Unlike litigation where spouses are accompanied by their team of high powered lawyers who battle it out in court, using all kinds of tactics against the other spouse. In mediation, the two spouses have to negotiate with one another.

Here is a list of few steps in negotiation that lead to a conflict-free divorce mediation.

Laying Down the Issues

The best way to go about Orange County divorce mediation is laying down the issues first and foremost before your emotions take over. Defining and outlining the issues in front of your spouse will give you both a clear demarcation of subjects that you will have to talk about. At this stage if there are other issues that need to be addressed, your spouse will add them to the discussion to make sure you know exactly what the negotiations will base around.

Identifying concerns and underlying interests

Once you have laid down what has to be discussed, the next step is to find out what is important for each of the spouse. Typically in an Orange County divorce mediation one of the spouse can want the custody of the child while the other may have an inclination towards the monetary side of things. This will make sure that the two parties know which topic needs to be touched briefly and which one needs to be discussed deeply to allay the concerns of the other party.

Developing Options that will help Address the Solution

Both the spouses will typically have designs on how they want the issues to be resolved. You need to put your solutions to the problems forwards and ask the other party to do the same. This will make sure that a number of ideas are put on table instead of one.

Bringing the Options together for a resolution

Once the options for the resolution have been laid down, the emphasis is then on the making sure that these options are chopped and changed. Deliberated upon and accepted for a final resolution. This phase of the negotiation will involve bargaining between the two spouses when both the spouse will need to give the other spouse something in return for what they want. For example if you want the custody of the child in the holiday season, you may have to give up the right of taking him with you on the weekends, etc.

Gerald A. Maggio is a trained divorce mediator who has amicably resolved cases many cases out of court, as well as an experienced divorce and family law attorney. Mr. Maggio founded California Divorce Mediators in 2012 with the belief that although “not every marriage can be saved, every family can” and a mission to save families from the financial and emotional distress associated with traditional divorce litigation. California Divorce Mediators is located in Irvine, California, and serves the Orange County area and other counties in California offering divorce mediation, child custody mediation and mediation of other family law matters.