Mediation Services

Once the parties have selected a mediator, or if a mediator has been assigned by the court, the mediator will schedule your mediation session.

A typical mediation session begins with the mediator and parties establishing some ground rules. Once the ground rules are established, one party will tell his or her side of the story in an uninterrupted manner while the other party listens. One by one, the parties will tell their stories so that all the information relevant to the dispute is heard by everyone.

The mediator then works with the parties to determine exactly what issues are in dispute, and parties will be encouraged to identify options for resolving the various issues.

Generating settlement options is often the most exciting part of mediation, because very frequently the parties are able to find creative options for resolving the dispute which results in "win-win" solutions. This is in contrast to obtaining a decision by a judge, who often can only rule for one side or the other.

Keep in mind that a mediator is not like a judge; the mediator will not impose any solutions, nor identify which is the best solution for you. Deciding how you would like to resolve your dispute remains entirely up to you, and if applicable, your lawyer.

If you have a lawyer, he or she generally attends the mediation with you. Lawyers can certainly participate, but discussions between you and your lawyer are most commonly held in separate meetings with the mediator, whereby they are confidential and not heard by the other party.

Even in the best mediation sessions, there are times when parties are not able to find satisfactory settlement options. When that happens, the mediation is stopped and the parties return to the court system, just as if mediation had not taken place. Inability to reach agreement in mediation will not negatively impact movement toward trial. Because mediation is confidential (with very few exceptions), the judge and court staff will have no knowledge of what was said or done in mediation.

The Michigan Supreme Court encourages parties to try mediation because of its demonstrated success in helping parties resolve disputes to their satisfaction. It's as simple as this: in the traditional court process, when a judge enters a judgment in a case, usually one party wins, and the other loses. In mediation, all parties have a chance to reach an acceptable solution, and it can be a solution quite different from that imposed by the judge. Put differently, parties have maximum control over how to resolve their dispute in mediation. In the court process, parties give all authority to resolve their case to the judge.

Mediation can be scheduled quickly and can be less expensive and produce more satisfactory results than litigating a matter through trial. Moreover, experience shows that parties who reach agreements in mediation are more likely to keep them than they are to abide by court judgments.

For persons who have on-going relationships, like family members, business associates, neighbors, landlords and tenants, or employers and employees, mediation is an effective way to not only resolve the problems at hand, but also to improve their relationship and decide how future disputes might be resolved.

Because court proceedings are public and documents appearing in court files are generally public, parties frequently choose mediation to keep various aspects of their dispute private.

If you decide to try mediation on your own, or if you are ordered to try mediation, you and the other persons involved in the dispute have the right to select your own mediator. Some factors you should consider in selecting your own mediator include:



• The extent of the person's mediation training and continuing education
  
• How much experience the person has had as a mediator
  
• How quickly the mediator would be able to work with you
  
• The mediator's fees and the services included
  
• The type of mediation process used by the mediator

If you are in court because of a dispute in a family matter, there are several additional things you should consider:

First, in a divorce case, if children are involved, mediation can help create a collaborative way of looking at the future. Since parents will need to talk in the years ahead about such things as parenting time and working together for the best interests of the children, mediation has distinct advantages over returning to the adversarial court environment each time parties have a disagreement.

Second, it has been clearly shown that parties who reach agreements in divorce have far fewer post-judgment contacts with the court. This means that parties usually keep their agreements because they have crafted them and they do not need to return to court for resolving matters. The obvious benefits are that parties save both time and money in not having to return to court for resolution of problems likely to arise in the years following the judgment of divorce.

Mediation has been shown to be helpful in a wide variety of family matters. Parties involved in contested trust and estate matters, and even contested child and adult guardianships and conservatorships, have benefited from the problem-solving aspect of mediation.

If, within a divorce matter, you have a personal protection order or are involved in a child abuse and neglect matter, you should not be ordered to mediation without a hearing before the judge.

Domestic violence in your relationship may be grounds for not participating in mediation; you may feel that your safety or health would be jeopardized if you attended a mediation session with the other party. If you have been abused by the other party, mediation is almost never appropriate unless your attorney will be present with you at all mediation sessions attended by the other party and other safety precautions are taken.

Mediation is not appropriate for your matter if the other party uses fear, force, threats, violence or intimidation with you to get what they want. It's also not appropriate if parties have been threatening or violent to each other or where parties do not feel able to safely express their opinions about the dispute.

In mediation, if the mediator is willing, the mediator may provide an "evaluation" of any unresolved issues. This means that if you and the other party are able to resolve eight out of ten issues (for example), but are stuck on resolving the final two issues, the mediator may provide recommendations for resolving the final two issues. You are free to accept or decline those recommendations. Because the evaluation is confidential, the judge will not know what the recommendations were and who may have accepted or rejected them.

Another advantage of mediation is that, if you have agreed on all but two issues in your case, those are the only two issues you will need to take back to court. Your agreement on the other issues can be preserved if you choose.

• Domestic
  
• Divorce
  
• Custody and parenting time
  
• Guardianships / conservatorships
  
• Trust and estate matters
  
• Civil disputes - contracts, landlord / tenant, boundary disputes, small claims
  
• Special education
  
• Agriculture
  
• Business - employer / employee, business associate / partners
  
• Religious / organizational entities
  
• Criminal (Restorative Justice), which is a form of alternative dispute resolution, not classified as "mediation