But We Already Agreed to Everything!

{3:30 minutes to read}  How many times during a mediation have I heard this plaintive cry? It doesn’t mean that the mediation is derailed. It doesn’t mean that someone has been participating in a disingenuous way. It simply means that one of the parties has had a chance to digest and perhaps rethink a decision that he or she may have made in a previous session.

Not only is this not unusual, but it speaks well about the mediation process in that it leaves room for couples to try things out (parenting plans for example — more on that later) and allows for some room to maneuver before a final decision can be made. This is so important.

During my consultation with potential clients, one of the many things I explain about the mediation process is this: Some of the decisions they make will be made quickly as they may have already discussed the issue and know what they want to do. Other decisions may need time to simmer or the couple may need to “sleep on it” for a while because they can be more complex. Co-parenting is one such topic. For example:

1. Some couples may have already been living separately and apart for some time, so I always ask how they are co-parenting, and if what they have worked out is working for them and their children. If it is good, good; If it’s not, we work on it.
2. Other couples are still living in the marital home together and haven’t the foggiest idea how they are going to work it out. Perhaps they are going to continue to live together until they sell the house, because they can’t afford to separate until it’s sold. We still need to write up a plan for when they are no longer living together, so we have to imagine the future a bit.
3. For others, one of them is about to move out and so we work on a temporary plan for now, with an agreement that they are going to revisit it before any final decisions are made, to be sure it still makes sense.

In all the cases above, some tweaking will likely need to be done. In fact, it’s rare that the original plan couples put into place at the beginning of the mediation is the same one they end up with when the mediation concludes. That one or the other parent has changed their mind doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing. There is a state of flux that occurs during the mediation process — not only for parenting but for other issues as well. By the time we finish, they will have arrived at their final decision and all the back and forth it took to get it right, was time well spent.

The notion that “we already agreed to everything” — well… some things are just going to take a little more time before they sit right.