I read an article today on the Internet called “The Myth of Divorce Mediation”, published by one of the major divorce law firms on Long Island. It’s basic premise is that mediation sounds great in theory, but in practice you will get hurt and would be much better off with separate attorneys to represent each of you.
Their points are:
1. There is no licensing of mediators, so anyone can call him or herself a mediator and hand out a shingle. You have no idea who or what you are getting.
2. There is no one to represent you, so the stronger spouse will always prevail over the weaker spouse.
3. There is no required disclosure of financial information, so one spouse may be hiding assets or liabilities and there is no way to know that.
4. Often, one spouse comes to mediation to keep the other from obtaining representation.
All of those are valid points, but to claim that therefore you must hire separate attorneys is extraordinarily self-serving on the part of the attorney author.
The author does not address the fact that, certainly here in a divorce on Long Island, most divorces are of two wage earners with a house with a mortgage, some children, some debt, and some miscellaneous assets and liabilities. The likelihood that either party is hiding assets is remote — where did those assets come from?
The other issues that the author addresses are all issues of the competence of the mediator. No mediator should continue a mediation in which one party is being bullied by the other or allow one party to pursue his or her own agenda to the expense of the other party.
The purpose of a mediation is to arrive at a reasonable, fair solution that deals honestly with the realities of the parties’s lives and finances, and that produces a workable long-term solution.
The issue that our attorney author does not want to address is the ruinous and wholly unnecessary expense in a middle-class divorce where the parties are prepared to be reasonable, realistic, and forthcoming. They simply need help structuring the deal. It does not take a lawyer to offer complex or sophisticated legal advice; the “black letter” law of child support, custody, and other issues in divorce are readily available in books, on the Internet, or from a knowledgeable divorce mediator. Also, once you have a deal hammered out, have a lawyer review it and give his or her opinion.
The realities are that the attorney author of that article has set up a straw man, then knocked him down, whereas experience with real people strongly suggests that mediation is an excellent solution for most middle-class families, that allows them to end a marriage and move into a different relationship with each other and with their children without spending tens of thousands of dollars when a couple of thousand would have done just fine.
It is hard to see the purpose of this article as anything other than shameless self-promotion.
