Mediation: Time & Cost
How long does mediation take?
That's the golden question. I will tell you that depending upon how difficult your case is, how complex is the financial situation, and how complex your assets are will determine the time. Sometimes there are houses and cars, but there's not a lot of cash flow, so the mediation is going take as long as it needs to take and that unfortunately is not the answer that everybody wants. But the reality is how do you communicate? Do you have difficulties communicating? Are there difficulties in understanding the financial picture? Is somebody mistrusted? Is there somebody that did something that caused mistrust in that relationship? All of those factors come into play. Most of the time when we see a mediation take less time, it's because both sides have have been very open with disclosing and sharing the information. They’re giving all the documents, everybody is putting all the cards on the table, and just talking through like what makes sense.
A mediation could take 8 hours, 2 hours, it could take multiple months, multiple days. Typically when we're getting involved in valuations, the valuation alone is going take four to eight weeks in order to just get a number. Then we start negotiating all the assets based on knowing all the numbers. So a mediation is going to take as long as necessary. Another thing to keep in mind is that there may be one person that's very gung-ho and ready to go and there may be another person that's not quite there yet. So having the process take place over time, maybe over a one to three month period, maybe six months, very difficult cases could take a year, but traditionally, probably somewhere in the three to six month range is very reasonable for you to get through all the documents to upload and update the situation.
Then to get to a process of hiring attorneys and going forth in order to file it into the court system. A lot of times, even to file something in the court system, you might have a 30+ day waiting period. This is considered a “cooling off” period that you have to wait until you can do anything in the case. We walk you through that process and sometimes you can negotiate some things on your own. Anything that you can facilitate outside of the mediation is obviously going to help the process as well.
How much does mediation cost?
It really depends again on the mediators. Some mediators could cost as low as $150. Other mediators could be as high as $350 to $450. It really depends on, again, the complexity of your case. If you have a very simple case, you might be able to find a mediator that will do it for a fixed fee. Maybe you could get the entire thing done for $1,000 to $5,000. The more complex the situation, the longer it could take, and the more expensive it could cost. A lot of this is billed by the hour; so a larger mediation could cost more. Typically, if you go to litigation and you have a complex financial matter, you could end up paying fees for your attorneys and experts in excess of $100,000- even a small divorce, you might end up paying $25,000. Going to litigation is a very expensive endeavor in mediation, it might cost significantly less, but those are conversations to have with your mediator up front. They are either going to charge you by the hour or they're gonna charge you a fixed fee for a group of hours and you go in stages. A lot of times we get people started with 10 hours and we say “Okay, we're going do some work and we're going to meet with you and let's see where we are at 10 hours and then let's stop and see what we need to do from there.”
You’re going to find a mediator that's right for you and that’s within the right price range, but you may need to talk to other people or get referrals and interview them and ask them what they have done and what kind of experience they have. Everybody is different. Most of the time a mediator only has to complete 40 hours of training and then they develop their own skills and process. My advice is to ask them up front what the costs are going to be. If they can't give you a good range, maybe they haven't done it for very long or they just don't know what to expect. If that makes you uncomfortable, have that conversation upfront before you hire somebody.
