If you are going to have a mediated California divorce, you may want to also consider starting your divorce paperwork at the same time. Mediators will generally only handle the mediation of your divorce and help you come to an agreement, but they generally don’t handle the paperwork. And people are surprised that after they have spent several months in mediation that they never started the process on the 6 month divorce process with the courts which just causes delays.
Mediated California Divorce : When & Why To Start Your Divorce Paperwork
Today we’re talking divorce mediation and the process of doing that and what we encourage you to do and I’ll give you the rationale behind it.
If you’re going into mediation, mediators will typically mediate your entire divorce case before any action is taken with the courts. Let me give you an example or let me give you some opposing views.
We File Your Divorce Case First To Start The Clock On The 6 Month Process
If you call us, the 1st thing we do is get your case filed, get it served, so we can start the clock on the process. Then it can take as long as it needs to take. 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, a year. You can do your mediation. You can go through that process, but the benefit to filing initially is that you start the clock on the 6 month process.
Why Spend Months Mediating & Never Start The Court Process?
Here’s the alternative. If you go to mediation and let’s say you spend 6 months in mediation, you finally iron out your agreement, you have a memorandum of understanding drafted for you and you say okay, let’s go through the divorce process, you basically it’s as if you’re just getting started. You have to file a case.
File & Serve Divorce Papers And Then Mediate
You have to have the paperwork served and the 6 month clock starts after you come to all of your agreements. Now that’s fine unless you’re hoping to have your divorce case completed faster. If that’s the case, you can go ahead and do your mediation, but at the same time, go ahead and call us so we can get your paperwork started for your divorce, get it served, start the clock and then take as long as you want.
That way when your memorandum of understanding is completed and you guys are all in agreement and done, you can literally finalize right there on the spot. Tim Blankenship, divorce661.com. Thanks for watching. Hope this was helpful and have a great day.