IF YOU CHOOSE  TO GO TO COURT TO FIGHT

If you choose to go to court for your case, you will be required to provide documents to the court and the other party on strict deadlines, such as mandatory disclosures, responses to discovery, affidavits of financial information, resolution statements, proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law, and pretrial statements.  Further, you may have to attend numerous court hearings, such as a resolution management conference, review hearings, return hearings, status conferences, evidentiary hearings and a trial.  You required under Rule 49 to obtain and provide copies of all pertinent documents and the opposing party must do the exact same thing.  Obviously this is time consuming and expensive because you are producing duplicate documents back and forth.  In mediation, the parties are under the same full disclosure rules, but they can work together to produce their documents.  Courts do not excuse these requirements because you are unrepresented.

By allowing a mediator to assist your family resolve your issues, you can avoid court and all the other paperwork requirements for a litigated matter. You can avoid all the other steps and procedures of a litigated matter by negotiating all your issues. You must still file the initial pleadings and answer, attend the mandatory parenting class and file the required final documents, but it will be in a measured timely fashion, one that you can choose. You never have to step foot in a court room once you are able to mediate all your issues.

Learn about the mediation process next.