With divorce mediation, two spouses hire a neutral third-party San Francisco mediator to oversee and facilitate negotiations over the settlement. There are many reasons to choose mediation as an alternative to litigation when it comes to divorce if the two spouses are willing to work with one another.
While some couples choose to go through mediation without respective legal counsel, they are able to hire attorneys to be present at the negotiation if needed..
The benefits of choosing divorce mediation include:
- Low cost: Court fees are avoided in mediation and legal fees are decreased because in most cases, the spouses share the cost of only the mediator and because divorce mediation is much quicker than litigation.
- Privacy: Divorce litigation in a San Francisco court means that much of the proceeding will be part of the public record. With mediation, only the final judgment is part of the public record.
- Duration: Because both parties are willing to work together to find a resolution to key issues, mediation is usually able to come to a final settlement much quicker than a court case would. Another reason for this is that the parties would not have a waiting period to appear before a court since the mediation is done privately with their attorney.
