What does it mean to mediate your divorce? Want the easy answer? Good!
When you go to a mediator, you are asking a neutral third party attorney to assist you with coming to an agreement about the terms of your divorce.
A mediator will work with both spouses to explain how the law works so you can make informed decisions on how to best divide your assets and debts and to work on parenting plans, etc. Essentially, mediators will help with whatever issues you are unable to resolve on your own.
Once you are in agreement, they will draft a “marital settlement agreement” or MSA which you will sign.
But why are we discussing this on a divorce document preparation service site you ask? Because mediation is the next step if you cannot come to an agreement on your divorce.
Let me give you an example.
Many people who don’t want to spend thousands of dollars on their divorce come to me to prepare their divorce for them. These folks are mostly in agreement on the terms of their divorce. But there may be one or two sticky points they are still working on.
What we will do is get their divorce filed and start the process. We will prepare and complete all the necessary mandatory forms including the financial disclosures. Once this is done, you are ready to work towards some type of agreement on the distribution of your assets and debts.
Let’s assume at this point that you are unable to come to an agreement on say a parenting plan or the amount of support to be paid. Where you are unable to make decisions, using a mediator can help.
A mediator can provide you with the information you need so you can make informed decisions. A divorce mediator is far better than the parties going out and hiring individual attorney’s. There is certainly a cost advantage to using a divorce mediator.
I have clients that come to me who later need mediation. I refer them out to a local Santa Clarita divorce mediation team who will help them through their issues and draft the marital settlement agreement.
Once the agreement is drafted, they come back to me to finish up the divorce documentation and we submit the final judgment.
What we recommend is that you start your divorce with us and allow us to get all the paperwork done for you. This will save you a lot of money. Then if you need to speak to a divorce mediator, you can go to them for help on an agreement. Then we will wrap up your divorce for you.
