By now you've seen that Central Valley Family Mediation is something special and because you know you want to avoid the insanity and financial expense of hiring attorneys and fighting in court with your spouse, you see that a friendly divorce, guided by our mediator, provides a much better choice. It's important that you know how we work because we do things a bit differently at Central Valley Family Mediation than at other firms. That's why our clients love us so much.

Schedule Your Personal Divorce Mediation Consultation

Call our office at (559) 222-4891, to schedule your Personal Divorce Mediation Consultation and ask to speak with Leanna, our Client Services Administrator. Leanna will schedule the most convenient appointment time available for you and Rick Banks. Rick sees clients on Monday through Friday. We even have evening and Saturday appointments available upon request to make scheduling as convenient for you as possible.

When you schedule your Personal Divorce Consultation, you will provide your credit card number to secure your appointment. So long as you don’t cancel your appointment within 48 hours of your scheduled appointment, nothing will be charged on your card. If you must cancel within 48 hours of your appointment, your credit card will still not be charged unless you fail to reschedule your appointment within 14 days of your cancellation. If you cannot keep your appointment and you choose not to reschedule, your credit card will be charged $275.

We understand that this policy of securing your appointment with a credit card may seem unique. So is our mediation firm. We provide our very best service to those couples who are looking for a good relationship with their divorce mediator. We expend most of our energy providing an exceedingly high degree of service to our existing clients and limit the number of new clients we see each week. As a result, we must secure your appointment time so that if something comes up and you can't attend your appointment, we will have enough advance notice to open the slot to a waiting couple.

What to Do Prior to Your Personal Divorce Mediation Consultation

About 3 days after scheduling your appointment, you will receive a Priority Mailer with your Mediation Planning Worksheet (also downloadable here at our Homework Page) and other important information that you will want to review prior to your personal Divorce Mediation Consultation. We must have your Mediation Planning worksheet returned to our office three days prior to your Consultation either by mail, fax or electronic mail, or we will need to reschedule your Consultation. Feel free to call the office at any time if you need assistance completing your worksheet or have any questions at all.If you have any of the divorce planning documents, please make sure that you bring them with you for our meeting so that we can review them with you.

What to Expect the Day of Your Personal Divorce Mediation Consultation

On the day of your meeting, please expect to spend 2 - 3 hours with Rick. The initial meeting with your mediator has two purposes:

• To identify whether there is a good fit between Rick and the two of you, and
• To educate you about the divorce process and how mediation offers you a much better alternative.

Assuming that you and Rick determine that there is a good fit between you and Rick, AND that you identify specific ways you would want things to happen that are different than what would happen if you chose a court-fought divorce, you and Rick will start the mediation process with the ultimate goal of designing a settlement agreement for your family right away. However, we typically do not try to complete everything all in one session. We will usually get together 2 or 3 times over the course of a month or so before we complete the process.

By looking at the issues that need to be dealt with in a divorce, you can identify those issues you would want to resolve first, or where the biggest differences lie between the two of you. We can then begin the mediation process by calmly helping you make the decisions together, with Rick’s guidance, that are necessary to give you the peace of mind of knowing your family will benefit in all possible ways.

What Happens Next?

Once you and Rick have spent an hour or so looking at the “big picture”, you and he will then begin to discuss the specific issues that need to be resolved such as child custody, child support, spousal support, and dividing up marital property and debts. Over the course of our meetings, as each issue is agreed upon by you, it will be added into the working draft of the settlement agreement. When all of the issues have been resolved, a final set of documents will be prepared to be filed with the court. At that time, you will have the opportunity to have those documents reviewed by an attorney, financial planner, or anyone else you want.

At our final meeting, both spouses will sign all of the necessary “Final Judgement”documents. Then, our office will file them with the court for you. That’s it! All we do then is sit back and wait for the Judgment to be signed by the Judge and returned to you. If all goes as planned, neither you or your children will have to set foot in a courtroom or speak to a Judge.

What Happens After If We Need To Make Changes To Our Judgment?

Your Final Judgment will include the parenting plan that was reached during the mediation. However, the parenting plan will sometimes have to be amended or changed because as children get older, their schedules change and often need to be revised. As part of a final settlement agreement, you may wish to consider having a periodic planning meeting to discuss the issue of the children’s needs and schedules. You may wish to set a specific date and time in the future, or agree that at least once every six months to a year, you will get together to discuss the current parenting plan. At your meetings you should bring your calendars, the children’s school calendars, and anything else that would be helpful in preparing a schedule for several months in advance. Try to remember the need to remain flexible. To help facilitate these changes in schedules, we will make one support or parenting plan modification for you for free within 2 years of our first meeting, which is a $450 value.

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