Family Law Mediation/Negotiated Settlement

A growing number of parties are electing to resolve their divorce case not through the court system but through mediation.

Family Law Mediation

Mediation is a structured session or sessions with a trained mediator with the goal of working together towards a settlement of your divorce case. Parties are electing this route as it can be much less expensive than litigation, less emotional stress, it preserves your privacy and creates a legally enforceable agreement that you may not be able to do within the court system.

At The Kaseno CPA Firm, APC we can work with parties that chose to resolve their family law matter through mediation in the following ways:

• Work directly with the parties to obtain answers to financial questions such as income available for support and the estimated value of a family business.
• Work with the mediator and the parties to provide insight and an unbiased analysis of complex financial issues.
• Explore and put numbers to different scenarios that the parties might want to incorporate into their final agreement. Many times these are scenarios or solutions that would not be available to them if they were to go to trial.
• Attend mediation sessions to help with the actual settlement of the financial issues or to explain more complex financial concepts.
• Work with the parties in a calm, respectful and peaceful manner to help them understand their financial position and post-divorce realities.
• Provide easy to understand charts, flowcharts, and summaries to help the parties quickly and easily make financial decisions.

Sometimes through mediations, the parties are anxious to get their cases resolved quickly. We pride ourselves on being responsive, efficient and as low cost as possible to get parties answers they need to mediate their cases.

Negotiated Settlement

Usually parties that mediate their cases will not be represented by legal counsel. However, most parties will have a consulting family law attorney that they consult throughout the process and that they will have review Marital Settlement Agreement before it is signed.

However, some parties chose to be represented by legal counsel and chose to negotiate a settlement with the other side through their attorneys. This is fairly common in San Diego as many family law attorneys are experienced and willing to work with the attorney representing the other spouse to develop a settlement.

In these situations there isn’t always a structured meeting or process. Usually the parties will work with their “team” which sometimes includes The Kaseno CPA Firm, APC. We will work with the attorney to make sure that we obtain the information and documentation that we need. That we can perform any analysis that we need to perform and we provide the results to the attorney.

The attorney will then rely upon us to help construct settlement letters or responses to settlement letters. We will also attend ‘four way” meetings with the parties and their attorneys that are meant to discuss the financial analysis performed and the settlement of the financial issues.

We are there to help attorneys help their clients facilitate a resolution every step of the way whatever path they chose.