For those of you interested in emulating the personal habits of celebrities (which we typically don’t advise), this may be one of the few occasions where it should be permitted.
E! News reports that Britney Spears and her ex-husband Kevin Federline are using mediation to develop a working custody agreement:
Kevin Federline wants Britney Spears to once again play a major role in their children’s lives. Just not a bigger role than his.
K-Fed’s attorney, Mark Vincent Kaplan, spoke exclusively to E! News in the wake of Thursday’s all-day mediation session, in which both sides were seeking to hash out a custody agreement in advance of an August trial.
“Kevin is seeking to maintain the sole legal and physical custody that he presently has,” Kaplan said. “There’s nothing magical about 50-50. There’s nothing magical about 60-40. What’s magical is that whatever order is in place, it’s the order that best suits the best interest of the children.”
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You know you are on the road to success when your field is mentioned by a celebrity or on reality TV. (I am only half kidding). Well prepare for divorce mediation to take off now that the TV show Denise Richard: It’s Complicated has hit the E! Channel. In the show actress Denise Richards meets with a divorce mediator on camera to discuss her divorce.
While this is not necessarily the best press for the sane, sensible, confidential, and affordable approach to mediation that Peace Talks believes it, as the old saying goes “Any press is good press.”
From the world of thinly stretched analogies, I thought I should point out that in the U.S Open, a nearly unknown player, aptly named Rocco Mediate, is battling established golf giant Tiger Woods in a playoff today. Mediate is the new “alternative” to Woods and is finally getting recognized for his success in his field.
In the latest issue of the ABA Journal, there is a great article about the nastiness of divorce litigation and the move towards mediation and other alternative dispute resolution tools.
One highlight from the article written by Jill Schachner Chanen reads:
Wider use of alternative dispute resolution is a key reason why more divorce cases are being resolved with less acrimony, say Hunt and other matrimonial lawyers.
“We feel that it has increased client satisfaction,” Chinn says. “We are resolving cases more quickly, for example, by moving immediately to a mediation date, practicing full disclosure, creating asset notebooks with the numbers and your position on them. It’s just to make it easy for the other side.”
Many jurisdictions now mandate mediation in divorce cases, especially where custody is at issue, Herman says. “In one of the counties that I practice in, there is an 80 percent success rate for [resolving] contested custody cases with mediation,” he says.
If you have kids or hang around child-like adults, you have probably heard someone scream out “shotgun” as they approach the car. This modern tradition allows the non-drivers to lay claim to the front passenger seat when there is the potential it will be contested by another. What is so intriguing about the game is that the competing parties rarely have a practical interest in acquiring the seat. The 5’4 person will still belt out “shotgun” even if the competitor for the seat is 6’5 and the car is a sub-compact. The goal is merely to have a victory.
This same desire to win, even when it’s impractical, can also creep its way into the divorce process and create unnecessary and damaging results. A spouse may lay claim to an item, even though they know it is something they have no interest in, just to feel victorious. This little victory may feel good, but it can be costly, figuratively and literally.
The win typically leads to tit for tat retaliation from the other soon-to-be ex-spouse. And in the end, the retaliation usually leads to unworkable divorce and custody agreements. Meanwhile, each party is spending more time (read: more money) with their lawyers to try and salvage the things they really wanted to begin with.
In divorce mediation, we try to eliminate the child-like competition and bring practicality back into the process. Couples in a mediation session are given the opportunity to openly discuss their interest in an item and work towards an agreement that ensures everyone can claim a victory.
With the economy in a serious downturn, many Americans are looking for sensible alternatives to survive the crunch. To dodge the skyrocketing gas prices, some are trying hybrid vehicles, biodiesel fuels, and public transportation. To avoid the sting of the housing market slump, sellers are offering flat screen televisions and gift cards to woo potential buyers. And to suppress the every-growing costs of a traditional litigated divorce, separating couples are looking to divorce mediation.
