Professional Mediators at Equitable Solutions help couples that want extreme privacy for their divorce, believe they can work out the division of their property with professional help of a mediator and are more interested in the welfare of their children, whether adults or still in school, and divorce in a manner that will help promote good relations in the future within the family. As one client said “Thank you helping us end 40 years of marriage with dignity”.
Mediation in Texas is primarily handled in two manners.
Caucus Mediation
Caucus Mediation is a scenario that looks like this:
The wife and her attorney and financial or other professionals are in one room. The husband and his group are in another. A mediator, frequently another family law attorney, goes between the two rooms bringing or taking proposals, explanations, and impressions. The mediator’s job is to settle the case. It is not his job to settle it “equitably”, “reasonably”, or any other way – though most mediators care deeply about how well they settle a case. Mediations are generally set for ½ or one full day and the pressure to settle is intense. It works. The cases that settle in mediation are significantly over 90% and clients go home tired but having made a decision about their future that they have agreed to.
Equitable Solutions is frequently an advisor to one of the parties in this type mediation.
Early Intervention Mediation
Early Intervention Mediation is different. Both clients are in the same room – most often at a round table for obvious reasons. Attorneys and other professionals may or may not be with clients, but if one has them, both do. Clients and the mediator discuss alternatives, look at possibilities, look at possible results, and explore alternatives to search for divisions both clients can agree on. Attorneys are available by phone or in person for answers to legal issues. The Mediator may indeed be an attorney but cannot represent either party. Mediation usually last only about three hours per session and averages three sessions to complete. The success rate is as high as or higher than in caucus mediation.
Equitable Solutions’ staff are trained mediators with extensive experience in Early Intervention Mediation.
Children’s Issues
It is the position and belief of this firm that children’s custody and parenting issues are paramount in divorce and should be handled by professionals in that area. Equitable Solutions does not mediate parental issues.
Equitable Solutions does assist clients in determining the cost to raise a child both through high school graduation and during higher education years. Those considerations are paramount when determining child support and university expense obligations after child support has terminated.
Equitable Solutions has experience in working with the financial concerns of special needs children and their potential life-long expense.