We just had ours last week so it’s a bit fresh on my mind. Thought I’d share a few things.

Our mediation was court ordered. Meaning, the judge says you’re going to try to work things out before you come to me for a ruling.

You’ll have to pay your half of the mediator’s fee ahead of time, or show up with a check if it’s done in a physical office.

Ours was done over Zoom where the mediator was 300 miles away from me and I never had to look at my STBX and the mediator just moved between virtual rooms. This mediator cost a shitload of money, but I think it was worth it. She was really good. I never thought we’d even sniff an agreement but we got damn close to finalizing it that day. We just ran out of time.

Prep work:

-I’m going to assume that you’ve been getting all your accounts together, keeping all the paperwork, etc in a “Divorce” folder on a single device like a laptop or iPad or something. Make sure that is with you. You may need to pull up bank accounts or documents to prove something to the mediator. You’ll have it all right there if you do. I had to hold my phone up the screen to show that the bank accounts I listed are all that I actually have with my bank.

-Generally, have an open mind, but have a short list (one or two things) that are your redline. Mine was that she couldn’t move away with the kids and I wasn’t paying her alimony. Everything after that is an additional victory. In the end, our agreement doesn’t look anything like either of us originally planned. But, it still works.

-go to the grocery store the night before. You are about to be in a conference room at your lawyers office all damn day and you’ll be nervous, bored, emotional. Snacks and drinks are good. Get something you really like for lunch that travels well. It’s okay to have a cheat day. If your lawyer’s cool, bring a couple of cold beers for when you log off.

-At the very least, wear a collared dress shirt. I brought a jacket and tie with me just in case but the lawyer said not to worry about it.

-Other than that, not much is required. Your lawyer will be next to you the whole time. He’s done this a thousand times.

How it goes down:

-Scheduled to start at 9:00 AM. Standard start to a zoom meeting getting everyone off mute and making sure you can hear and see each other. Frame the Zoom so that the mediator can see everyone in the room.

-Mediator goes over the rules. She can’t tell the other side anything unless you want her to, the mediators job is to make everybody see the other side’s point of view, she’ll tell you if something you want is illegal or unlikely to happen in court, keep an open mind, yada yada.

-If you have kids, you’ll probably hit that first so that you can have an agreement in place before you start on property. I actually like this method. This way you can’t try to use kids as leverage during property disputes and try to re-trade the deal.

-that took us to about 12:30 and we had kids settled. The mediator is drafting a document as everyone is talking and is able to crank out an an agreement pretty quickly. She emails it, everyone e-signs it and we move on to property.

-In my case, I had made an offer prior to the mediation that went unanswered, so that was the starting point. Ordinarily, the Petitioner (the one who filed) is obligated to make the opening offer.

-STBX didn’t have her shit together and the mediator is in the room with her for close to an hour. Comes back with an absolutely ridiculous counter to my original offer. Mediator knows it’s ridiculous and pretty much says so without saying so. We shot almost all of it down and made another counter within about 20 minutes.

-it goes back and forth several times.

-One thing I learned is to let the mediator finish talking when she’s presenting the other side’s offer to you. When my STBX wanted half of my VA benefits I cut the mediator off mid-sentence, lost my fucking mind and went on a rant. Remember that the meter is running and you’re paying a lot of money to let them listen to you whine. Don’t do that. Stick to business. Just say no to that item when you read the list back. Perhaps a short reason why, but that’s it. Keep the mediator in your room for as little time as possible.

-Wife had to switch lawyers halfway through the day and nobody knew that this guy had a hard stop time of 5:30pm. I felt like we were really close, but had to suspend.

-Mediator says she thinks we are close, as well and offers her services for another day. Very kind of her since her rate is $600/hr and she’d do the extra for free.

One bit of advice I got beforehand from my lawyer was that the mediator is not your friend. She is only judged by whether or not a deal gets done. She doesn’t care if it’s a good deal for you. I never got that feeling from mine, but I thought I’d pass that along.

We’ve just gone back and forth a couple of times between lawyers since the mediation and should know in a couple of days if we have a deal. We should. Fingers crossed.

This is just to give you one guy’s experience. YMMV. I just had no clue what to expect, so I thought I’d write a few things down. It’s not scary and I actually thought it was a good experience.

One benefit is that you’ll finally see what the other side really cares about after keeping their cards close to the vest for so long. If knowledge is power, you’ll get a bunch of both from this.

Shoot any questions you’ve got.