Spend/Thrift: When cooing stops but billing continues: Mediation
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A mother of two in San Francisco estimated that she and her former spouse had spent more than $6 million in six years trying to divide up their assets. She declined to give her name because she and her ex-husband were still in litigation. “Protracted legal wrangles are what some people want or think they want, particularly if the matrimonial breakdown has been bitter, but very few find the cost worth it,” said Hazel Wright, a family law attorney and partner in London with Cumberland Ellis. That is one reason that alternative dispute resolution, a form of conflict management practiced by corporations around the globe for more than 25 years, is now taking hold in family law circles in the United States and Europe. Karl Mackie, chief executive for the Center for Effective Dispute Resolution in London, has recently begun taking on more cases in the family law arena. In much the same way as it works in the corporate arena, out-of-court conflict resolution in a family law setting “is a friendlier and less costly approach,” he said. The “friendly” part is important, especially in situations, like those involving children, in which the parties have to continue to deal with each other. More : iht.com |