When it comes to divorce and divorce mediation there are more and more creative ways companies are coming up with to attract people to mediating their divorce versus hiring a divorce attorney.
And I am for divorce mediation and dedicated an entire chapter to divorce mediation in my book, Why You Don’t Need A Divorce Attorney.
There is a new divorce mediation company who is rumored to be coming to Los Angeles called Divorce Hotel. Honestly when I first heard about it recently the name kind of sounded scary and reminded be of a horror movie like Bates Motel.
But as I am always curious of new business’s related to divorce and divorce mediation, I thought I would do a little research on Divorce Hotel.
Divorce Hotel is a company in the Netherlands that connects you with mediators with a concept of completing your divorce mediation over a period of 2 days which occurs over the weekend. You stay at one of Divorce Hotel’s Hotels.
I would imagine that Divorce Hotel does not own the Hotel’s they hold their mediations in, rather set up the divorce mediation in a hotel near you.
From my research it appears it is more of a concept, meaning that their concept allows mediators to establish relationships with Divorce Hotel as independent contractors who can then use their name. Seems more of a franchise type relationship where mediators would use the Divorce Hotel concept for their divorce mediations.
There are many types of “concepts” for divorce and divorce mediation out there. I have even seen divorce mediation companies advertising “divorce vacations” where the divorce mediation takes place at some resort style location and is meant to have people enjoy their stay and relax during the mediation.
Do You Really Need Divorce Mediation?
The reason I wanted to write this article is to talk more about divorce mediation. While there are all types of divorce mediation services with their own little twist, my question is, “do you really need divorce mediation to begin with?”
My definition of divorce mediation is to have a neutral third party who specializes in divorce mediation sitting in a room with you and your spouse helping you to communicate and work through your issues and decisions as it pertains to your divorce settlement or agreements.
I have found over the years that most people do not need divorce mediation. They usually either have a misunderstanding of what divorce mediation is or felt that it was required to finalize their divorce. I don’t know about other States, but in California you do not need to mediate to finalize your divorce.
Options To Start Your Divorce
As a divorce paralegal business, also known as Legal Document Preparers who specialize in the divorce process, I have found that most people don’t need a divorce mediator. If you and your spouse have decided to work through your divorce amicably, you have some options. I have recommended that people start their divorce at the lowest level (and cost) which is through our paralegal divorce service.
While going through the process of divorce with us, it will become apparent if you require divorce mediation during the process. When using or divorce service, we will walk you through the process and assist you. When you start to have problems coming to an agreement in certain areas, you can then decide to get professional mediation at that point.
I explain to people that you don’t know if you need to hire a mediator until start the process and start talking.
I personally feel that it does not make sense to start with divorce mediation unless you absolutely know that you will not get through your divorce without one. I have many clients who have called us and wanted to know if we did divorce mediation then after speaking with them they state that they are mostly in agreement and just need to work out few details.
When you work with us, we will help you through your divorce and only if you cannot come to an agreement will we refer you out to mediation.
The worst thing you can do is walk into a divorce mediators office without any idea of where you are at as far as your agreements or disagreements are concerned.
We work with several divorce mediators and they say the worst things about divorce mediation is when clients come in and have no idea what they agree or disagree to or what they even want. This results in a very costly process as most divorce mediators charge per the hour.
This is why I recommend you start with our service and if issues come up, you can go have those one or two issues mediated and once you have that wrapped up we can continue to complete your divorce case.
Clients of ours who thought they needed divorce mediation initially are very happy with going through our service. As we are going through the process, certain things will come up. When I see they are not resolving certain issues, I can then send them to a divorce mediator that specializes in the area they are having trouble.
For instance, many of the issues people going through divorce get stuck on is related to custody issues and / or anything to do with money, such as how they are going to divide up their assets and debts.
Say, for instance, that the issues are related to division of assets and debts. In these cases I would refer you to a divorce mediator who specialize in finances. I have a divorce mediator I refer to that does just that and holds a certificate as a Certified Divorce Financial Analyst (CDFA) and who has helped many of my clients with just those issues.
So what I wanted you to take away from this is that divorce mediation is not required in California and most people either don’t need divorce mediation or don’t know what they don’t agree to and therefore divorce mediation would not be very helpful or would be costly to begin.
Give us a call and I can speak to you to learn more about what you and your spouse have going on and let you know the best way to proceed.
