Mediation minimizes the hostility and misunderstandings that couples experience following separation - whether they're heterosexual, gay, or even unmarried. It also helps parents with minor children build a foundation for a healthy co-parenting relationship even after their relationship as a couple has ended - and spares the children the trauma of an acrimonious divorce.

The issues I address in marital or domestic partnership mediation include dividing marital assets, allocating community debt, setting child support and maintenance, and establishing the parenting plan.

Modifications: As the circumstances of parents and children change, the parties may need to revisit their parenting agreements or arrangements for child support or maintenance. These circumstances may include change in employment and earning power, transition from stay-at-home to full-time employment, and more.

Relocations: Mediation gives the parents an opportunity to express their feelings about the proposed move as they consider alternatives or work out ways to mitigate the child's loss of contact with his or her parent.

Other post-divorce issues: Mediation can help parents address many other post-divorce issues, including: differences in child-rearing practices, competing needs for boundaries, concern about the other parent's new partner, and the difficulties of adjusting to being part of a new blended "step"-family.

Many birth parents can now opt for open adoptions, where they maintain contact with their child after adoption becomes final. And that's often a good thing: open adoption helps the child know that he or she is loved by both the birth family and adoptive family and provides the opportunity for each family to be supportive of the other.

Still, open adoption can create quite normal feelings of insecurity, fear, jealousy, and resentment. Facilitative mediators can help both adoptive and birth parents through the emotional and unsettling maze of the adoption process - and beyond.

Disputes that can be mediated include: an open adoption agreement, voluntary termination of parental rights, grandparent or other relative adoption, and foster parent adoption. Post placement and reunion mediation are also provided.

It is rarely easy to watch family members age. As physical, emotional, and financial changes occur, sons, daughters, and caring others may be called upon to make complex and difficult decisions.

If you have concerns about such issues as living arrangements, caregiving, medical decisions, financial management, powers of attorney, estate planning and end-of-life decisions, mediation may well be your answer.

A successfully mediated outcome helps ensure that the elder person enjoys healthy interactions and retains control over basic life decisions, while addressing his or her need for assistance and support. And that can protect and preserve family relationships.

Estate Planning

In the best of all possible worlds, estate planning provides opportunities for partnerships and a way for survivors to honor your memory. Too often, though, estate decisions lead to financial, emotional and legal wrangling. So you need to do your best - now - to resolve disputes, foster communication, and decrease acrimony for issues such as these:

• Business-related: What will the order of succession be in a family business?
• Financial-related: Who will manage the finances for the surviving parent?
• Property-related: Who will inherit the family home?
• Personal-related: What happens to mom's wedding ring or the family heirlooms?

Mediation is an effective approach because it encourages all the issues - financial, legal and emotional - to surface so they can be examined and put to rest. As your mediator, I can help create an open, constructive dialogue about difficult subjects, building a collaborative spirit that leads to mutually satisfying agreements.

Will Contests
Probate & Trust Administration

Mediation can be used to clear up ambiguity and resolve problems after death and during probate and trust administration. If your goal is a genuine solution - not a finding of fault -- mediation allows for more flexible communication than formal court procedures allow.

Family business disputes are complex. Sometimes when the immediate conflict issue involves a business decision, underling tensions - the need for recognition, unmet expectations and feelings of unfairness - come into play. And that can threaten the business's success and even its survival.

Mediators are skilled at getting family members to work with each other to resolve both family issues and disputes that are purely business-related. A mediator doesn't tell family members "what to do"; she helps them figure out how they can best decide what to do. In mediation, family members are encouraged to articulate their needs and concerns, to listen with empathy, and to seek common ground. As each person's stress and resentment diminishes, a spirit of cooperation enables the family members to work together on succession planning, allocation of responsibilities, dividend distribution and other issues.

Other issues that can be mediated include:

• Estate planning.
• Family/Non-family management conflicts.
• Working vs. Non-working family members.
• Ownership planning.
• Family Issues / Relationships.
• Compensation.
• Communication.