July 29, 2025
Unlike Going to Court, Mediation is About Creating Peace
The Reality of the Court System
Over two decades ago, when my own divorce process started, both myself and my ex-husband automatically hired litigation attorneys because “that’s just what you do when you get divorced.” When I sat down with my chosen attorney, I stressed to her that my number one priority was for her and I to behave amicably in the hope that my ex-husband and I would then be able to work together to create a place for me in my step-daughters’ lives.
I did not understand back then that when a person chooses to use the court system for their divorce, no matter how many times they tell their attorney to be “amicable,” and repeat what their values-based priorities are, they are inherently choosing a system that is based on battling. Fighting. Winning and losing. Convincing. And often, everyone involved is, to greater or lesser degrees, running overt or deep-seeded trauma patterns from their past. There is almost no chance for closure, no chance for healing, no chance to speak from the heart, no chance for the opportunity to truly listen to the other’s truth about divorce topics.
Mediation is About Creating Peace
Whereas, divorce mediation is the antithesis of that. Mediation is about creating peace. It is about reconfiguring the divorce process into a “complex project with problems to solve for.” Mediation acknowledges that there are multiple topics that clients will need to delve into, which means that mediation is about learning….learning about one’s finances, learning about potential ways to best share anything from a shared asset (like a restaurant), to community savings, to the house, to children’s time, or how to allot responsibility for debts.
Part of a mediator’s job is to ensure that the complexity of the divorce mediation project is not overwhelming to clients. The best way to lower anxiety at the beginning of the mediation process, is for clients to review their unique life circumstances, and create a list of their “problems to solve for.” This process creates a roadmap for the mediation, with the reassurance that everyone in the process can see everything that needs to be done to finish it and can agree, at the outset, on the “You Are Here” at the beginning of that path.
No divorce mediation client is expected to know anything about California Family Law, any particular details about their assets or debts, best family dynamics practices, tax implications of various natures, or anything specific about their lives when the process begins. Mediation clients only need to come into the process ready to share their financial, professional, and factual information with the mediator and other person. It’s the mediator who guides the sifting through of all the collected information, and teaches the clients the law around their topics, offers information about tax implications, points out possible consequences of different options for agreement based on the mediator’s experience, and otherwise makes sure that both clients, as individuals, understand what their options for agreement are and able to make informed choices about what is acceptable to them and what is not.
Divorce Mediation as a Complex Project With Problems to Solve For
No set of clients ever sees eye to eye on every topic at the beginning of the mediation process. It’s natural, emotionally healthy, and understandable that clients might see some topics the same way and other topics differently at the beginning of the process. The mediator merely notes each person’s different views, giving respect to both perspectives, and then brings the clients’ attention back to the necessary step of gathering information on each topic. Information is empowering and helps people understand their situation from a detailed place, which is for some clients the first time they’ve experienced that in their adult lives. It is from that place of having multiple sources of information on every topic—from documents, legal information, conversations in mediation, input from outside professionals like CPAs, business valuators, and/or family therapists—that clients are then able to focus on the big picture of the possible impact of options for compromise and develop them in concert with the other person.
When we take the framework and mindset of battle out of the divorce process, we are left with a complex project. Conceptualizing the process in this non-adversarial way, as a restructuring of people’s lives, enables clients to develop the highest-quality outcome possible for themselves, and sometimes even taking into considering the impact on the other person, while keeping costs down and moving through the process efficiently. This is the atmosphere that engenders the opportunity for clients to create peace as they develop their divorce agreements in mediation.