Mediation is a voluntary highly successful approach to resolving disputes.
 

About Counseling Mediation Intervention Contact


What is Mediation?

Mediation is a voluntary, non adversarial, confidential, informal, and highly successful approach to resolving disputes. The mediator, a neutral third party, facilitates a process that enables the parties to resolve their own conflict, rather than have one imposed by an arbitrator or judge.
 
Mediation fosters a nonthreatening environment that allows both parties to fully and effectively express themselves and receive recognition. It can help disputing parties overcome rigid positions so that they can see their own interests more clearly.
 
It is an empowering process that yields creative, win-win solutions, whereby both parties gain—there is no loser in mediation. While disputants often arrive at the table certain that no resolution is possible, they are frequently surprised at how sitting down with a neutral third party lowers the hostility and facilitates cooperative problem solving.  There is no need to assign blame or guilt.
 
Mediation is future oriented. Mediation agreements grow out of the perceived needs and values of the respective parties. Therefore, people feel more satisfied and better able to live with their agreements than is the case with more adversarial approaches.

 

What Types of Disputes Do We Mediate?
 

Divorce Mediation, Custody/Visitation, Post-divorce Disputes

Employment Disputes

Business/Consumer Disputes

Probate Disputes

Family Feuds

Parent/Child Conflicts

Interpersonal Disputes

Neighbor Disputes

 


Divorce Mediation, Custody/Visitation,
Post-Divorce Disputes

The painful and emotionally charged issues that arise in divorce and custody/visitation cases go to the heart of who people are and how they will be able to conduct their lives subsequent to the separation. Traditional adversarial divorce, based on a win-lose approach, often exacerbates an already highly conflicted situation. It tends to increase the short and long-term costs of settlement, both financially and emotionally. Often, the biggest losers are the children.

When decisions are left to the courts, outcomes are based on considerations that may have little to do with the spouses' or children's real needs. Mediation is a process that encourages the parties to look realistically at their lives, their values, and their needs. It leads to solutions that both parties feel are fair and livable. When children are involved, a mediated settlement sets the stage for future cooperation on parenting issues by considerably lowering the heat. When disputes arise after the divorce, as they sometimes do regarding finances or custody and visitation stipulations, mediation is an ideal forum in which to seek resolution.

Before agreements are signed, each party reviews the agreement with his or her own attorney. Divorce agreements reached through mediation usually leave former spouses with a sense of greater fairness and ownership, which reduces anger and hurt and improves the chances that both parties will live up to the agreement.


Employment Disputes

When left to fester, claims of discrimination or disparate treatment, sexual harassment, labor/management disputes, or disruptive conflicts between employees may undermine the smooth functioning of the workplace and, ultimately, become very costly. When mediation is offered at an early stage, these disputes can often be readily settled to everyone's satisfaction, thereby avoiding the potential high cost of formal complaints and legal procedures.


Business/Consumer Disputes

When disputes arise between business partners and associates, contractors and their clients, or business owners and their customers, parties can put an end to the costly aggravation by coming to a resolution they both feel is fair through mediation.


Probate Disputes

Parties battling over the division of an estate might expect to spend endless years litigating, seeing much of the assets eaten up by legal fees. Mediation offers a fast, efficient, and far less costly resolution. It's easier on relationships than fighting it out in court. And, since mediation is confidential, it preserves the privacy of the parties.


Family Feuds

Who gets invited to family affairs? What's the seating arrangement? How many years have cousins, siblings, parents, and children not spoken? Who's responsible for the care of elderly parents? Are personality conflicts sinking the family business? Do you and your spouse seriously disagree over how to raise the children? Mediation can change the atmosphere and alter the nature of the relationship for the better, as well as resolve the dispute.


Parent/Child Conflicts

Some degree of parent-child conflict is normal and even healthy. It often plays out around issues like curfews, behavior, discipline, homework, and religious values. But when conflicts become intractable and exasperating, they heighten anger and permeate and disturb family relationships. Mediation provides a quiet and calm atmosphere, and the assistance of a neutral third party enables parents and children to work out solutions they can both live with.


Interpersonal Disputes

Your coworker is infringing on your personal space. Your child is having serious fights with another child, and you've argued with the other parents. You're always getting into arguments with your partner (business or marital). Mediation can resolve specific disputes, and it can also improve communication and preserve relationships.


Neighbor Disputes

Neighbors often live for many years in aggravating, frustrating situations. Whether the problem is noise, pet annoyances, common driveway disputes, property changes that impact your quality of life, etc., mediation can help resolve these often long-standing complaints.


 

We provide Mediation in Westchester, NY
and the greater New York Area

 
Home  |  Counseling & Psychotherapy  |  Mediation  Intervention | Contact
 
 
Hosted and Managed by www.WestchesterTowns.com