Tag: Litigation

Genesis and Dispute Resolution

{4 minutes to read} Conflicts go back a long way. There’s no shortage of them. Some get resolved and some don’t. And the species has chosen many different ways to resolve disputes. One method with a long history is murder. It’s a quick solution, though not necessarily a long-lasting one.

Cain killing Abel, marble relief on the facade of the Milan Cathedral, Duomo di Santa Maria Nascente, Milan, Lombardy, Italy

According to the Bible, Adam and Eve get off to a rocky start. Even before the trials of raising a family arrive, Adam and Eve have some issues. You may recall the serpent convinces Eve she need not fear eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. She eats the fruit, gives some to Adam, who also eats it, and things go downhill pretty fast. God notices what happened, asks for an explanation, and the testimony is a model of accepting responsibility and trying to work things out.

Discovery

{4 minutes to read} I have written before about when is the best time to mediate. No, you don’t have to go back and re-read that blog because the answer is simple: Now. Now is the best time to mediate.

Does that mean, now, now, or now with some lag time? Ok, now with a little lag time. A party can’t mediate by itself, so there are by necessity some preliminaries, like getting the other side(s) to participate in the mediation. However, that is becoming easier as more courts increasingly direct the parties to mediation without waiting for an agreement. If you want to see a good example, look at the ADR rules for the Federal District Court for the Western District of New York or the rules for North Carolina State Courts and federal courts: Eastern District of NC, Western District of NC, and Middle District of NC.

Practice Makes Perfect

{3 minutes to read} There are 24,601 reasons why divorce mediation is preferable to divorce litigation. One of them, however, is that when a couple engages in mediation, they can create the details of their post-divorce life by figuring out together what works. In mediation, they can talk directly to one another about important matters, something divorcing couples often find very difficult to do outside of that setting. Over time, such conversations not only allow the couple to work out the details of the divorce — and creating a new life is no small matter — but help them create a foundation for future conversations. And when a couple has children, the odds are likely they will need to talk to each other for years to come.

The 11th Commandment

{4 minutes to read} I have written and spoken in the past about automatic court-annexed mediation programs, but maybe you haven’t heard me discuss it or read about it before. So just in case:

Certain courts force parties to go to mediation before they can continue litigating their cases through the “normal” court process. But parties shouldn’t be forced to mediate, should they? Isn’t that a decision the parties should both agree on? Isn’t a basic, guiding principle of mediation self-determination, including the decision whether or not to mediate?

Anger as a Pathway to Resolution, Part I

There are very few emotions as destructive as anger. Shootings, murders, rapes, spouse and child abuse, intra-family squabbles (big and small), road rage, divorce, gang violence, are all fueled in part by anger. Anger is usually an aspect of any litigation, although even mediators must acknowledge that litigation as a dispute resolution mechanism is light years ahead of violence.

Anger and violence go back a long way. Whether we take the Bible as historical truth or a fundamental mythos of our collective Western unconscious, the first act of violence is primeval: it occurs between the very first human offspring. Most of us think we know the story, but just in case, the entire events are described in only seven short verses, as follows (Genesis, 4:3-9):

Is Divorce Mediation Always Successful?

It is fairly well accepted that divorce mediation is a far better way to handle the details of unwinding a marriage than litigation. If there are any assets and any kids, the parties typically know the details of both, and with proper guidance are capable of figuring out how best to proceed so that the kids and assets are dealt with fairly and everyone can move on to leading happy and productive lives.

Is Mediation Always Successful?

Well, pretty much. But first, let me backtrack.

What is meant by success?

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