Court Appointed Vs Independent Mediation

Whether you are here in Tampa, Florida or anywhere else in the world, getting married, getting a divorce, caring for our elderly, most of us go through these experiences and realize they are filled with potential conflict and eventually we must learn to accept and embrace conflict or end up in anger management, or explode, or even worse… implode!

Pain, trauma, guilt, regrets, we all have them. The sense of loss and failure are just two other emotions that must be dealt with, and then there is the need to go through all the legal proceedings that are necessary sometimes, it can be overwhelming.

Because the judiciary system is ill equipped to deal with the psychological ramifications of the decisions that need to be made in times of crisis, mediation is quickly becoming an important tool in this process. No matter how you look at it, mediation offers the best way to protect the mental stability and well being of all the parties involved while they attempt to settle their disputes.

The fact, for example, that a marital relationship has become unbearable does not necessarily mean that the affection that was once its foundation has completely vanished. In Spanish we have a saying that goes, “Where there was fire, ashes remain.” And so it is many times with dissolved marriages, feelings of resentment only reflect great disappointment regarding what might have been. And so it is with every family dispute, underneath it all the ashes of what once was, what could have been, still remain.

Court Appointed v. Independent Mediator

Get your own independent mediator!

When you are required by the Court to enter into a mediation process, well… you are not doing it voluntarily of course, so, so much for consensual participation. Due to the demand for services and because it represents a cost to you, the parties are only required to mediate for one hour. So there is no procedural flexibility, is there? And do you really want to be so restricted in time when you have several big issues to resolve? In a family case, for example, you may have not only custody and visitation, but child support and financial issues that are just as important and many times closely intertwined.

That is why it is important to emphasize the advantages of getting an independent mediator, especially when you can get one for much less cost than you end up paying for a court appointed one (see our sliding fee scale), because an independent mediator is truly the only choice if you really want to get the benefits the mediation has to offer: The empowerment and satisfaction that is derived from self determination in an environment that propitiates the fair resolution of the conflictive needs and interests of the parties involved. And, of course, you may get lasting results, i.e., an agreement that is acceptable to all parties and therefore will hold.