The Good Divorce
Mediation is replacing the court battle, and families are benefitting.
by Brett Berk
September 29, 2008
Perhaps most important for couples with kids, is the fact that mediated settlements tend to be extremely child-centric. They allow participants to collaboratively custom-tailor a plan to meet the needs of their individual children and their relationships with those children, not simply to follow arbitrary custodial guidelines. "I don't know your kids," said Judge Mann. "I don't know the minutia of how they respond to situations." Sara Guciardo, a licensed mediator in North Carolina, affirmed this difference, in the spirited tone endemic to her profession. "The first thing I ask participants to do is talk about their goals for their kids: what they want them to achieve, what morals they want them to live by. Then we come up with a plan to meet these goals." While Judge Mann always finds herself admonishing courtroom divorcees to "Let your love for your children outweigh your hatred for your ex," to have the proceedings be "Child-centered instead of adult-centered" and to remember to "Take on the hurt, so your kids don't have to," Guciardo told me that, as a mediator, "I have yet to meet a couple who can't put their animosity aside to focus on creating common goals for their kids."
Even outside experts agree on mediation's benefits. In a longitudinal study by Robert Emery Ph.D. — a psychologist and Director of the Center for Children, Families, and the Law at University of Virginia — families filing for a contested custody hearing were randomly assigned to either mediation or a traditional battle. Following these families for twelve years after this, Emery found that those (non-custodial) parents assigned to mediation were three to four times more likely to see and/or speak to their children weekly than those assigned to adversarial settlement. Moreover, custodial parents who did mediation gave their non-custodial exes better "grades" in every area of parenting — including discipline, grooming, moral training, celebrating holidays, taking part in events, and discussing problems — than those who didn't. These couples had only five hours of mediation on average. But the small-scale collaboration at this crucial moment made a lifetime of difference for them and their children.
After hearing all of this, I was ready to run out and get a mediated divorce myself. (Except, where I live, I'm not legally allowed to marry.) But first I had to investigate any downsides to this practice. All my interviewees said the same thing: for mediation to work, both partners need to feel like they can safely voice their needs and desires. So it's not great for people who are too emotionally distraught to advocate for themselves, for someone who's hoping the relationship will reconcile, or for a couple with an extreme power imbalance. It can also be difficult if the two partners are at very different stages in reconciling the relationship's end. I was ready to run out and get a mediated divorce myself. As Judge Mann put it, "Divorce is a grieving process, just like death. Most of the time, the dump-er has done much of their grieving in the home prior to initiating the split. They'll think about it for months or years, then one day, they'll say, 'You know all those nights I've been lying in bed with my eyes open? I've been thinking about how much I hate you.' The dump-ee then has some catching up to do."
But for splitters who don't feel saddled with these issues, the jury seems in on mediation to me: it's cheaper, faster, and better for the kids; plus it makes you a better person. In the words of recent mediated divorcee Jack Maiorino, "I think it was better all the way around. Not just for then, but now. When we get to a bumpy spot, we use what we learned to get through it." His ex-wife, Deb, concurred. "When you have a kid with someone, you're tied to that person for life. So it doesn't suit anyone's needs to be angry forever. I'm still me, and Jack's still who he is. But in mediation, we created a trust that we're both always going to do what's right for our son. I'm so glad we got to that point."
©2008 Brett Berk and Nerve Media
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