HOW TO CHOOSE YOUR DIVORCE MEDIATOR

The practice of divorce mediation is unregulated, so ANYONE can call himself a divorce mediator. Someone with no training and no relevant experience, can solicit divorce cases. So, it's caveat emptor, "buyer beware." It's crucial to find a mediator with credentials and experience. The first divorce professional you go to usually determines the tenor your divorce. Failure to settle your divorce with the wrong mediator may increase the likelihood of adversarial, acrimonious, expensive divorce litigation.

Mediation is a craft and an art, not a science. It requires certain native talent, training and a diversity of life and mediation experience. I have been a divorce mediation trainer for a dozen years at Rutgers, working with hundreds of prospective mediators from many professions. I have learned that there are certain talents and interpersonal skills that cannot be taught and which someone must have to become a good mediator. Those skills must be developed by good training, mentoring, and hundreds of cases of divorce mediation experience.

No! Experience as a judge or matrimonial attorney is often a disadvantage for a mediator, because those professions encourage the development of very different skills and eats of thinking about divorce and dispute resolution than those a good mediator needs. Judging and litigation are "evaluative" in their approach, focused in the professional as the one making decisions based on judgments of who is in the right, who is more deserving of a relief. By contrast, a good mediator's approach is facilitative, focused on the process to facilitate the parties' fashioning the settlement.

Judges and experienced divorce lawyers are often good at arbitration, (i.e. telling people what to do), not at mediation (i.e. helping them figure out what to do). Although both are forms of dispute resolution, in many ways litigation is the opposite of mediation. It is rare to be good at both litigation and mediation, because philosophically, they are opposites and require completely different skill sets.

What judges and divorce attorneys often do in what they call "divorce mediation" is focused solely on telling people how they must resolve the issues, rather than helping divorcing parties exercise self-determination and informed consent, the keynotes of a good mediation, the ingredients that make mediated settlements superior and more likely to succeed. The New Jersey Supreme Court recently changed the Rules of Court recognizing that what mist retired judges do is not mediation.

A consumer should ask a prospective mediator:

• Are you accredited as a divorce mediator by the Association for Conflict Resolution (ACR, an international organization) and the New Jersey Association of Professional Mediators?
• What training have you had? (A 40-hour divorce mediation training is a bare minimum to start)
• How many divorce cases have you mediated? (Preferably, several hundred divorce mediations)
• What percentage of your practice is divorce mediation? (Close to 100%)
• Do you have experience as a divorce mediation trainer? (A good trainer learns more from teaching than the students learn and teaching demonstrates recognition by other professionals.)
• What is your mediation model and how does it work? (A facilitative mediator helps the two of you come up with your own settlements, respecting your right to resolve the issues, even if its different than what a judge would do)

Even after a first-class 40-hour training, it takes years of practice and more trainings to become a skilled divorce mediator. Divorce mediation training experience working with other experienced professionals from a diversity of professions is a key to becoming an accomplished mediator.