Hi! This is Tim Blankenship, owner of divorce661.com. Today I want to talk to you about the difference between the court mediator and the court facilitator. These are two services that are free. If you consider paying your filing fee with the court, part of the services of the court is to be able to use the court facilitator and the court mediation services.

So here’s the difference.  The court mediator is an attorney who works for the court and a neutral third party and will assist you in helping you come to an agreement on certain issues. These issues generally relate to your child support, child custody and child visitation issues. .

Mediation is required if you go and you’ve filed a motion for child support, child custody, child visitation or some type of request for order regarding those issues, or you can make an appointment with them at any time when you need assistance coming up with a parenting plan.

The court facilitator on the other hand is another attorney working for the court and is another neutral party that doesn’t represent either one of you and their job is to help you come up with a solution for spousal support, that’s their sole function.

So if you have questions regarding spousal support, how much you have to pay and what the law says as much as spousal support is concerned, you can go work with the court’s facilitator to help come up with a figures for as how much is spousal support,  if any is going to be paid.

Both these services are provided by the court. They are not mandatory that you come up with an agreement. They’re not going to force you into an agreement.

They’re there to educate you and hopefully help you come to an agreement regarding child support, child visitation and overall parenting plan.

With the mediation service and with the facilitator to help you come up with help as far as spousal support is concern.

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