What Is Mediation?
Mediation is the art of finding a workable solution to a dispute. It helps you get results you can live at a cost you can control. Since your future is important, it is essential to always use a mediator who knows divorce, custody, and family mediation.
It starts with a meeting between the parties and a trained, neutral mediator. The process involves defining the problems and issues, exploring options, and finding resolutions that meet everyone’s needs. Mediation gives you the opportunity to speak, to be heard, to understand the options, and to maintain control over the divorce process. With mediation, you get to choose the resolution, freely and voluntarily — not a judge.
What is Arbitration?
Arbitration is another form of alternative dispute resolution that allows couples to avoid having to go to court. As with mediation, arbitration involves the appointment of a neutral third-party, who tries to get the couple to come to some sort of agreeable compromise. Unlike with mediation, however, if the couple cannot come to an agreement, then the third-party decides on a binding resolution, not the divorcing parties themselves.
In many ways, arbitration is very similar to litigation, except that the couple themselves can decide on who the arbitrator is, and it involves much less of the formalities, expense, and time of going to trial. It also allows couples and their families the privacy that open court cannot afford.
