Learn the true financial difference between litigation vs mediation in your divorce or custody dispute
Settling Disputes by the Numbers
There are significant differences in financial exposure for couples when deciding between Divorce Litigation vs. Divorce Mediation, or Custody Litigation vs. Custody Mediation. Before you make your decision, carefully consider the information presented in the table below.
The “Life Beyond Divorce” column shows you some financial equivalents of the costs you and your spouse will assume in Litigation. Think about it: Do you really want to spend your children’s college education account, your vacation money, and the equity in your home on your divorce? Consider divorce mediation or custody mediation with Peace Talks as a lower-cost, lower-stress alternative that will also give you and your family better options for the future.
*Think we’ve exaggerated the costs of litigation? Consider this quote from Los Angeles’ then-presiding family law judge, Aviva Bobb, from a bar association meeting in September 2002. “By the time we see [divorce] cases in court, most people have spent all their community assets on the divorce itself.”
**For this calculation, we’ve used 4% simple interest rate and subtracted the cost of mediation from the cost of litigation. This figure represents the amount of money you’d save by mediating your divorce instead of litigating, and how much that savings would be worth if you have invested it at 4% interest for 20 years.
***According to Presiding Family Law Judge Marjorie Steinberg in the Los Angeles Times Magazine, May 4, 2008, if a couple can get a divorce for $100,000 in Los Angeles, Judge Steinberg considers that “pretty cheap.”