Mediation can be a wonderful way to work out your child custody dispute, and California courts are going to require mediation except in very limited and special circumstances. Mediation is also cheaper than going to court, and it’s faster. Even better, since it’s less adversarial, families tend to come out of mediation with better relationships then if they have to go to a court battle. But mediation isn’t a guaranteed win: mediation fails all the time, and if you want your mediation to succeed, you need to properly prepare with your child custody lawyer in San Diego.
How Your Child Custody Lawyer in San Diego Can Prepare You for Mediation
Educating You on What It Is and How to Make the Most of It
If you don’t thoroughly understand what mediation is and can do for you, you’ll be at a disadvantage. Additionally, if you don’t really know how to make the most of your mediation sessions, you have a much lower chance of success when you get to them. Your lawyer will explain when and where mediation is required, all the requirements of the family court system regarding mediation, and allow you to adjust your expectations for the commitment that will be involved and what the court will be looking for out of you. Even if the mediation ultimately fails because the child’s other parent refuses to cooperate, if you know how to make the most of it and try your best, this is going to make you look good and position you well when you do have to fight it out in the courtroom.
But while having the right attitude for mediation will be useful to you even if it fails, you also don’t want go into the mediation assuming it will fail. This is something your lawyer can particularly coach you on. You want to assume that it will succeed and know what’s required of you for that success to happen. Of course, even if you do everything perfectly, that’s still not a guarantee of success, since you can’t control the other person, but you should control everything you can, and that starts by controlling your own attitude and perspective.
Focusing on Goals and Priorities
To make the most of your mediation, you’ll need to know exactly what goals you want to pursue and what priorities you have and their basic order. In other words, what is a dealbreaker for you, and where can you compromise? Your lawyer will talk through all of this with you, explaining what the laws are, all your options, and what common outcomes typically are for people in your situation. This will help you to stay focused on the most important issues.
Your lawyer can then help you list out your goals and put them in order of importance so you know what to negotiate on and where you can be flexible. You may already have an idea of these things in your head, but one of the benefits of having a lawyer is that your lawyer will make sure everything here is very specific. Specificity is key.
For example, say you want to be sure that you have your child for Christmas, and to you this is nonnegotiable. This is a very tough ask: unless you are awarded sole custody, you’re going to have to work out a compromise with the other parent somehow. Your lawyer can help you to understand precisely how difficult it’s going to be to get a guarantee of having your child every Christmas, but your lawyer can also help you specifically develop a negotiating strategy and think through what you really want.
When you say you “want your child for Christmas,” your lawyer might start by specifying precisely what that means. Do you want your child the entire Christmas holiday? Do you mean Christmas morning? Is Christmas Eve the most important time of the holiday to you? Or, is the most important thing having your child with you when he or she can spend time with other relatives, like your parents or siblings? Depending on the answer to this question, you may be able to work out something with the other parent.
Preparing Emotionally
Mediation is less stressful than going to court, but that doesn’t mean it’s a no-stress situation. If you’re not emotionally prepared for it, it can be difficult to face the child’s other parent and stay calm, especially if they start demanding things you find unreasonable. Your lawyer can help you to understand how to stay calm and focused and give you techniques for compromise that may be very beneficial in the moment.
Beyond that, your lawyer can go into the negotiating session with you in most cases and provide a buffer that can make it easier to talk to the other parent. If you’ve talked through the things that are most important to you and also what behaviors by the other parent tend to make you angry, your lawyer will know going in what to watch for and when to ask for a break to make things is easier.
Gathering All Key Documentation
While mediation is not as formal as a courtroom appearance, you will need to provide all relevant documentation both to the mediator and to the other party, and gathering paperwork is always difficult. It’s so easy to forget something, and one of the benefits of having an attorney is that your attorney has done this many times before and knows exactly what paperwork will be needed for each of the issues you’re going to deal with.
Your attorney will help you gather all of these as well as request any from the other parent that may be missing. Just having someone to deal with paperwork like this can be a huge load off your plate and relief to your mind. You can go into your mediation session knowing that your lawyer has taken care of these details and you can focus on your emotions, your child’s needs, and the kind of compromises you might need to make.
Reviewing Any Relevant Documents
If there are any court orders already in place related to child custody, you need to be familiar with them so that you can use them in negotiation. All the established facts should be laid out and clear, if for no other reason than you want to avoid accidentally making a contradiction that would undermine your credibility. In addition, if the court has already ruled on a particular issue, that may not be one that you need to address in mediation, so you want to avoid wasting time on it.
Beyond that, while the courts do not automatically roll over temporary orders into permanent orders, whatever has been temporarily ordered will be carefully considered, and the court do tend to like to stick with what’s already in place unless there’s clear evidence that there should be a change. If you know exactly what’s already been ordered, you and your lawyer can talk through what, if anything, needs to change and how to negotiate for this so that you and the other parent can come to an agreement that the court will sign off on.
Get help today from an experience to mediation lawyer by contacting the Law Office of Kevin Lemieux today in San Diego.
