Divorce mediation offers you a way to end your marriage without hashing everything out in court and helps you keep things civil, which is especially important when children are involved. However, you may be worried about what exactly happens during mediation. Divorce Options San Diego—professionals who are revolutionizing the divorce process with expert divorce mediation San Diego couples trust to help them create amicable, customized divorce solutions—offer this advice about what to expect so you can be prepared and ready to work out an agreement.
A Mediator Is a Neutral Party
The first thing you need to remember during divorce mediation is that the mediator is there to help you and your spouse work through any disagreements. The mediator doesn’t take sides and can only offer you advice about what the laws are in California regarding divorce. This neutral position allows the focus to stay on you and your spouse working out what you both want in the divorce.
Working with a Mediator Separately Can Produce the Best Results
Dissolving a marriage can get complicated. Over the years, you might have done things together such as start a family, buy property, and even begin a joint business venture. For this reason, you shouldn’t expect to reach a complete agreement right away.
At Divorce Options San Diego, we talk with each party separately to learn what they really need from the process—psychologically, financially, and otherwise. Our professionals have training and extensive experience in strategic game theory and psychoanalysis, so we’re also able to help each party address the deep unconscious issues he or she is trying to solve.
We rarely conduct mediation through joint meetings because they heighten anxiety, exacerbate stress, and often cause the parties to be guided by their emotions rather than higher order cognition, which includes flexibility of thought, problem-solving and planning abilities, abstract thinking, and creativity. On the rare occasions when we do conduct joint sessions, we use video conferencing so the parties aren’t in the same room.
Mediators Gather Information Throughout the Process
The mediator will examine the assets and debts you’ve accumulated during the marriage, but that isn’t all a good mediator will focus on. At Divorce Options, we gather a lot of financial information while connecting emotionally, building trust, and forming alliances with our clients. We collect much of the information at the beginning of the process and continue to collect more as we go.
Our cases are complex, and all the issues tie together. Once we work out a community property net value, we do a thorough analysis and present at least a few options for division that are optimal financially, socially, relationally, and psychologically. Our goal is to manage these in a process that minimizes stress for each party. We do both a legal/financial analysis and a needs-based analysis and bring these two different worldviews into integration. These analyses may involve a wide variety of complex tasks, including those relating to child support, spousal support, QDROs, stock options division, family business valuation, family money, prenups, postnups, 401Ks, income differentials, and, sometimes, currency conversions due to international factors.
Mediation Doesn’t Mean You’ll Have to Compromise
In most cases, people get divorced because of betrayal in some way or incompatible life goals. You’ll probably go into mediation expecting it to be a back-and-forth process of give and take. However, if you’re willing to work through the process with an open mind, you’ll find that with high-quality mediation, there’s little to no compromise needed. Instead, the team from Divorce Options San Diego focuses on creating new options and new value.
All the financial, legal, psychological, and practical aspects of honorable, respectful divorce agreements can be managed by Divorce Options San Diego’s experienced, trustworthy divorce mediators. San Diego couples can rely on our specialized comprehensive process, which is so thorough they won’t need to hire attorneys. To learn how we can help you with every aspect of your divorce, call us today at (858) 281-2628.
