Mediation Protects your Rights in Divorce in Pennsylvania

Mediation gets a bad rap. Some think it means giving in, giving up ground, submitting to an opposing viewpoint. Nothing could be further from the truth.

An experienced divorce mediator, rather than tilting the conversation toward the other party, will keep the playing field level and help a spouse who feels intimidated to gain confidence through information and knowledge. For instance, two spouses are arguing over how to divide future education expenses for children equitably. One spouse typically handled the finances, has more insight and knowledge about financial vehicles and options, and has successfully convinced their partner that they are dumb or don’t understand such things.

The mediator will step in, calm disparaging or impatient comments meant to undermine one spouse’s confidence, and slow down the conversation until the second spouse has the time and space to understand the choices and ask questions appropriately. The mediator also preserves and respects the important information offered by the other side.

In this sense, it is an interruption of the couple’s bad habits of noncommunication for the sake of clarity.

Another way a skilled divorce mediator protects your rights is by understanding divorce law and the impact of divorce on finances. People rarely know where to begin to calculate what it will take to get to the other side of divorce, let alone how to project 5, 10 or 15 years into the future. A divorce mediator has access to financial divorce software to help calculate scenarios involving child support and tax consequences on the division of assets. The mediator does not replace a financial advisor or lawyer, but has the experience and knowledge to anticipate and guide the conversation.

It’s true, a divorce judge is tasked with protecting individual rights as well, but he or she has far more leeway in determining what that means in a given situation – and that decision is absolute. In mediation, the two negotiating parties preserve the ability to object, present an alternative view, slow or speed the process – or change their minds completely.

Each spouse may also retain their own attorney or financial advisor as well as a mediator. While it is rare that such professionals participate in divorce mediation, there’s no ethical reason they can’t.

Maybe the best way that mediation can protect your rights is allowing you and your spouse to make a decision that is contrary to the way Pennsylvania law splits marital assets. For instance, if one of the parties has a special need or disability or a special need dependent outside the marriage, or to compensate for any disparity not accounted for by law but felt by the parties to be important.

Mediation is what you make of it. When two parties really hunker down to find the best outcome, it can result in a lower conflict, less devastating divorce.