Four Key Steps in the Mediation Process

If you and your spouse have decided to divorce but you wish to remain on relatively good terms, divorce mediation might be the best approach for settling your differences and finalizing your divorce. Our experienced team of Irvine family mediation lawyers can assist you with navigating your proceedings.

There are four key steps to a successful mediation, and following these steps carefully and patiently with your attorney is the best way to ensure your divorce goes smoothly. Below, we discuss those steps in greater detail.

The Introductory Meeting

In the initial mediation meeting, the goal is to make each party feel comfortable with the road ahead. The mediator will typically introduce themselves to the parties, explain their role in the proceedings, and express their neutrality concerning the outcome of the mediation. Usually, your Irvine family mediation lawyers will have delivered a series of documents detailing the particulars of your divorce with respect to asset division, custody arrangements, and so on. The mediator will state what they believe are the issues involved in your case and outline the process for solving them.

State the Problem

In your next meeting, the mediator will state each issue involved in the divorce and allow each party to tell their side of the story. This stage of the mediation is best approached by being respectful and allowing your soon-to-be former spouse to speak without interruption. Then, when it’s your turn, you can expect to make your argument and allow the mediator to come to their own conclusions about the best path forward for you and your spouse.

Information Gathering

After these initial meetings, the mediator will get to work reviewing critical documents that demonstrate what’s at stake in your divorce. These documents are generally prepared by your legal team and will include a brief that details the facts and evidence. These documents might include accounts, appraisals, bank statements, proof of bad behavior, like adultery or overspending, and more. After the mediator has reviewed those documents, he will likely contact each party to ask follow-up questions and obtain more information. Doing so allows the mediator to minimize each party’s emotions and get to a plausible solution.

Bargaining

Once the mediator has come to a solution that he believes can work, he will propose this solution to the parties, and the bargaining will kick off from there. In this stage, each party negotiates for what they want, and the mediator essentially keeps those negotiations in check. Knowing what he knows, he can make calculated suggestions when he believes one party is overstepping their boundaries. This stage of the process can be done with each party present or one-on-one, depending on the needs of each couple.

Call Our Irvine Family Mediation Lawyers

Even in an amicable divorce mediation, you’re going to want a trusted legal team on your side. Contact our Irvine family mediation lawyers today to get started.

Frequently Asked Questions

What happens in the first mediation session?

Orienting the process rather than negotiating. The mediator explains their role and its limits, establishes what confidentiality does and does not cover, identifies every issue the judgment will have to resolve, and determines what financial information exists and what has to be gathered. Interim arrangements are often addressed at this stage, since bills continue while the case proceeds. Substantive bargaining before this groundwork is laid tends to produce positions that have to be revisited.

How much financial information has to be exchanged?

All of it, the same disclosure the Family Code requires in any dissolution. Both parties serve declarations of disclosure listing all assets and debts, community and separate, with income and expense information and supporting documents including tax returns. Mediation does not reduce that obligation, and attempting to shortcut it is the single most reliable way to produce an agreement that fails. Where a business or complex asset is involved, this stage also includes the expert work.

When does the actual negotiation happen?

After the information is complete, which is the sequence that distinguishes a durable agreement from a fragile one. With the numbers established, the discussion moves to what each party needs and what structures are available: how a business is offset, whether support is stepped or bought out, how tax consequences and basis differences are allocated, and how a parenting schedule fits both households. This is also where creative terms emerge that a court could not order.

What finishes the process?

A written agreement, reviewed by each party’s consulting counsel where they have it, followed by the judgment paperwork submitted to the court. Nothing is final until the judgment is entered, and no California divorce can be final sooner than six months after service. Retirement accounts requiring a separate order need that order prepared as part of the package rather than left for later, which is among the more common items to be overlooked at this stage.