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If you decided to mediate, what issues did you mediate? Would you recommend it?

I just want to feel more confident about my decision to not mediate. I would appreciate some honest feedback especially if you can explain if I am missing something.

Quick background: Married 19 years. I was mainly a SAHM, homeschooled kids with special needs and worked part time as a teacher. He is a cop for almost 15 years. Stbx has mental health issues.

We each have our own vehicle. His is a 2012 car and mines is 2006.

We rented our home.

He has a pension which I am entitled to 35%.

Child support ~ State guidelines

Children's tuition ~ Isn't 50/50 reasonable?

Uncovered medical expenses ~ Again, isn't 50/50 reasonable?

Parenting plan ~ He is entitled to visitations (total is 5 hours a week) but children do not wish to see/speak to him at this time.

Alimony ~ Haven't asked for any.

Credit card debt ~ 50/50 right?

He currently owes me for back tuition and money that was borrowed from a savings account for DS14 tuition. This money was used to purchase his police vehicle with the intent of putting the money back into the savings account using the raise he would receive by having his own police vehicle within 4 years.

I know he is not going to want to pay me back for the children's tuition. If he refuses and we go to court, what are the odds that the judge will force me to "forgive" the outstanding balance? He will also not want to pay the difference between what our vehicles are worth. What is there to bargain?

Right now, I have temp physical custody and joint legal. I would like full on both. Is this something I would negotiate?

I'm reading a book about divorce/mediation and instead of understanding the point of mediation, I keep asking myself what would he and I mediate about? Which is why I'm asking you guys.

Thank you!

I would not mediate with him, because I think it will be a waste of your time and money. I might be wrong, but he just seems way too unreasonable to mediate. I don't see why a judge would tell you to forgive the outstanding balance. He owes you, so he should have to pay, but I'm the last person to claim expert knowledge on this kind of thing. I'm still wondering what's going to happen in my own case. One thing I would recommend is that if you do not use the local non-profit place. When my atty heard I'd gone there, he said hey were nice and all, but not really professionals in the field and we'd be much, much better off going elsewhere.

dmari, we did end up choosing mediation; the entire thing cost us about $5000 which was a lot less than having our own lawyers each. In our case there were cars, rental (income) properties, real estate properties, tax and insurance liabilities, retirement, bonuses and stock plans and a lot more to mediate about. We did a lot of negotiation up front, as to how to divide the assets.

Mediation is not for the faint-hearted. You cannot mediate when somebody is unreasonable and is already showing tendencies to take advantage of you.

There were several times I almost stepped away from mediation because of XH's antics. However, XH was very desperate to get rid of me and there were also some legal things I could have used against him that, so after a brief cooling down period, he would become reasonable again.

I did have a separate lawyer as a fallback position; he reviewed all the documents and was available to me to give advice when I felt stuck.

Good luck to you. You can PM me as well if you have any questions.

[This message edited by fraeuken at 10:52 AM, July 14th (Sunday)]

Thank you