Divorce Mediation In Pennsylvania

You may have heard your parents or your friends talk about their stressful divorces. Now that you are going through your own, the idea of a long drawn-out courtroom battle can be intimidating. Before you put on your boxing gloves, consider all of your options. Divorce doesn’t have to take years. It doesn’t have to be contentious. And, it doesn’t even have to happen in court.

It’s all about having choices, and mediation is one of the options that you should consider. I am divorce mediator Patricia Wozniak Henk, and I am honored to be one of the few professional mediators who has an active family law mediation practice in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and throughout Allegheny County.

I not only have more than a decade of mediation experience — I am also passionate about what I do. I devote at least 100 hours each year to training in family law mediation, and have received positive remarks for my mediation skills, including compliments from the leading family law and child custody mediators in the U.S.

The Benefits Of Divorce Mediation

There are many benefits to choosing divorce mediation, including:

• You and your spouse will commit to working with each other directly to reach a settlement of your issues. This means that you will decide what happens to your property and children, not a judge.
• If children are involved, mediation can be a way to minimize the disruption that divorce has on their lives. While they are not present during the mediation, I will make sure their interests remain front-and-center of any decision that affects their lives.
• Mediation is often a much faster process than courtroom divorce.
• Many courtroom divorces end with both parties frustrated by the process and the results. The goal of mediation is to formulate an agreement that is acceptable to both parties.
• Mediation provides an opportunity to those families with a desire to have control over and responsibility for the resolution of their issues to reach a fair agreement, as the parties themselves define it, without the use of attorney intermediaries as in traditional litigation.

How Divorce Mediation Works

During mediation, you and your spouse will sit down with a mediator, who acts as a neutral guide throughout the process. The mediator does not represent either of the parties and cannot give legal advice. For that reason, you are encouraged — though not required — to have an individual lawyer to consult about your legal questions.

The mediator will lead your mediation, helping you identify your issues of concern and your needs. He or she will gather and analyze the information you need to fully consider and make educated decisions that are right for you and your family. You will have the opportunity to brainstorm possible options for resolving your issues through the use of creative and personalized problem-solving techniques.

When you and your spouse reach a tentative agreement that you feel is fair, the mediator will prepare a written summary of those terms. Your independent attorneys will then create a final agreement that incorporates those terms. They will go to court to finalize your divorce or obtain the entry of any court orders to which you have agreed.

Learn More — Call 412-281-6555

Learn more about divorce mediation in a free 30-minute consultation at my Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, law office. I can act as your mediator or as your attorney.

It’s all about having choices…