Anyone been through mediation?

mike62 wrote:

Attend mediation to get a tick in the relevant box?

Mine too! He ticked the 'attempted to mediate' box. Blamed me for not agreeing his shoddy figures...then cancels 3rd meeting.

These procrastanators waste time and money. And I doubt they'd get better through a Court!

This is where this countries divorce laws fail. (And lack of guidelines) People think what they think is right, is the LAW, and there's no guidelines to tell them they're being unreasonable.

Either that, or they're Addicted to Dysfunction!

My ex married me just for the shere sadistic pleasure it gives him of making my life hell!

(So it would semm!)

Thanks, all.
As an aside, my wife (silly woman) unintentionally let me see a letter to her sol saying that the mediator thought my behaviour to be bad (and hence justification for having me thrown out the house). The mediator confirmed that this was rubbish, so helping me greatly (it's not the first time my wife's lied: she has a very flexible interpretation of 'truth' and 'facts').

I was hoping that by attending mediation my wife was willing to let the mediator dig her out of a big hole she's dug. She was born in the house and her brothers haven't spoken to her since we moved in (not even at their father's funeral) (last straw rather than sole cause methinks), so a mediator saying 'I think you can't keep the house' and 'a court will most likely order it to be sold' would be her excuse for selling and hence save her face. But it wasn't to be.

Mediatin: an interesting, if finally fruitless, way of spending £300 and 2 days holiday. Unfortunately, you can't dance the tango if your partner insists on being the conductor (or something like that).

Anyway, I'd recommend mediation to anyone and that you give it your best but don't pin all your hopes on it.
Good luck, all.

Mediation is a gamble. Potentially it can save an awful lot of expense in both time and money but if nothing comes of it the outlay is wasted. I wouldn't give up on it just yet, there is always a glimmer of hope your wife might change her stance given a little time to mull over what's been said thus far.

Picking up on Sera's point about guidelines, here in Scotland the law aims for clarity/certainty rather than flexibility but this can be very unfair. Also, although it's now possible to divorce after one year with consent or 2 years without consent in all but the most simple cases it takes considerably longer. UB/adultery are only used in approx 25% of cases as there is a strong burden of proof required.

'Mediation' or 'Counselling' or whatever you want to call it was a waste of time for me. My STBX wife (still learning these things, that's 'Soon To Be Ex', right?) acted like she was all for it after first telling me that our marriage wasn't working, but almost as soon as we went in she was just going on about how much she had no interest in making the marriage work and nothing that I could say or do would change her mind....she didn't give the counsellor anything to work with as it takes two people to make a marriage work.

Then afterwards she said that it'd been helpful (for her maybe, I suppose) but she didn't think it was worth booking any more sessions because her mind was made up even more firmly than it was before.

It was only shortly afterwards that she started seeing her old male 'friend' regularly. I feel that she just went through the motions so that she could tick the 'I've tried mediation' box and say 'Yeah, I tried counselling but I still can't put up with his unreasonable behaviour' (watching DVDs and playing games too much) in order to justify in her mind a divorce and ease her conscience a bit over what she's doing with this other guy.

Hi Toxie - Sounds a very familiar story. Mine did much the same in counselling - took me 3 sessions at £65 a throw to twig that it wasn't really worth investing further.

Mediation is a different ball game however. It is about sorting out the access to children and sorting out the finances in a non-confrontational manner with a mediator.

It's a hell of a lot cheaper than doing it through a solicitor, but it does require both parties to be willing.

Sounds a bit early for you to be looking at that route right now. You and your STBX need some time to decide the next move for both of you.

Best of luck, you are among friends and like minded people here. Take care

Mike

Thanks Mike, I'm still getting used to all of this and what all the different terms for things are.

We didn't have any kids at least so it could've been worse.....just 2 cats which are coming with me when I go.

We've also got finances covered (sort of)....we've verbally agreed between us not to fight each other for anything and I intend to stick to that. She's financially better off than me (she came into a fair amount of cash when her grandad died a few years back) but I never married for money and wouldn't feel right quibbing over it. We've each got our own accounts and a joint account that the rent, council tax etc. are paid out of, I'll keep paying my monthly whack into that until I leave, and I've even said that she can keep whatever's left in the joint when I go and we close it down, which won't be much anyway. Because I'm not putting up a fight she's being very reasonable about what stuff I can take with me when I go, so it probably works out better.

As for being among like minded people, that's comforting to know (thanks) and hopefully I'll be of more help to other people in the future, just unfortunately I've got a lot of bitterness to work out of my system at the moment. That's why I'm here though, better venting it on a forum board than picking up things at home and throwing them at the wall which is all I feel like doing most of the time at home at the moment.

Mediation is the best £300 I ever spent. I never used a sol and dont intend to.

I let the ex say whatever she wanted at mediation and then when she offered £70K i just said no, then on 3rd visit the offer went up to £80k I still sat tight and said no finally on the 5th visit she offered £90K as her final offer which I accepted.

Once you are in mediation have a figure in mind and work towards it. Your ex will know like you that a sol will take £20K from each of you just to get to the same figure so she would be silly to not offer better terms.

Then mediation will draw up a memorandum of understanding for £90 which my wife gave to her sol who for £200 turned it into a Consent Order and that was it.

And another thing dont agree to pay half the costs for anything. My ex wanted the divorce so she paid the total cost for it, which came to £2k.

Keep cool and and you will come out financially better.