Consider this, a low conflict traditional divorce, with some negotiation but an uncontested final judgment, can cost around $40,000. The same low conflict divorce reached via mediation could cost as little as $8,500. That’s nearly five times less expensive than the traditional divorce. To put that in perspective, the savings are equal to several all-inclusive two-week trips to Hawaii.
The contrast in price in high conflict divorces is even starker. A fully contested divorce can run a couple as much as $350,000. Compare that to $25,000 for the same divorce resolved in mediation. The savings with mediation can buy you nearly anything you want, including a house in Ft. Lauderdale, a law school education, and a Rolls Royce.
While saving money is not the only or best reason to try mediation, it doesn’t hurt. And knowing that you will have money in the bank during this and future economic crises is reason enough to consider mediation as your sensible alternative to traditional divorce.
Pop culture has brought us a lot of great terms in recent years, including swiftboating, metrosexual, and my personal favorite, tivoed. But none is quite as catchy or appropriate as frenemy. For those of you not familiar with the term, it is a fusion of the words friend and enemy. It connotes a relationship where the two people masquerade as friends but in reality have negative ulterior motives. Some of pop cultures best known frenemies exist in soap operas and scripted “reality tv”. But frenemies exist in the real world as well.
While frenemy is a fun word to say, it’s not a fun relationship to have, especially when it is with your soon-to-be ex-spouse. A life change of this magnitude is difficult enough when a relationship is straight forward. It can only get worse if the relationship is duplicitous.
While some complexity in the relationship is expected, the frenemy dynamic is extraordinarily troublesome in mediation because it can distract from creating a workable divorce and custody agreement. For instance, if you think you are working together with your former partner to reach a equitable agreement, meanwhile both of you are attempting to undermine the other by omitting details or sharing incorrect information, the final product will be a waste of both your time and money.
To reach usable result in mediation, the couple must be straight forward and honest. Even if you and your spouse share a strong dislike for one another, there is a benefit in knowing where the other person really stands. This is not to say that being cordial is not an asset to a successful mediation, but manipulating your partner can only have negative impact in the end.
For those of you who are into public radio, you may have heard of the NPR series, This I Believe. Created by Edward R. Murrow in the ’60s and revamped for the modern era, This I Believe is, “an international project engaging people in writing, sharing, and discussing the core values that guide their daily lives.”
Inspired by the idea, and a little prompting from a member of the Peace Talks team, I decided to write an essay on what I believe and I thought I would share it with the Peace Talks community.
I believe “truce is better than friction.” Sure it sounds a bit cheesy, but it’s a belief that guides my work as a family law mediator and my life.
For years, I was a divorce attorney and, all modesty aside, I was really good. I helped my clients kill their ex-spouse (financially, that is).
Then people started actually dying. I had one client commit suicide and another whose former wife tried to kill herself when I won his case. Then, to top it all off, while I giving a closing argument, the opposing party dropped dead in the courtroom.
I took this as a sign that maybe the bloody courtroom battles I specialized in were not the best route to getting a divorce. Given that divorce impacts everyone, including children and extended family, I decided that there had to be a better, more peaceful way to get divorced.
That better way was mediation. Don’t get me wrong; I am not some peace-seeking hippie. I doubt holding hands or singing kumbaya is helpful, especially when your soon-to-be ex-spouse had a fling with your local Starbucks barista.
However, dialogue has always been a successful tool in conflict resolution. Moreover, it just seemed like the practical choice.
Think about it, most marriages fall apart from a failure of communication. Too often couples argue and, instead of listening, they are waiting for their chance to make their point. Or worse, they don’t talk at all until it’s too late.
In mediation, I ask couples to truly listen to and communicate with each other as they work towards a divorce. The structured discussion helps them recognize that there may be lots of different ways to meet each of their goals, and that the answer doesn’t have to include destroying the other person at all costs. Statistics show this truce often leads to more effective and long-lasting divorce and custody agreements.
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