Why we do Divorce Mediation
Having been a therapist prior to becoming an attorney and also teaching law, I knew that, although I had the intellect for law, I did not wish to be part of the problem by making spouses/parents adversaries in a courtroom which litigation demands, but rather I wished to be part of the decent and compassionate solution when marriages became untenable or unbearable.
When I first passed the bar, before I opened my doors, I spent five months sitting in courtrooms observing family court cases and myriads of matrimonial disputes. I swore then, that I was not going to do this to people if there was a choice, especially where there are children involved.
What we do Divorce Mediation
After my first year of practice, I wrote the article Compassionate Divorce which spoke to leaving a legacy to your children of compassion, that although Mom and Dad won’t be married to each other anymore, they are working together on an agreement so that they can all still be family.
The article became a mainstay of many of the therapists in Rockland and Westchester and Jonathan and I continue to observe every day, that the psyche of children who emanate out of compassionate divorce is far healthier than that of children who manage to survive their parents’ tough and sometimes nasty litigated divorce.
For the most part, once people understand the law and how little wiggle room there really is in compliance with the Law, they make the best decisions in their own best interests and that of their children, keep their kids far less traumatized, and keep the money in the family so that they can send their own kids to college rather than those of their attorney.
Think about it: If we are now trying to teach first graders in our school’s methods to resolve disputes decently, then certainly where possible, the grownups must model such behavior, especially where the absolute worst place to be for such a personally profound event as the dissolution of a marriage is a courtroom.
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