By Terri Breer
It is often said that the dominant culture of divorce is an adversarial one. A culture where winning and losing is the name of the game and that divorce is war. Family attorneys most often identify with the litigation community. If family litigation is the prevailing divorce culture then the family mediation community is a counter culture.
The way one identifies with a community or culture is to look at the following factors: 1) How do the members of the culture or community behave; 2) What do its members believe, and 3) To what organizations do they belong?
The members of the Family Mediation Community behave in a manner that fosters consensual and amicable decision making. They act in ways that encourage problem solving, and collaborative approaches to the resolution of all divorce related disputes. The mediators' culture is one that believes that family conflict is best resolved out of court and that the spouses should make their own decisions using a consensual process like mediation to resolve their marital disputes. Most divorce mediators are involved in the mediation community through their collaborative work with other consensual dispute resolution professionals, by membership in organizations like the Association of Professional Family Mediators (APFM), the Southern California Mediation Association (SCMA) and the International Association of Collaborative Professionals (IACP). The identity of a divorce mediator is not too difficult to spot by their actions, their beliefs and their participation in organizations with like minded professionals who seek to postively transform families through the divorce process.
If you are divorcing you don't have to engage an attorney who identifies with the litigation community. At Breer Law Offices we identify with the Family Mediation Community and we are working everyday to empower our clients to make their own divorce decisions out of court without engaging in advesarial litigation.
