The Divorce Mediation Answer Book

Though we all enter marriage hoping for "forever," nearly half of American marriages end in divorce. But divorce no longer has to mean pain, exhaustion, or suffering. Today, you can choose to mediate your separation or divorce and save yourself time, money, and aggravation. Mediation enables couples to create custom-made agreements that work for everyone and that pave the way for an amicable future relationship. In this accessible question-and-answer guide, two experts offer solid advice and cover all the bases. Among the hundreds of entries inside you'll find answers to your most basic questions: o How do we find a mediator? o How does court-ordered mediation work? o What are fault and no-fault grounds for divorce? As well as your most confusing issues: o We have children but we never married, and now we're splitting up. Can we use mediation to provide for our children in the future? o Our baby is still nursing. How does that affect custody and visitation? o Does child support include medical bills? Health insurance? o How do we decide who gets the frequent flier miles? Who gets the dog? o If we sell our home, how do we divide the proceeds? o Am I entitled to a portion of my spouse's Social Security benefits? o When we complete our separation agreement, do we need new Wills and any other new documents? An invaluable resource section, with a listing of mediators around the country as well as other sources of information, makes this book an essential tool for any couple about to separate. Whether you're contemplating separation or are in the midst of a complex divorce, this book will empower you, will provide you with a base for entering into negotiations, and will offer support and guidance throughout the process, from both a legal and emotional perspective. Most importantly, it will provide you with immediate, straightforward advice for all your questions.

Mediation in Family & Divorce Disputes is intended as a handbook for mediators and clients who are involved with family and divorce disputes. It distills 20 years' of priceless experience into a succinct and lucid handbook that will be invaluable to attorneys, mediators, social workers, pastors, psychologists and parties to disputes, helping clients to decide whether they would like to try to resolve their dispute through mediation and professionals to reflect on the fundamental principles and practical applications of their work. For mediators the book sets out to provide practical and theoretical guidelines for their work. The practice tips, further reading suggestions and references serve as an introduction to some of the work of leading mediators in the field for those readers who would like to develop a deeper understanding of the process. The book is also designed to be of use to those who have recently been trained as mediators or will soon be trained, as it complements the material usually presented in such training. For clients it explains what they can expect in the mediation process, tips as to what to look for in a mediator and what they can do to prepare for their mediation in order to get the most out of the process.

First published in 1989. This book contains a straightforward, unembellished articulation of the how to of family and divorce mediation, enabling the reader to bring it to successful conclusion; emphasis on process and technique is amply illustrated by case presentations and analyses. The authors provide a well-thought-out discussion of the differences between mediation and counseling, and throughout the book, in their exposition of the mediation process, make clear how this differs from the adversarial process.

The purpose of this book is to provide a brief explanation of mediation, specifically divorce mediation. It talks about the many benefits of divorce mediation over the adversarial process, which involves two attorneys representing the two sides to negotiate and argue on their behalf. The reason I have called this book Modern Divorce is because of the way everything around us is taking a new and modern path in our everyday lives.

Mediating Divorce: A Step-by-Step Manual is written for family law attorneys and therapists who need a comprehensive resource for facilitating the divorce mediation process. Written by Marilyn S. McKnight and Stephen K. Erickson, two widely known pioneers in the field of divorce mediation, this useful guide will show how to implement the techniques needed to be an effective divorce mediator. It includes helpful information for understanding and working through the emotions experienced by people going through a divorce.

Few Americans escape the experience of divorce, either first-hand or through the dissolutions of marriages of friends or relatives. According to the author, mediation offers a good alternative to the strictly adversarial divorce process that was so prevalent before such programs began to emerge. Originally published in 1991, this book was unique at the time in that it not only explores the role of communication in divorce mediation, but it also presents original research to support its claims. A series of empirical studies, it points readers to a more focused set of recommendations about communication than the typical practitioner's "How-to" books. A simulation exercise is also included, so that readers can apply the concepts described and see the results. The main goal of this text is to provide mediators with a language for understanding their own and their disputants’ communication patterns, strategies, and tactics – a shortcoming of most other books on this topic when first published.

If you are like most people who are going through a divorce, you would prefer to keep things civil -- especially if you have children. Unfortunately, even relatively friendly breakups can become acrimonious once the courts get involved. Couples with the best of intentions find themselves paying their attorneys thousands of dollars to haggle over issues that, in the long run, really don't matter. Divorce Mediation from the Inside Out presents a better option for couples who want to get on with their lives. Speaking from years of experience as a divorce mediator, Ora Schwartzberg explains why mediation not only costs substantially less than going to court, but also results in more relevant, fair resolutions. If you want to divorce with dignity and develop a blueprint for a satisfying life after your marriage ends, this book will set you on the right path.

Mediation, as a procedure to assist couples in dealing with the problems incident to their separation and divorce, is still relatively new in the United States. For the would-be practitioner, that poses certain problems. Divorce mediation cannot provide a long history of generally accepted procedures. Nor is there even a body of information to which would-be practitioners can turn for instruction or guidance. And, of course, there are no established schools that can train or prepare a practitioner to do this work. To make matters worse, the situation is likely to remain in this state for some time to come. Given this fact, it was felt that it would be useful for practitioners (even for those already engaged in divorce mediation) to have a handbook which would trace a typical mediation from its inception to its conclusion and which would provide them with the substantive informa tion they need to know in order to do divorce mediation. It is hoped that this handbook will fill this need. Having said that, however, it must be acknowledged that the purpose of this book is very much beyond that. Until now, divorce mediation in the United States has been shaped principally by such books as O. J. Coogler's Structured Mediation in Divorce Settlements: A Handbook for Marital Mediators, 1 and John Haynes' Divorce Mediation: 2 A Practical Guide for Therapists and Counselors.