Sometimes, you don’t need to go to court and hire expensive attorneys to settle a dispute. Instead, you should know the proper methods in fixing issues that are otherwise manageable by the right people.
One of the courses of action that legal procedure often goes to is mediation. You’ll be surprised at the many disputes you can solve with one mediator who can listen to the claims made by two opposing parties, and it is ubiquitous in many situations in the legal world.
What exactly is mediation?
Mediation is when an unbiased third party joins a dispute to help settle a case at hand. The process may come as an informal meeting between the opposing parties, a mediation conference, or a compulsory legal meeting governed by the law or statutes themselves.
Mediation is a process that makes simple disputes like employment resolutions, domestic relations, divorce disputes, transactional issues, community relations, and basic compensation qualms that can be arranged peacefully with a third party who’s entirely impartial for the opposing people at the case.
Who can be a mediator?
A mediator can be a lawyer but cannot do legal counseling as a mediator in a dispute. This is because of conflict of interest; when a lawyer represents someone, the attorney’s appeal is now in a biased position where it destroys the very purpose of mediation.
A mediator could also be someone with human solid dynamics skills and is a good listener who has good judgment in things that can solve an issue right away. These people can be completely unknown before the mediation and only become known when the dispute is ceased.
In hiring or appointing a mediator, you must trust this person completely and know that their appeal doesn’t concern them nor the parties involved in the case.
How to know if mediation is the right course for your situation
People often ask: is mediation the right course for my situation? Unfortunately, there are varying answers to this simple question, which stems from the actual case at hand and the complexities of the laws and obligations breached.
As mentioned, mediation is the correct legal action if the situation is among the following listed above. Still, it certainly isn’t exclusive to those since the primary focus of mediation is to arrive at a settlement.
Though the parties can agree to settle in court, which can go public and get expensive, mediation will solve disputes behind the curtains and solve problems seamlessly without public notice.
There are cases where an agreement is formed to compromise the differences, and mediation is perfect for these scenarios. For instance, a separation agreement between two married couples can quickly be done with a mediator, and in fact, it is done commonly in the states.
So, it should go without saying that many people get into issues that would otherwise be solved in mediation, but instead, bring these issues to court, which is entirely unnecessary.
The best way to know whether or not to settle disputes in a mediation is to contact an attorney for a piece of simple legal advice. Mediation is suitable for binary cases where no other crimes or breaches of obligations are committed; lawyers, a judge, and a jury are entirely unnecessary for these legal problems.
Conclusion
Mediators are helpful in legal cases in that disputes that are simple and solvable through settlements are quickly resolved without any attention and high cost attributed to them. But, unfortunately, the mediatory issues are always confused for court actions which shouldn’t be the case most of the time.
When you are unsure about going for a mediator to solve issues, it’s best to contact an attorney to get the right piece of information on whether or not you should mediate the problems.
But generally, if a relationship between two parties must continue, compromises are made through mediation that absolves these disputes to continue the said relationship, whether it be a marital, transactional, work-related, or community-related legal cause.
However, some cases couldn’t be resolved by mere mediation, and unfortunately, must go through court due to court orders or statutory reasoning.
Regardless, you would want to hire a mediator to settle an issue as fast as possible.
