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Visit us at divorceandyourmoney.com for the #1 divorce resources in the United States and get personalized help. Learn about coaching services here.   Thank you for listening! Find a transcript of this episode below.   In this episode, I'd like to discuss mediation. It's something like 95% of divorces, roughly, depending upon the statistic that you read, are settled out of court. Mediation is one of several ways you can settle divorce out of court.   Now, you can do what's called a do-it-yourself divorce, which means you and your spouse just work everything out yourself, you prepare the papers, submit them to the court, and you get divorced. You could have collaborative divorce, which is an option for you as well, which is a specific divorce process. You can look it up. There's episodes on it in the archives of this show as well. You can do what's just called a negotiated settlement, which is also common, which is where you and likely your attorneys will go back and forth and figure out and reach an agreement. Hopefully a reasonable on, and hopefully in not too much time, and you talk through with your attorneys, and you settle things.   And then there's mediation, which could be a part of many of the other options I already mentioned, but it is its own process, and it can help you stay out of court. Actually, in some states, depending upon where you live, they actually have court mandated mediation, meaning before you go in front of a judge or have the opportunity to go in front of a judge, the court mandates you go to mediation in advance.   But in this episode in particular, I want to discuss some of the downsides of mediation because, on the surface it, can sound like a great thing to do. I am a big believer in mediation when it works for you, but there are some things you have to be aware of and there are upsides and downsides to every part of the process. Actually, one of the things that I do a lot of thinking about when I get to work with you is are you thinking about things from your spouse's perspective as well? Not because I'm going to be defending or working with your spouse, but if you look at things from his or her perspective, you might be able to come up with a much better settlement that's better for all parties involved than if you only are coming from your self interests and not thinking about what might work for them or what their attorney might say.   The reason I want to bring this up in the context of mediation is that on the surface it sounds great. You might have had a friend who went through mediation and it perfectly resolved their divorce, or you may have heard about it or your attorney may have recommended it, or whatever the case may be, but I want to talk about some of the downsides to mediation. But before I get into those downsides, let's talk about what mediation is.   I want everyone on the same page and in mediation, now, there are some variations, but the idea is basically you and your spouse and a neutral third-party work things out in your divorce, any sticking issues or maybe all of the issues, to hope to help you get to a resolution. Now, when you go to mediation, there's a neutral third-party, as I said before. It could be a retired judge. It could be a professional mediator. Actually, one of the attorneys I work closely with, he shares an office with a professional mediator, and they have a conference room, and you can see them hashing out days of mediation.   So usually who's there, it's going to be you, your spouse, a mediator, and then both of your attorneys, most of the time, and this where we're going to start getting to some of the downsides, but we'll get there in a minute. One of the things that's very important as well is when you go to mediation, or the objective, I should say, is to come up with a resolution to your divorce. Therefore, you should be cognizant and prepared for your mediation the same way that you would prepare for a trial. Now, mediation is far less intense, at least in terms of, I won't say it's less intense emotionally because mediation can be very draining, very high stakes, and there's a lot going on, but it's less intense in the sense that there's a nonbinding process, typically, with most mediations.