How Divorce Mediation Will Benefit Your Children

Divorce mediation provides an escape route, shielding children from the damaging psychological effects a divorce may have on them.

Divorce mediation offers a more collaborative and harmonious path toward divorce, enabling both parties to reach amicable agreements on divorce matters through sound reasoning and mutual respect. Divorce can significantly impact children, particularly when both parents are argumentative and contentious. And with about half of married couples divorcing in their first marriage, this leaves a lot of children confused and overwhelmed.

Divorce mediation provides an escape route, shielding children from the damaging psychological effects a divorce may have on them. It can improve parenting, dampen tension, and allow both parents to play an active role in their children’s upbringing. Here are more reasons why divorce mediation greatly benefits your children.

It Puts the Children’s Interests First

Divorce mediation allows the child to take center stage throughout the divorce process, providing a common ground for the divorcing parents to ensure the children get what’s best for them.

A third-party mediator realigns the parents’ focus to ensuring their children’s happy and secure future. They also open up room for effective communication, so divorcing couples can explain the inherent harm of divorce and reassure their children that everything will be okay.

Encourages Positive Co-parenting

Separating after a divorce doesn’t mean the end of parenthood and parental duties. Litigated divorces often leave one spouse feeling hard done and disadvantaged. This shatters any chances of peaceful co-parenting and only exacerbates animosity.

Divorce mediation fosters a conducive environment for co-parenting, where each parent understands their role and plays an active part in their children’s growth and development. This cooperation reduces the dismay of divorce to your children and allows proper development until adulthood.

You Control the Outcome

Only you, a parent, know what’s best for your children. Divorce litigation is a set of doctrines the judicial system follows strictly regardless of the implications to your child. Divorce mediation allows you to circumvent litigation, giving you complete control of the outcome.

With a third-party mediator, you can consider each party’s circumstances and the compromises you can make for the children’s benefit. This is much better than resigning your children’s fate to a judge who sticks to the code.

Divorcing Parents are More Likely to Get Along

As mentioned earlier, litigated divorces mostly end with one spouse getting the short end of the stick. This worsens the disharmony, and when both parents can’t see eye to eye, the children often suffer the most.

It’s easier to follow through with everything agreed upon during divorce mediation since no disadvantaged party exists. Unfortunately, it’s hard to say the same about litigated divorce, where tensions between divorcing spouses only worsen. With worsening discordance between the divorcing parents, the fate of the children lies with the court, which is indifferent to the child’s concerns or best interests.

St. Louis Divorce Mediation

A mediated divorce can make a world of difference in how your children cope with the divorce and their future after their parents part ways. That said, it’s still essential to have an experienced attorney help you navigate the legalities of divorce mediation. Your children deserve nothing but the best.