The Advantages of Mediation vs. Divorce Courts

How mediating your divorce proceedings offers you significant benefits

Reasons to Choose Mediation

At Peace Talks Mediation Services, we fully acknowledge that you have a choice of options in how you divorce or settle custody disputes. Our professional and personal experiences have led us to wholeheartedly believe in the power of mediation to produce a peaceful, fair, and mutual agreement that benefits you, your spouse, and your family. Here’s why:

 

Divorce Courts

  • Lengthy & time-consuming
  • Judges have little time to hear the details of your divorce case, often less than 5 minutes.
  • Scheduling conflicts between courts and litigants cause expensive delays.
  • You may only get a minute or two to testify about your case.
  • Unpredictable outcomes.
  • You may have to make decisions about your divorce settlement in a split-second in a crowded hallway.
  • No confidentiality — all court files are public records. Soon, they will be available online.
  • Costly — each hour your lawyer spends waiting, you pay, even if no progress on your case is made.
  • Stressful
  • Courts by their adversarial nature encourage combat, which is not conducive to a healthy family life after the legal divorce proceedings are over.

Divorce Mediation or Custody Mediation

  • You determine the schedule and issues.
  • You control the mediation cost, which is usually about 1/10 to 1/3 the cost of a typical divorce case.
  • In mediation, you make the decisions that you’ll be living with.
  • You have the flexibility in mediation of taking time to consider how a decision will affect your family long term. You can try out agreements before you sign the final Divorce Agreement.
  • Mediation is Confidential.
  • You control the outcome in mediation, and because of this, agreements made in mediation typically work better than those negotiated in the courthouse hallway minutes before a divorce trial.
  • You can always go to court if mediation doesn’t work.
  • Cost-effective
  • Faster
  • Less stressful
  • Healthier for you and your family, since part of mediation is learning to communicate better, which is especially important when children are involved.