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Divorce Mediation empowers you to make your own choices about your future.
Unsure if Mediation is right for you?
It's finally happened... you've decided to get divorced
Or perhaps your partner has made the decision.
Getting divorced is one of the toughest emotional times that a person goes through in life.
Some may think that it’s the roller coaster of choosing a partner – the angst of processing the “what if’s” regarding whether the person is the right person for you … but nothing compares to the tearing loss that is often accompanied with divorce.
The tearing loss of your hopes and dreams, the loss of your imagined future and emotional investments.
There is also the loss of “life as you know it” – the loss of intimacy and companionship inherent in the nature of relationship. The loss of the sense of security of the “family unit” and social structures.
Sometimes, there can be the paradoxical feelings of a sense of freedom, a sense of release from obligation, and a sense of renewed adventure.
It's an emotional roller coaster
The emotional roller coaster that can ensue at this time is the balancing of the both/and.
Having feelings of loss and grief at the same time as having feelings of a sense of exuberance and a sense of release and freedom.
The process of divorce is the culmination of all of these paradoxes. The proverbial “up is down, left is right”.
At this time of mental chaos all we are wanting is to seek some control and clarity.
Clear guidelines of which way to go, what to feel and what to do next. We can feel desperate for a clear map, and if it is not provided to us we fear that we are going to lose ourselves in the madness of the unknown.
To avoid feeling this fear we often start controlling ourselves. We control our feelings into binary choices:
- Love / Not Love
- In Love / Out of Love
- Anger / Sadness
- Freedom / Despair
- etc etc
We also seek to clearly define our lives into controllable areas:
- Allowed / Not Allowed
- Debit / Credit
- Yours / Mine
- etc etc
Much of this control can seek to serve you on many levels. and much of it can be quite damaging to yourself as well as to the relationships that have been developed over periods of time. Some of it is necessary and some of it is a overwhelm response.
The perceived "easy-choice"
The allure of the “easy-choice” is to “simply” hire a lawyer to make sense of it all on your behalf.
To hand them the reins and let them fight your battles in the hope that you don’t have to. In the hope that they can save you from much of the mental exhaustion that is already plaguing you. In the hope that they can bring some clarity to the big decisions that you have already needed to make. Ultimately, to lighten your load!
Unfortunately, the hope of ease doesn’t often prevail and more often than not, the road of litigation and lawyers fighting your battles leads to much more exhaustion. To much more conflict, bitterness and hopelessness than the alternative option.
Choosing the alternative
The alternative option is to choose to negotiate on your own behalf. The option of working through the agreements of your divorce together with your partner. This option can appear to be intimidating at first, however this option has proven time and again to bring a greater sense of emotional ease and success.
The Alternative: MEDIATION
Mediation is where you and your partner appoint a neutral third party to support both of you equally in a process of dialogue to work through and manage your differences in a voluntary and consensual manner.
What this means is that the two of you come together with a single representative who works with both of you, individually and jointly, to empower the both of you to find the terms of your own divorce.
The mediator holds the process where the needs and requirements of both sides are heard, validated and understood and the parties (yourselves) own the content. You get to choose what works for you and what is in the best interests of your family/ending relationship.
Of course, any agreements relating to the children of your marriage will be approved by the Office of the Family Advocate to ensure that the best interests of your children are upheld in the agreements made.
During the mediation process you will finalize the following agreements:
- Divorce Settlement Agreement
- Maintenance Agreement (if applicable)
- Any Section 22 Agreements (if applicable)
- Your Parenting Plan Agreement and Contact Calendar (if applicable)
These agreements are then submitted to your local court where a combined summons is completed and the Sheriff of the Court serves the relevant summons and a court date is issued. This process, after submitting your documents, takes on average 4 weeks to finalize your divorce.
Depending on the level of agreement/disagreement within your relationship, the mediation process itself, to finalize your agreements, can take anything from 2 hours and upwards per agreement.
In Summary. Mediation is:
- Cost Effective
- Time efficient
- A process of mutual respect, and constructive dialogue
- Voluntary & Consensual (Meaning either party can leave the process at any time and pursue an alternative course of action)
- Based on mutual interests