Mediate Your Divorce to Minimize Hardships

By Gerald A. Maggio, Esq.

While divorce could be an emotionally draining process for you, there are ways through which the process could be made simpler and more dignified. Mediating your divorce is best available option. Mediation is nothing but fixing the terms of the divorce process outside the litigation system in the court.

Mediation is a collaborative process through which your spouse and you would arrive at an agreement that needs to be decided for the execution of the divorce procedure with the help of a third party who would be neutral. The arrangement might include the custody for the child, the schedule of parenting, the distribution of property, the decision to award maintenance to the spouse, the support for children and similar other factors. It needs to be mentioned here that the mediation in this case is not a court-mandated one. The mediation here has been agreed to by both the parties on a voluntary and free basis. The mediator needs to have a substantial divorce and family mediation training and could help you through the completion of the process.

Some of the obvious advantages of mediated divorces as compared to litigated divorces could be listed as follows:

1. Economical: The process involved in mediated divorces is much less expensive than adversarial divorces affected in the courts. In fact, the cost could be only about 25 to 40 percent of the process involved in the courts.
2. Time effective: The mediated divorce procedure takes a lot less time than the process involved in the courts. While the former might take anything between four and eight weeks to come to a settlement, the later might take months and even years to solve the imbroglio.
3. Less economically draining: While you have the leeway to go hammer and tongue against your partner in the courts, it might have a disastrous effect on the relationship in the future as regards caring for the child. Also, the process might affect you emotionally. Thus, the best possible way is to resolve the crisis through a mediated process so that a productive relationship could be maintained in the future as well.
4. A lot more dignified: Mediation focuses on the areas of agreement and not on the areas of dispute. Thus, the process doesn’t have a telling effect on the psyche of an individual. Also, the confidentiality factor is maintained during the completion of the process leading to it being more dignified.

To learn more about the divorce process in California and how mediation can help, please visit our page, “What is Divorce Mediation.”

Gerald A. Maggio is a trained Orange County divorce mediator who has amicably resolved cases many cases out of court, as well as an experienced divorce and family law attorney. Mr. Maggio founded California Divorce Mediators in 2012 with the belief that although “not every marriage can be saved, every family can” and a mission to save families from the financial and emotional distress associated with traditional divorce litigation. California Divorce Mediators is located in Irvine, California, and serves the Orange County area and other counties in California offering divorce mediation, child custody mediation and mediation of other family law matters.