Nolo's Essential Guide to Divorce - Emily Doskow [47]
Before the mediation, consider what you might want to say when you first have a chance to speak. It's your opportunity to set a positive tone for the mediation. You can do that in a number of ways.
• Refrain from spending lots of time talking about why your marriage is ending. Unless you think the problems in your marriage will affect how the mediation goes, leave the past in the past. State your intention to focus on the present and the future.
• Use positive terms to state your expectations from the mediation. For example, "I'm hoping we can resolve everything quickly and cooperatively," is better than "I want her to stop being so unreasonable."
• Say what's most important to you, and state your willingness to compromise on things that are less important. For example, "Getting the issue of the house buyout resolved is critical to me. I think lots of other things might fall into place if we can get that resolved, and I'm open to whatever scenarios might work best for all of us."
• Offer your commitment to doing what's best for your kids and for the family as a whole. Stay focused on those goals.
Making a Plan and Moving Forward
Once you have a sense of what needs to be accomplished, you, your spouse, and the mediator will plan how you are going to accomplish it.
You may or may not get down to actually negotiating during the first session. You may need to get more information before you can even discuss the topics that are on the table. For example, if neither you nor your spouse knows exactly how much you still owe on your house loan, and you don't know the fair market value of the house, then you can't have an intelligent negotiation about a buyout. The mediator will help you figure out what information you need before you can go forward, and will assign each of you tasks to complete before the next time you meet. It's important to keep the momentum going by not letting too much time pass between sessions-a couple of weeks at the most-but you also need to be sure you have enough time to accomplish whatever you've promised to do.
Strike while the iron is hot. Try to schedule the next session before you leave a meeting with the mediator. Doing it later by phone or email almost guarantees a longer delay.
Negotiating an Agreement
Most mediation sessions begin with a brief assessment of what's been accomplished so far and then a bit of planning for that day's work. Which issues do you want to tackle? Did each of you bring all the information that's needed to work on resolving them? Do some issues depend on others, so that you need to do things in a particular order? The mediator may ask you to deal with simpler issues first. Resolving them builds trust and encourages compromise when it comes to the more difficult issues. Settling a divorce, like almost any other dispute, has an aspect of horse-trading about it. If you let your spouse take the expensive stereo system that she spent so much time assembling, she may be more likely to agree that you can have the computer you have been sharing.
You'll then negotiate issues one by one in the order that you decided on. It's not always neat and tidy, and you may need to cycle back into the information-gathering stage. If you don't seem to be making progress, the mediator may ask everyone to stop, remind themselves about why they're there, and renew their commitment to settling the issues without a court fight.
During the negotiation, the mediator will help you and your spouse to express your opinions, positions, and what's important to you, and will help you to listen to each other effectively. The mediator will encourage you to brainstorm about possible solutions and come up with a wide range of options so that you can be creative about settlement possibilities.
Try to he open to compromise, and really listen and try to understand your spouse's point of view. Understanding doesn't mean you have to agree with it, but it's difficult to have an effective negotiation if you don't know what your spouse wants or why. You are also more likely to get