How to Effectively Use Mediation to Settle with Your Contested Canton Divorce – Part IV
In part four of our ten part series on how to effectively use mediation in your contested divorce case, we will continue to examine steps to take to make sure you and your Atlanta divorce lawyer are ready for mediation. This blog will also work if you and your spouse plan on using mediation to settle your case without an Atlanta Divorce lawyer. In this blog, we go into a the importance of prioritizing issues that are important to you.
Being prepared involves setting priorities. It is important that you understand at the outset, which are the most important goals to obtain through settlement. If primary physical custody of your children means more to you than anything else, you both need to be clear that this means that you might need to make certain financial concessions in order to obtain custody. Setting clear priorities before negotiation helps both you focus on what is most important to you, and allows your Atlanta divorce attorney to prepare your strategy.
If there have been any settlement negotiations before the mediation, you should outline them in a concise manner. Often the best way is by using a chart so that on one piece of paper each person’s position on each separate issue can be tracked. This will often help in two areas. First, your Atlanta divorce lawyer may see a trend or strategy in your spouse’s negotiation. Second, it will enable the mediator, who has no prior knowledge of the case, to look at what has occurred, the positions taken by you and your spouse, where there are agreements, where there are differences, and more importantly how different those differences are. This tells the mediator exactly where attention needs to be placed and where the time, energy and fort of the mediation need to be spent. It is a quick snapshot of what has transpired. Even more important, it is a road map of where mediation needs to go and, hopefully, how to get there.
