Are you going through a divorce?
Divorce is never easy. It’s not just the legal process that can be difficult, but also the emotional and financial implications of ending your marriage. You need someone who understands what you are going through to help guide you through this difficult time in your life. That’s where Lloyd Sokolow comes in! He understand how important it is for you to feel confident about every decision made during this process, so we will work with you to ensure that happens. Our goal is to make sure that both parties walk away feeling satisfied with their decisions and hopeful for their future lives together or apart from one another.
If there are children involved, Lloyd will carefully review all aspects of child custody arrangements including visitation rights, parental responsibility (decision making authority), and child support payments before presenting them as options for consideration by the court. He believes everyone deserves an equal opportunity at happiness after divorce – no matter what age they may be when they go through it – which is why we offer services tailored specifically for children too! Whether it’s helping kids cope with new living situations or working out a plan on how much time each parent gets with them each week – family mediation professionals have seen it all before and know exactly how best to handle these sensitive matters so everyone walks away happy!
Family conflicts come with a lot of stress, anxiety, and resentment. Divorce is a central part of any family dispute. Ending the marriage involves different challenges to a disintegrated family. Most of them are related to child custody, child support, spousal support, and marital property division.
In a traditional sense, divorces include costly and time-consuming court litigation.
Fortunately, things do not have to play out that way. To avoid financially and emotionally draining court procedures, spouses can choose alternative dispute resolution methods.
Mediation
Mediation is an alternative dispute resolution method that is a neutral, voluntary, and confidential approach to dispute resolution. It offers the divorcing spouses various benefits that a classic court trial lacks. The mediation process enables spouses to express their feelings related to a divorce. Simultaneously, it keeps fierce emotions under control, not allowing them to interfere with the conflict resolving process. With these attributes, mediation affirmed itself as an effective and mutually beneficial method of handling divorces.
The mediator is an impartial third person chosen voluntarily by the parties, devoted to finding common ground between the divorcing spouses. That is a specially trained professional with counseling skills that will help the couple to acknowledge their feelings and reach the settlement.
In divorce mediation, the process includes multiple talks the mediator conducts separately with each spouse (caucuses). Besides, there are also joint sessions held in the presence of both parties and their attorneys.
The mediator facilitates the negotiations between the conflicting spouses, which usually results in a settlement agreement. After both spouses sign it, the settlement will be presented to the courts and act as a binding agreement.
Mediation offers many benefits. It is less stressful and emotionally less harmful to children that are often negatively impacted by the adversarial roles of their parents during court procedures. Such experience can sometimes be detrimental to their mental health and well-being. Contrary to that, the mediation procedure occurs in a friendly and peaceful atmosphere. An experienced divorce mediator will help the spouses better understand each other and reach the settlement agreement easily. Of course, such peaceful conflict resolution between the parents sets a positive example for their children.
Confidentiality is one of the most significant advantages mediation has over litigation. Everything said in court becomes part of the public record. On the other hand, the mediation process keeps family life out of public sight.
It is worth mentioning that the mediator cannot resolve the conflict by making a decision. The mediator’s job is to facilitate talks between the conflicted spouses without the possibility of issuing a binding decision. The mediation can succeed if the spouses are willing to negotiate openly and sincerely. The mediator is there only to help those negotiations run smoothly. On the other hand, if the mediation does not end with a settlement, the divorcing spouses can always turn to the court.
Due to a history of domestic violence, mediation may not always be an appropriate method for resolving family conflict. These spouses cannot engage in meaningful conversation, let alone a constructive negotiation. In such cases, going to court litigation seems like the only way to end the marriage.
For the reasons mentioned above, divorce mediation helps spouses avoid stressful and unpredictable outcomes of draining court litigation. It enables children to stay unharmed from an adversarial process which inevitably puts their parents in a bad light. After successful mediation, the former spouses can still maintain quality co-parenting relationships.
