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Waukegan

2835 Belvidere Road
Suite 202
Waukegan, IL 60085

(847) 520-8100

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Mediating Child Issues

Jesse Barrientes: Once you identify that, you can move forward. Once again, a true facilitative, the parties come to the agreement. The mediator doesn't even really suggest things. They inform them of certain things, and they ask them, okay, this is your problem, well they maybe pose a couple questions and ask them, "How do you think we might be able to get some language to be able to fix this?"

David Siegel: What percentage of the custody mediations reach a conclusion that allows for the court not to get involved in that issue? In other words, how often is custody resolved so we can then move on to division of property, allocation of debt, and things like that?

Jesse Barrientes: That's a great question. I don't know what the percentage is, and I guess they may vary from county to county, but I can tell you either way, some people look at it as, "I just wasted time, and wasted some money because I had to go to a mediator." You have to be able to want to mediate.

David Siegel: In my experience, over 90 percent of the time, mediators have resolved the custody issue right at the start, before it expands in to this ridiculous process in terms of time, and expense, anguish. The mediator is great in my opinion at facilitating that issue, unless of course there's just no way they're going to reach an agreement no matter what the mediator says. That's about 10 percent of the time.

Jesse Barrientes: For court appointed mediation, there's only two issues. One issue is of course custody, and the other issue is visitation. They talk about a rule, but it deals with the same thing, custody and visitation. Basically those are really the only two things, two issues that you can kind of mediate, and that gets broken down further in to, okay, we've talked about medical for the children, stuff like that. That's all in their—

David Siegel: You never get in to support?

Jesse Barrientes: Never get in to support.

David Siegel: Never explain to the parties what support is all about?

Jesse Barrientes: That's not what's being mediated. However, if they—

David Siegel: If it's broached.

Jesse Barrientes: If they ask, and they have to have that understanding that they have to pay the support.

David Siegel: You almost have a triangle of custody, support, visitation. You have a triangle of issues there that interlope in to each other.

Jesse Barrientes: Right.

David Siegel: One brings about another, and of course, whoever has custody, like you said, is entitled to child support. The non-custodial party's entitled to visitation. You've got this three-headed monster that you've got to deal with, and I think as a mediator you can probably handle all those in one fell swoop.

Jesse Barrientes: You really don't deal with it in terms of the child support, and actually in a recent mediation, that kind of came up. I explained to them, because one of the parties was talking about, "Oh I haven't received any support." I said, "That's what your attorneys are going to handle because that's what their job is. In mediation it's my job to help the people to be able to reach an agreement." Here's the thing.

David Siegel: I want you to mention too that the divorce attorneys of Waukegan are not present at the initial court-ordered mediation for custody.

Jesse Barrientes: No.

David Siegel: It's very important the attorneys are not there. It's the parties and you.

Jesse Barrientes: It's the parties and you, and it's a different venue. A recent one I just completed, they had a four-way settlement conference. Before it was both the attorneys and both parties, and they weren't able to resolve it, and it was a different atmosphere because it's set up differently. It's, "I want what I want for my client, and you want what you want for your client, and we're going back and forth." So there's a different tone. As a mediator, again, I'm neutral. I don't have any stake in the outcome.

David Siegel: This is important too. If you are familiar with either one of the parties, I'm sure you must refuse the appointment.

Jesse Barrientes: Right.

David Siegel: You can't have any bias. You have to be completely neutral. They can't know you. You can't know them. You shouldn't know any of their family members. You shouldn't know anybody from work. You are just an absolute outsider who's coming in to facilitate the mediation process.

Jesse Barrientes: That's correct. In the beginning when they come in for the initial mediation in DuPage, you have basically three hours of mediation, then one hour of administrative type of stuff for the mediator which means reviewing documents, writing letters, writing the final report, making phone calls, that kind of thing. Usually it's broken up in to two one and a half hour sessions, so for the first session as part of the introduction for the opening statement is what you tell the people. You just make sure in front of them that neither one of you have met me before. You go through some other things, some other kind of warnings – not really warnings, but more information in terms of the ground rules, in terms of, "Hey listen. Nobody's going to talk over somebody. They're not going to interrupt. We're not going to make judgments. We're not going to swear or point fingers because we're not here for that."

Mediation

When mediation is best

Mediating child issues

Cost of mediation

Success of mediation

Benefits of mediation

Proceeding past mediation

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