Lessons Learned from Mediations This Week

1. If you knowingly married the wrong person, admit it in the divorce and correct the record. 
A. You will then be mediating from a point of authenticity and strength.
B. You don’t have to negotiate the settlement outside of the laws of your state, but the voice you will have in the negotiation will be stronger, will not be blaming, but instead will be a voice from truth, and the truth will set you emotionally free. People think that getting more of a settlement than they thought they could get is the reward. I say, “No.” I say the reward is to be unshankled by the veil of dishonesty that covered up the truth of the relationship.

2. There are three divorces: Emotional, Legal and Social
A. Go through the grieving before filing
B. File with a healed heart
C. Your social circle will change with a divorce

3. Don’t try to win your mediator over by bashing your spouse.
A. A good mediator will never be swayed by spouse-bashing, but you will put your mediator on guard against you. That means that the mediator has to work extra hard to remain neutral and just work on advancing the conversation, the negotiation, the settlement issues between the spouses.

4. Do not force settlement terms on your spouse. This will make your spouse not trust you, and trust is at stake here.
A. Men do this to women more than women do this to men.
B. And, men do this to women without receiving counsel from an attorney. 
C. And it generally seems that the tone, the condition of the relationship, in those instances where a settlement agreement is proposed to the wife, is fragile, not amicable, and fraught with fear.
D. Bring in the attorneys, cause that is the only way fear can be diminished.