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By Diane Marshall
FAMILY mediation is a constructive, non-adversarial way to resolve
family and parenting issues that inevitably accompany separation or
divorce. It can help to reduce the pain, the time, and the expense of
finding solutions. A professionally trained, impartial mediator
assists the couple and other involved family members to define new
relationships, roles, and responsibilities.
While family mediation is not itself therapy, it is a therapeutic
means of resolving contentious family issues. It provides couples the
opportunity to face each other with less risk and vulnerability and
to identify and address unresolved conflicts that can get in the way
of negotiating a successful post marriage agreement. When there is
not a gross imbalance of power (for example, financially) or a
history of violence and serious abuse (of a spouse or children), then
mediation is often a useful process for the resolution and ending of
a marriage.
Practical issues
For example, family mediation can help to determine how and when to
separate; how to let go of the past and develop an effective
parenting plan for the children. The mediation can also help address
and resolve difficult financial issues, appropriate personal decision
making, how to reduce stress, conflict, and the threat associated
with litigation, and how to ensure private and confidential
resolution of contentious issues. Mediators can also help to create a
written 'Memorandum of Understanding' outlining an agreement that can
then be legally finalized by lawyers.
Clergy, lawyers, social workers, psychologists, and marriage and
family therapists who refer their clients to a trained mediator can
help people in crisis deal with the overwhelming transition that
separation and divorce can represent. The overall goal is to help
divorcing couples move from the role of partners, while continuing to
focus on their enduring relationship as parents for their children.
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Mediation allows the parties themselves to determine what issues need
to be addressed and in what order. It fosters a sense of co-operation
between the parties rather than conflict, an obvious virtue when
children are involved. A trained mediator assists the parties to work
out agreements that are imaginative yet practical, and that meet the
unique needs of the people and relationships involved. Moreover,
mediation is time-effective and comparatively inexpensive.
This may be the way that living at peace with one another is achieved
for those who are painfully ending a marriage. Mediation may be a
kind of peacemaking, and its fruit may be the flourishing of the
children or others in the family who feel at least temporarily
dismembered at the finality of family breakdown and divorce.
The role of the faith community
The church can play a supp ortive and healing role in the lives of
family members who are going through the often excruciating pain of
divorce. By resisting making judgment's or taking sides, except in
situations when one or more members are in need of safety, the church
community can be a stabilizing help to children, a kind of extended
family during a time of upheaval. It is important for churches to
have fellowship groups that are not couple-centered, so that someone
going through marital breakdown can have a place of support and
acceptance.
Primarily, the church is called is to facilitate preventative work
through marriage, couple and family education programs, so that the
risk of breakup goes down. Yet at the same time, the church needs to
work to minimize damage and maximize healing in those cases where
reconciliation is not possible. Encouraging a mediated process would
be one such peace-making effort.
For further reference:
Books for children:
When Mom & Dad Divorce: A Kid's Resource. Emily Menendez-Aponte, &
illustrated by R.W. Alley; Abbey Press, Indiana, 1999
Diane Marshall, M.Ed., RMFT works with the Institute of Family Living
(IFL), Toronto, and is a regular contributor to
canadianchristianity.com. This article is based on her book: Healing
Families - courage and faith in challenging times.
www.ifl.on.ca
www.anglicanbookcentre.com
June 21/2007
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