Divorce Mediation Attorney in Litchfield, Connecticut

Mediation (Alternate Dispute
Resolution “ADR”) Services

We enter into Marriage expecting it to last.  A happy marriage is a foundation, upon which we build the design we conceive for our life.  We expect Marriage to safekeep, foster and ensure our personal development, to provide a nurturing environment in which to raise our children, and to give us the solid platform to launch and carry out our career and to make our self-designed contribution to the world.  Marriage is the legal declaration of our most intimate relationship, and carries with it covenants of mutual support.  

If it fails, uncertainty about the safekeeping of each aspect of our life built upon that platform is at the foremost in our minds.  Alternate Dispute Resolution shines in the area of working with families breaking up.   

Here are the six core principles underlying ADR and what it offers:

1. Privacy - Working through the issues needing to be addressed happens quietly.  Your differences of opinion or worked through in a private forum.  Court by its design is a public airing of grievances, and its goal for transparency of justice often does not work in a divorce.  

2. Agreed timeframe - Court has its own schedule which may not work for a couple.  Often resolving issues and getting a hearing that settles disputes is a long and arduous process, and keeps the couple in an unresolved status, unnecessarily drawing out the agony of being in limbo.  

3. Structure - Who even wants to have the toolkit and knowledge about what needs to be addressed in the undoing of a marriage other than a professional?  Like handling our own plumbing when we are not trained, planning for a divorce is overwhelming.  This forum provides the structure and outline for addressing all aspects of what is needed for the uncoupling, and what is needed to create a new plan and a new order.

4. Parenting Plan - If you have children, it is not just your own life that is affected by a divorce.  What is the new reality for them?  ADR provides a private forum to discuss the issues, help with impasse, and ways to assist the re-structure of parenting  a child.

5. Fixed and Agreed Fee - One household turns into two; the financial costs of that fact creates a lot of stress for a divorcing couple.  A couple filing a traditional, court-driven divorce is usually aghast at the cost, and disagreements that are unresolved have to be tried in a judicial system that was designed without financial costs figured into the formula.  With  us, whether you choose mediation or arbitration of your disputes, your costs are known and agreed.

6. Participation - You have selected ADR to remain involved in the process.  You created the marital union; you are at the work table in the design of the new chapter for your life.  What is important to you?  What do you excel at?  What do you conceive for this new time?  

Stephanie M. Weaver is a trained professional,  and involved in domestic relation law for decades.  She has chosen to practice in this area  because she recognizes the value ADR offers to a divorcing couple.