Mediation

Sue is an accredited comprehensive family mediator with the OAFM. You get the best of Sue in this area, as she really enjoys using her conflict resolution skills training (often different from litigating skills!), common sense, empathy and broad family law experience to help people create a well-thought out and lasting agreement, without going to court.

Advantages of mediating with Sue:

• Cheaper to share the cost of a skilled mediator experienced in all aspects of family law to do most of the negotiations, than to each pay a lawyer to do all the negotiating for you;
• Stay out of court and behave in a respectful fashion, focusing on children;
• Address the issues important to you family, not just what a court can ‘fix’;
• You control the pace/ timelines;
• Create the foundation for successful future communications and resolution with your ‘ex’, so that you can solve problems yourself without having to hire lawyers about every problem (and they will crop up, no matter how great a job your Agreement does);
• Get better information about what sorts of options may work for the long term – Sue has seen so many different families, she has a vast repetoire of different options for you to consider if you don’t come with your own ideas;
• Help you break down and organize information so that your need for outside legal help will be minimized, because you are confident about who you have reached the Agreement that you did;
• Experience with self-employed income and more complex property claims;
• Experience and with both married, common law and same-sex relationship breakdowns;
• She will help you to assess whether you are emotionally ready to make good decisions for yourself and your family, or whether some other resources should come first.

Mediators can and do provide legal information to you both, but their job is to help you reach an agreement. They don’t make the decisions for you! It would be a conflict for the mediator to provide independent legal advice to both of you. An important part of having the appropriate power and knowledge to negotiate effectively in mediation requires you to learn your rights and responsibilities from your own lawyer, worried only about you.

Sue can help you save legal fees as your mediator, because her years of experience as a lawyer will ensure that all important legal issues are skillfully canvassed. Her calm, matter of fact demeanour and her years of wide experience working with separating families and all different kinds of cases, and strong emotions help her to keep you on track to resolve your matters, so that you can continue to speak to your ‘ex’ in future.

Why should I mediate if I still have to hire my own lawyer? Most commonly, people think of mediation to reach a resolution outside of court, save money, and get an agreement on your own timeline.   One of the most valuable gains from mediation that people don’t know about, however, is that mediation can help to create the muscle memory for you and your ‘ex’ to have civil conversations and solve problems together, which can help you keep control of your life in future, and avoid legal disputes year after year like some people you have likely heard about. This is what makes Sue the happiest about doing this work.

Sue can help you reduce your legal costs by mediating efficiently so that your need to meeting with your individual counsel is at a minimum (it is still really important to make sure that you negotiate knowing your legal rights from your own lawyer). She will help you prepare the documents your lawyer will want to see and will make sure that all of the important issues in your case are thoroughly reviewed. When she acts as a mediator, she cannot be a lawyer for either party, and she does not make decisions for you; you do the negotiating.

All mediations start with private ‘screening’ sessions with each client, to get to know each of you, and also to ensure that mediation is the most effective and correct process for you. Here you can view a copy of my initial letter, draft Agreement to mediate, and intake form, which need to be returned to me prior to meeting, and some principles to remember.

While there are no guarantees of success (people remain human!), even cases without success should at least have educated the parties about gathering all of the necessary information to help make good decisions.