Montgomery County Mediation Lawyer
Deciding on a divorce’s terms can be a lengthy, stressful, and exhausting process, particularly if you and your former partner find it hard on agree on certain issues—or potentially any issues at all. If you need help coming to a mutually agreeable consensus on these matters, or if you simply want to make sure the process goes as quickly and as smoothly as it can, working with a professional mediator may be in your best interests.
A Montgomery County mediation lawyer can accompany you into mediation sessions, and provide crucial guidance before, during and after each mediation session in order to help you get the most out of them. In addition, your divorce attorney could walk you through your options for litigation if you are unable to resolve all relevant issues through private mediation.
How Mediation Could Simplify Divorce Proceedings
Mediation involves both parties to a divorce participating in a meeting led by a neutral third party, whose role is not to represent either party’s interests but rather to help both parties understand the other’s desires and identify how they could compromise. Discussions and agreements made during mediation are not legally binding unless they are signed by both parties, and then can be passed along to a court and incorporated into a final divorce order.
For many people, the most important benefit of mediation is a degree of direct control over how the divorce process ultimately concludes that court rulings simply do not allow for. If two divorcing individuals can come to an agreement in private about how they want to address matters like child custody, financial support, and the division of certain assets, they will not have to depend on a court—and accordingly, on prolonged and expensive litigation —to make decisions on those issues for them.
Likewise, cooperation between divorcing parents through mediation can often be much less stressful for their children than litigation would be—not to mention often much cheaper for the parents. Talking with an attorney could help clarify whether the mediation process might be a good fit for a particular Montgomery County divorce.
Can Mediation Help During Contentious Divorces?
Mediation is mostly entirely voluntary process, which means that both parties need to buy into it in order for it to work effectively; however, in Montgomery County, the court may also order the parties to attend mediation. However, this does not mean mediation cannot still be effective if divorcing individuals have a contentious relationship, or even if one party has been unreasonable or standoffish in the past.
Once mediation has begun, a skilled mediator will make sure that both parties stay on task and prevent either from resorting to personal insults or attempting to manipulate the situation to their advantage. In fact, just having a neutral third party present can often make what were once contentious topics much easier for both parties to discuss calmly. Either way, a lawyer in Montgomery County could help prepare an individual to not only argue for what they want and need, but also to effectively counter any bad-faith tactics their former spouse might try to employ during mediation.
Learn More From a Montgomery County Mediation Attorney
While mediation can be extremely helpful during a lot of divorces, it is not appropriate in every situation. If there has been substance abuse, or you are worried an imbalance of power, or if they have been violent towards you in the past, or if severe animosity makes a calm discussion impossible, litigation may be the only practical way to execute on your divorce.
In many cases, though, mediation is the best option to ensure your divorce proceeds efficiently and ends with a mutually beneficial agreement between you and your former spouse. Get in touch with a Montgomery County mediation lawyer to discuss your options.
