Divorce can be a very sad and difficult process for couples who are not in agreement about the dissolution of the relationship. If you’ve never been divorced or know anyone personally who’s been divorced, your only experience with the process is probably dramatizations seen in movies or television. However dramatic those divorces may be, every year, many couples seek mutually agreed upon no-fault divorces.
4 Tips to Overcome Hurdles in Your Mediation
According to Florida law, mediation can be used as an alternative dispute resolution to handle family law issues. While mediation is an elective low-conflict alternative divorce process, it can still be difficult for couples to reach a compromise. If you’re heading into mediation, here are few tips to help you overcome several pitfalls that can derail your divorce mediation.
- Be Realistic: Just because you’re in divorce mediation doesn’t mean that every aspect of your divorce will go smoothly without a single argument or disagreement. It’s important to be realistic about what a divorce is and the reality there may be issues that cause you to become emotional or angered. To keep your divorce mediation moving in the right direction, you should take it easy on yourself and allow for momentary bumps in the road if they don’t end in a detour off course. If you feel the mediation is becoming too heated or unhelpful, take a short break and go back to the mediation after spending some time to get your bearings.
- Strategically Plan: If you notice your divorce mediation is going well, but you keep getting stalled on a particular issue. You can table disputed issues and keep moving forward towards negotiating your divorce, and when you circle back to these items after you’ve had time to work through your feelings. Develop a strategy for how you plan to work through any unresolved or debated issues and work with the divorce mediator to make progress towards the dissolution of your marriage.
- Be Positive: The goal of mediation is to end your marriage without the conflict and emotional strain of traditional litigation. One of the benefits of mediation is that because it’s a mutual process, you know your soon-to-be ex-spouse wants exactly what you want – a low conflict divorce. So, it’s important not to fall into some of the more common divorce traps. Assigning blame for the divorce or allowing anger to motivate vengeance because it’s unproductive. Focusing on the future and your goals is the key to keeping your divorce mediation on track.
- Practice Your Listening Skills: Poor listening skills can derail any divorce – litigation or mediation. Being emotional about your experience and feelings during the divorce process is common, but you can’t allow your feelings to consume you so much that you don’t have ears to hear what your partner is saying. Just because you are getting divorced doesn’t mean you don’t care about the experience and feeling of your partner, part of mediation is listening and compromising. You need your almost ex-spouse to feel their position is being understood and heard. Reaching a settlement agreement is the key to finalizing your mediation, and that won’t happen unless each party clearly verbalizes their terms and conditions and the other party accepts.
In Florida, not only can a divorce be mutual, but it can also be affordable and fast. If you want to save the money and time you’d spend on a traditional litigation divorce, then divorce mediation is a great option for you. That isn’t to say that divorce is easy or unemotional, but it’s not as dramatic and fraught as many of the stereotypical ones that you hear about from Hollywood or soap operas.
Measured and Thoughtful Representation
Don’t let emotions and resentment derail your divorce mediation. Alternative dispute resolution can provide you with the low conflict communicative divorce experience you’re seeking. Divorce is a difficult experience, but if you and your soon-to-be ex-spouse agree on the terms of your divorce and both want to move forward, there’s no reason why divorce has to be more negative than necessary.
Beatriz Zyne, P.A., can help you with the divorce mediation process. Call us now at (305) 876-6138 to schedule a consultation or use our online contact form to request more information.