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Recent Posts in Custody Mediations Category
| November 14, 2010 |
| BENEFITS of MEDIATION Include Receiving ALL RELEVANT INFORMATION |
| Posted By Desert Family Mediation Services |
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In the typical experience of divorce or partnership dissolution, parties may or may not make use of legal professionals. Estimates are that over 60% of people don't hire lawyers or even consult with them to address the legal aspects of their family law matter, and in some populations that percentage is much higher. Yet, divorce is exceedingly complicated even for "experts".
Similarly, many people do not seek assistance from mental health professionals when they are ending relationships. Those that do rarely learn about parenting, co-parenting, child development, or peaceful ways to unwind interpersonal entanglements. Yet, we have little innate knowledge about such matters.
In court proceedings over-busy judges make decisions, usually without explanation. As a practical matter, those rulings are not open to question or challenge - in a way that is reminiscent of the power imbalance between parents and very young children. Unlike adult/child relationships, however, judges don't instruct the litigant about anything. There is very little about the Court experience that allows for feedback in ways that might help the parties to understand what is occurring or how to deal or cope with it. Even when parties have attorneys they rarely explain the reasoning underlying the court's decisions to their clients or the basis for their recommendations.
Where the parties have children and cannot come to custody and visitation agreements forensic therapists and psychologists may be appointed who have differing levels of training and mastery, and little time or resources, to make custody recommendations.
The ironic truth is that in family court litigation clients are always the least important and empowered persons in the proceedings. This means that for some people the experience becomes a lonely, clumsy, uninformed struggle that frequently leads to further unsatisfactory consequences.
Mediation and co-mediation offer major benefits and advantages above the customary paradigm. Mediation is first and foremost a forum for educating the parties about all relevant circumstances. It functions to provide a discussion and an exchange of information that is required to make informed decisions possible for each participant. For a person's consent to a settlement to be voluntary and intelligent, they must first be provided all relevant legal, financial, child-specific, and sometimes psychological information.
At DFMS we believe that the mediator's role includes educating parties about the legal principles that affect their dispute, without becoming fixated or stuck on projected courtroom outcomes. People can be way more creative in achieving mutually sustainable resolutions when they also consider areas of common interest, rather than merely applying legalistic formulas. We have found that people can also benefit from understanding emotional reactivity from the perspective of mental health professionals.
Our lawyer mediator Thurman W. Arnold is a Certified Family Law Specialist, a designation and achievement that required a great commitment and investment of time as well as supportive judicial and peer reviews. He has 30 years' experience.
Our retired judge Mediator Gretchen W. Taylor is not only a Certified Family Law Specialist but was a Family Court Commissioner for eleven years, first at the Indio courthouse and then at the downtown Los Angeles Family Court. She has 35 years' experience.
Our psychologist mediator Dr. Jane E. Shatz has decades of professional experience working with children in and outside of the southern California court system. She is an expert in all manner of parenting disputes and issues, and she will make the best family science wisdom, particularly as it pertains to parenting and children, comprehensible.
Our marriage and family therapist co-mediators Karen Horwitz and
David Hayes are exceptionally trained and experienced counselors, and each has the ability to explain complex issues relating to family dynamics and interactions, and to suggest concrete ways of how to modify them and so move on.
Whether you choose one mediator or a team of two interdisciplinary mediators, the most important benefit that you will derive from the mediation process, aside from resolving your dispute respectfully, efficiently and economically, is that of having been the central figures within the process. We will explain the law to you, we will ensure that the process between you and your former spouse or partner is thoroughly transparent and fair, and we will give you the tools to successfully complete mediation and to address future disputes more positively and effectively than if you continued the old patterns.
Mediation is all and only about you and your family. It educates and empowers and so leaves nothing to chance or misinformation. It only requires two willing participants to explore and engage the process.
Desert Family Mediation Services
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| October 29, 2010 |
| DO WE NEED MEDIATION If My Spouse and I Know Exactly What We Want to Do? |
| Posted By Thurman Arnold |
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Q. So I am wondering - why would we need mediation if my wife and I already know and are agreed about how to divide our stuff? I am thinking we should have a cheap divorce.
