In my last blog I strongly suggested you consider the cost of litigating your divorce. You don’t want to spend your money putting your attorneys’ children through college instead of your own kids.
But maybe when you read that blog you thought, Murphy hasn’t got a clue how difficult my spouse can be to talk to!
How can I negotiate with a strong personality who won’t even let me get a word in edgewise?
You may be absolutely right.
But maybe not.
If it’s just the two of you in a discussion, it may just be impossible to have a rational conversation. You can’t get a handle on the real issues dividing you if you try to have the discussion yourselves without help.
But consider the possibility that a neutral third party – a mediator(not two eager and expensive attorneys) – can pull together those issues in a way that will let you resolve them without screaming, bloodshed, bankruptcy or otherwise destroying the future for you and your children – before the divorce judgment is even signed.
A good mediator sets up a process that lets the parties “vent” and then shifts the focus to teasing out the important elements of the issue, the concerns raised by it, the underlying interests involved, and then generates possible solutions. An experienced mediator won’t let one party dominate the process and if the “bully’ keeps it up will even put the parties in separate rooms and use shuttle diplomacy.
It’s better than having attorneys, each armed with only one side of the story, exacerbate the situation rather than resolve it.
Think about it.