When someone is in emotional turmoil about a relationship, a family member, their business or finances, it's critically important that they know their options. When someone calls Tricia, she explains the appropriate options,  mediation, arbitration, litigation, collaborative law, and others. After learning about the situation, she refers about 60% of callers to a professional with specialized expertise matching the client's needs, like another mediator, the mediation center, or a lawyer.
 
A mediator is a neutral, licensed professional who has had hundred of hours of training. When needed, mediators will bring in neutral professionals such as lawyers, accountants, certified divorce financial analysts, business evaluators, and therapists. This can be much less expensive than each party having their own battling experts and adding a third neutral one. Sometimes lawyers and judges try to mediate, but they have not had the hundreds of hours of training and practice required for the license which helps ensure expertise. Mediation has a 95% success rate. Depending on how much animosity people begin with, it may take six to nine months to get them to start talking with each other. Mediation usually resolves most of the issues between parties, but some remaining issues may still need to be litigated. 

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Mediation agreements are contracts filed in court by attorneys and are legal and enforceable.

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Mediation can be very useful many areas such as:

Trusts, estates and eldercare: It's important for elders to have their wishes recorded while they are still clearheaded, but later, mediation can be an way to regain family peace when trusts and wills are challenged by heirs who have differences about how to care for their parents and their housing needs, managing the estate, etc. 

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Medical malpractice: This is another area where mediation is very helpful. A Chicago hospital saved $65 million last year by using mediation to resolve medical error problems. 

 

Construction: On Oahu there are mediators with thousands of hours of experience resolving disputes arising in the construction business. 

Pre-marriage mediation can help couples anticipate challenges in daily life (find out what each one likes and can do, and negotiate what nobody wants to do), and how they want to raise children, in anticipation rather than trying to do therapy to heal past injuries after the fact.

 

Divorce and custody. You can get divorced in a weekend with mediation, as opposed to a year and half of the financial and emotional costs of litigation. 30% of the divorce process is legal, the rest is financial and emotional. 

 

Sexual harassment.

 

Insurance disputes: There is potential for mediation to be used in government, but it does require that both parties want the issue to be resolved. 

Contact Tricia at 808 283-7811 or Tricia@TriciaMorris.com