My ex and I did mediation, and it was relatively informal. She was a family lawyer with extra training who did mediation instead of court and divorce stuff, and was recommended to us by the marriage counsellor we visited before the final breakdown. Our last visit to the counsellor was a kind of a "so we're splitting up, what do we do next?" session. Very depressing.
Her rates were quite reasonable, around $150 an hour I think it was, though I suspect it was because she was young and starting out and building her business. I'm thinking we lucked out considerably with her. She was very neutral, told us the low down about the divorce process, built us a transitory schedule to get us through the first few months of breakup and separation. She listened to both our needs and requirements, and helped us navigate to common ground, and above all, kept our focus on our two children. She told us what we'd need to examine throughout the process, and told us to go away and get lawyers at the necessary time, and what their role would be. She covered the classic three pillars of divorce (spousal support, child support and shared parenting), basically helping us set up a status quo of who was caring for the children when, and helping us through figuring out our assets and working us towards agreeing about how to divide them. Then she drew up a draft separation agreement and we each sent it to our lawyers for less neutral examination, to cover the independent legal counsel requirements.
And there it languishes, because my lawyer has had it for over a month and still hasn't gotten back to me. I sent him a reminder email and got told it was the busiest he's ever been in twenty years. Probably going to charge me $100 for that answer too. And I'm afraid that the longer it takes, the less likely my ex is to sign it in the end. But that's a whole separate issue from the mediation process.
It took about six mediation sessions over five months or so, but I have to admit that we ignored one of her main requirements, which was not to discuss anything outside the mediation table. So sometimes we'd show up having worked out something on our own. And we had trouble scheduling the sessions, so they were pretty far apart, but that had the unexpected benefit of giving us time to mull things over in between, and come to calmer conclusions about some things, as well as to see the good effects the transitory arrangements were having on the children.
I honestly believe that without the mediation, if we'd just gone straight to hiring lawyers and done it that way, that everything would have been a lot more adversarial, we'd have spent a whole lot more money getting to this point, and our children would not be adjusting nearly as well as they are to the whole awful, messy situation.
Of course, I am not through the whole divorce process yet, so perhaps the agreement won't pass muster with his lawyer, or mine, or the court. Maybe all the money we paid the mediator will be ultimately a waste and we'll have to start over. Although now that I'm examining it, I do think that even if this happens, the initial mediation really helped us focus on the children's stability, and set us on the path of good co-parenting despite the issues between us. And that's well worth any amount of money.
lol
