Divorce Mediation

What is Meditation?

In Michigan divorce mediation, a neutral mediator helps to educate and guide couples through all the necessary decisions to complete a divorce. The mediator also assists the couple by providing educational and professional resources that will lead to productive discussions, goal identification, and issue resolution. The mediator helps the couple to communicate and collaborate effectively during meetings in which they discuss options and ultimately create their own divorce agreement.

Why Choose Mediation for Your Divorce?

Mediation maximizes communication, collaboration and client education in divorce. This foundation provides people with more control over their divorce, reduced conflict and stress and a better adjustment to your post-divorce life. If you are considering mediation for your Michigan divorce, we encourage you to read about the benefits of communication and collaboration — and the disadvantages to litigating divorce in court. If you have specific questions about mediation in your situation, we welcome you to contact Cleland Collaborative Divorce. Because how you approach your divorce will have a great effect on your life, it is our mission to help you educate yourself on all your options. So we offer a free one hour consultation to answer your questions.

How Does Mediation Work?

Step One: Build a Roadmap and Identify Issues to be Resolved

When you meet with the mediator you will begin by learning about the mediation process and having an open discussion about your concerns. You will identify the areas that need to be resolved to achieve a divorce and make agreements on the process by which you wish to proceed.

Step Two: Build a Team

We begin by make decisions about the role of attorneys in the mediation. Each spouse is free to retain their own counsel to advise them throughout the process, but many couples choose not to use attorneys for legal advice. If attorneys are not involved, we provide the couple with a low cost attorney whose role is limited to filing the necessary paperwork and attending a court hearing to finalize the divorce.

Divorce isn’t just a legal problem. It’s a parenting, financial and emotional problem too. Therefore, we make our network of financial specialists, mental health professionals and child specialists available to assist you with these problems. We will help you to decide whether retaining any specialists is appropriate for your situation.

Once we have built a team we don’t leave it to you to manage it. That’s our job.

Step Three: Gather Information

We assist you in gathering financial and other information needed to make informed decisions.

Step Four: Hold Meetings to Explore Options to Resolve Issues and Reach Agreements

Typical issues center around parenting time, property division, child support and spousal support issues. After each meeting, the mediator will summarize the conversations and agreements reached.

Step Five: Finalize Your Terms

When agreements have been reached on all of the issues, a divorce settlement agreement will be drafted that contains the terms of your agreement. The agreement will then be signed by the couple.

Step Six: Make it Official

If you have not retained your own attorney, the "transactional" attorney we have provided you with will prepare and file the necessary paperwork and accompany you to the short hearing in court to make the divorce official.

Interested in Mediation for Your Divorce? Next Steps

Contact us to schedule a free consultation about getting the process started. We offer daytime and evening hours to fit your schedule. Our Mount Clemens divorce mediation attorneys work with clients in Macomb, Oakland and Wayne County and elsewhere in Southeast Michigan.

Not sure yet if mediation is right for you? We're happy to discuss the pros and cons of other options, as well. Or learn more here on our website about divorce in court (and how we can help), as well as other out-of-court options for divorce that we offer.