|
Extended Consultation
Description
Extended Follow-Up
Phone Follow-Up
Mediation Service
What Mediation is
How much & How l ong?
Mediation-Pre-nup Method
Sample Mediation
Agreement
Collaborative Practice
CP: A new form
Support
Calculation
QDRO Service
Qualifications
FAQ
Family Law Essays
Sitemap
Directions
|
|
Mediation: How much and how long?
Recently I attended a lecture by a mediator who is widely published and well
known. He suggested that when asked how much a mediation will cost that the reply
be:
"About the same as a car."
"What kind of car?
"What kind of mediation?"
It’s a somewhat clever answer but it’s a useless response to a question that
completely legitimate but very difficult to answer. I can’t and won’t estimate the cost of
mediation in any particular case, so the following comments should be understood as
very general. They may have absolutely no application in your case.
- Generally, ten hours is quite a bit of mediation. A
substantial percentage
of the cases I’ve handled over the years have been concluded with ten meditation hours or less. At
$280 per hour, the cost of the
actual mediation would be about $2,800. (I’ve handled cases where the fees totaled twenty times this amount and other cases where the fee for the
actual mediation was less than $1,000.)
- I charge by the hour for documenting the settlement. The
cost of preparing the first draft of the Marital Settlement Agreement and a draft
of the necessary court documents, where the terms of the agreement are not terribly unusual and there is no time pressure will be somewhere
between $1,000 and $1,500.
- There is a way to avoid paying two court filing fees. I’ve
never thought it was a good idea, so when I prepare the court documents the clients pay both filing fees for a total of slightly less than $400.
-
If there are minor children, both parents must attend the
court’s
parenting class at a cost of $50 each for a total of $100.
- If so-called Qualified Domestic Relations Orders (QDROs)
are necessary
to divide future pension benefits, I refer the work to a sub-specialist. We try to avoid QDROs where the value of the future pension rights are not
substantial. But where the benefits are significant, the work has to be
done and it’s worth what ever it costs. The minimal fee charged to prepare a QDRO is about $500.
- The best predictors of how much a mediation will cost
involve: (1) The emotional relationship of the parties; (2) The amount of time they have been physically separated; (3) Whether they are doing individual work
with a counselor; (4) Whether they have received couples and family counseling with regard to issues specific to the divorce; (5) Whether they
have avoided chaos involving interim financing during the early stages of
the separation. A couple that’s been separated for a year or more, where both spouses
are doing individual counseling, the couple has done joint counseling, and
the family has done some family therapy, and where both parties have done their best to keep things as "normal as possible" during the
separation, will have an inexpensive mediation and divorce. A couple that answers to the opposite description is likely to have a very
expensive mediation and divorce.
- The amount of money involved, whether it is high or low,
and the
complexity of legal issue, whether high or low, don’t seem to have much to do with whether the case will be difficult or easy.
In comparing the cost of mediation to the cost of conventional representation
note that the court fees and the cost of documenting the settlement will be
the same for each. So the subject of the comparison would be the professional fees,
and it’s no easier to estimate the cost of a conventional divorce than it is to
estimate the cost of one that’s handled in mediation.
The work involved in preparing the court documents is tedious and boring. I only
do it as an accommodation to my mediation clients. Some couples are willing
to complete the court forms themselves by using a book like How To Do Your Own Divorce in California. (This is the best reference book there is for divorce,
regardless of whether it’s going to be a do-it-yourself.) The risk with this, as it is
with many do-it-yourself projects, is that the cost of correcting mistakes might
exceed the money that would
otherwise be saved
If the settlement is completely routine, the best place to go (by far!) for
documentation is the Santa Barbara Legal Clinic
(687-0200). The Santa Barbara Legal Clinic is private and has no connection with Legal Aid. It’s been in operation
for at least twenty years and is run by Marshall and Patricia Fox. They are both
practicing attorneys and their mission has been to provide routine legal services at
a minimal cost.
They have their own guidelines for what business they will take; if it looks complicated
they turn it (and the fees it would generate) away. If Marshall accepts your case for
documentation of a settlement, the cost will be 25% to 33% of what I would charge. He tries to do the work for less than what a paralegal service (No lawyers!) would charge;
but Marshall (and Patricia) are lawyers and they will to do the work properly and they
will be able to spot potential problems to which any paralegal would be oblivious.
|