A. You may not need mediation at all! This is not for us to decide. There are many times when people want to hire a paralegal or perhaps a lawyer, or even a mediator, to act as a scrivener - that is, merely to take down the terms they dictate and turn it into a settlement agreement or stipulated judgment to be filed with the Court. Most mediator offices do prepare all of the divorce paperwork that gets filed.
Since you reference "stuff" I imagine you two don't have children. I think it is really important for people who do have children to consider mediating their breakups, especially when there are even only occasional conflicts over time share, communication styles, or a child support stream or the sharing and reimbursement of any number of kinds of expenses, because even intermittent disputes can deeply affect kids in ways that keep lingering.
But assuming you don't have children, whether you might consider mediating may depend on a bunch of factors.
- How much stuff is there and how long were you married? If you are dividing pots and pans and a small apartment full of furniture, without more, then chances are you don't need a mediation.
- If there are no issues of spousal support or child support, or if what you propose to agree on is indeed perfectly adequate and fair to each of you (and you both know that to be so), then mediation might be an unnecessary cost for you.
- If there are no issues over repayments of loans to parents, no residence to divide or sell, and if the two of you really have no ongoing ties that will bind you together in the future in terms of finances or other people, mediation might not provide an added value to the quality of your divorce.
- If each partner has been and remains able to talk respectfully towards the other, and to behave with fairness and dignity, mediation might be superfluous.
- So long as there really are no imbalances of power, such as for instance one party who has decided there is nothing to disagree over and then sets about convincing the other that this is so, then mediation may not be necessary to protect the interests of either party.
But it is our experience that there are usually issues and agendas that lay beneath the surface of what each party voices. Many times the parties have assumed conditioned roles or "conflict patterns" (for instance "accommodation" or "withdrawal" from conflict, something I will separately blog because it is so unconscious and yet so important to understand) that mask or shortcircuit a full and fair resolution of the matters that must be settled in divorce or partnership dissolutions. If those patterns are not honestly looked at and addressed, then someone's interests will likely be damaged no matter how "friendly" or "amicable" the separating is expressed as being.
Mediation is the parties' process, not the mediator's. Just as both partners must be on board to attempt mediation, we believe that both partners ought be on board in believing that it will not assist them assuming they are otherwise willing to consider it. Sometimes one person has not really expressed that they would like to discuss in a safe setting what the agreement that has been reached really means, or inquire whether it is fair or whether there might be a better alternative.
We are available to assist you whenever you feel that exploring mediation might benefit one or both of you! This is a topic that is appropriately raised at the Orientation meeting, or at any time once the mediation commences.
Thurman W. Arnold III |
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| October 16, 2010 |
| Child Psychologist JANE ELLEN SHATZ, Ph.D Joins the DFMS Team! |
| Posted By Desert Family Mediation Services |
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We are extremely pleased and proud to announce that Jane Ellen Shatz, Ph.D, has joined the Desert Family Mediation Services Team as a Mediator and Co-Mediator.
Dr. Shatz has a therapeutic and forensic psychology practice based in Beverly Hills, but is also a part time resident in the Palm Springs area.
Her achievements are too extensive to list, and she is highly sought after. She is well known among family law attorneys, jurists, and within the mental health community for her innovative writings, teachings, and for her thorough and insightful forensic work including 730 Evaluations in high-conflict custody and visitation cases. Dr. Shatz has extensive experience working with families in conflict, and in helping to resolve custody disputes and differences. She helps parents to develop a positive new co-parent relationship and to work together in productive and meaningful ways.
Actor Alec Baldwin describes Dr. Shatz in his 2008 book "A Promise to Ourselves: A Journey Through Fatherhood and Divorce" as someone who profoundly helped him with his difficult divorce. He states, "My sessions with her would become the most valuable I had throughout the entire experience.
I believe that had my case been overseen by someone as intelligent, honest and reasonable as Jane Shatz, my whole nightmare might have ended a lot sooner. Shatz is one of the heroes of [my] story."
Dr. Shatz brings her deep sensitivities and unflappable demeanor to mediation as an individual mediator for child centered conflicts and as a co-mediator in the larger disputes that also encompass complex financial and legal related issues. She is at the apex of the mediating and child focused mediation pyramid on a national level, and we are privileged to be able to team with her and to help make her available within the desert cities and the greater Los Angeles area to serve your needs and your family.
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