250 and assuming your mediation takes 12 hours, you and your spouse together will pay the mediator $3,000. Let's say you each also pay consulting attorneys for nine hours spent coaching you, reviewing the settlement agreement, and filing papers for your uncontested divorce. That's another $4,500. You may also hire an actuary to value a pension plan ($500) and a CPA to review your settlement for tax consequences ($400). And you have one meeting with a child psychologist to discuss how best to work with your child about the divorce ($200). That's a total of $8,600.
Now let's say that instead, you and your spouse each hire lawyers of your own to negotiate for you. You each have an initial consultation ($500 each) and give the lawyer financial documents to review. The lawyer spends time putting those documents in the required form to send to the other side (which is what your spouse has become), and reviewing the documents from your spouse (many of these may be the same documents). The lawyers talk to each other, too. That's probably another $2,000 total.
Over the next few months, there's some wrangling about the visitation schedule and support payments, and your lawyers make a trip to court to argue those issues in front of the judge ($2,000 from each of you). You hire competing appraisers to value your home ($1,000), you each hire a CPA to look at the tax issues in your divorce ($800), and you have several visits with a custody mediator to work on your visitation schedule ($550). Your lawyers coordinate all of this and review the reports of these other professionals, then argue with each other about what the reports mean-and you are kept up to date on these negotiations, which also involves the lawyer's time. Another $1,250 each.
After all of this, your lawyers may encourage you to try mediation with the lawyers present -a great idea, but another $1,500 from each of you to pay the mediator and your own lawyer for a half-day session, plus the $500 you'll each pay your lawyer to prepare for the mediation.
At this point you've spent nearly $8,000 yourself-almost twice what you would have spent to have your divorce completed in an average mediation process. And you haven't even paid for the lawyers to prepare and haggle over a settlement agreement if you settle in mediation (another $1,000 at least). If the mediation isn't successful, you're looking at another 50 to 75 hours of your own lawyer's time preparing for and presenting your case to a judge.
You can do the math on that, and it isn't pretty: You and your spouse could end up paying more than $50,000 for your divorce trial. Can you think of other ways you might want to use that much money?
Typical Costs: Mediation vs. Pretrial Costs Using a Lawyer
Is Mediation Right for You?
Mediation is a good option for just about everyone, but there are a few exceptions. For one thing, if you think you have a chance in the court system of getting everything you want, mediation is unlikely to satisfy you. Other circumstances that are likely to preclude mediation are:
• Violence. If you're intimidated by your spouse, who uses bullying or emotional abuse to try to control and manipulate you, you may not want to mediate. A lawyer