If you live in Tennessee and have made the decision to separate from your spouse, you may be considering your options and trying to determine whether mediation may make sense for you. Rather than each spouse having his or her own attorney working on their behalf, mediation involves taking more of a joint approach to the situation. Typically, it involves having you and your spouse sit down with an unbiased, uninterested third party to work out matters concerning asset division, child custody and visitation, and so on.
While mediation may not work for everyone, you may find that it offers sizable benefits to you and your family, especially if you and your spouse can remain relatively amicable with one another throughout the process. Per the American Bar Association, mediation is often far less costly than a traditional courtroom divorce. So much so, in fact, that undergoing mediation can save you somewhere between about 40 and 60 percent of the cost of a standard divorce.
Mediation also often makes things easier on children. Choosing to mediate may mean that you and your spouse have more control over matters such as child custody, because you are working through such decisions on your own and not leaving them up to a judge. It can also benefit your children to see that you and your spouse can still commit to working with one another despite the divorce, which is often an indication that you may be able to successfully co-parent once your divorce is official.
Though this information about the benefits of mediation seeks to inform you, it should not replace legal advice.