Greetings!
When I tell people that my firm helps families deal with disputes, they immediately think of divorces. It's true, we do help couples obtain divorces through mediation or the traditional legal process. But we also help families deal with other types of conflict.
Shay, Samantha, Margie and Victoria sought mediation to decide what to do with the family home. Shay, Sam and Margie were sisters in their 30s and 40s. Victoria was their mother, a very assertive woman in her 70s. Margie and Victoria lived in the family home with Margie's adult son. Margie worked at the post office and Victoria lived on social security. Even though the family owned the home outright, rising taxes and constant repairs meant that the people living there couldn't afford to pay all of the bills. The two younger sisters, Shay and Sam, had previously been added as co-owners to the home, so they stepped in to cover the remaining costs.
But Shay and Sam had their own families to support. And even though the younger sisters were paying nearly half of the costs for the family home, they got little input into the repairs, ignored when they requested the adult son pay rent, and disrespect from their older sister. Calls and texts quickly devolved into cursing and name calling.
I co-mediated this dispute with a wonderful mediator. In the first session, niceties ended quickly as decades of slights came to the surface. The mother, upset that she was treated as an equal in the room (rather than the one in control) stormed out and never came back. The older sister was hurt that she wasn't a co-owner and felt she was cast as the family screw-up. The younger sisters were exhausted from spending tens of thousands to help, only to get cussed out on the phone.
We had three tense mediation sessions. In the end, the sisters reached an agreement about running the home, how to communicate with each other, and what might happen after mom passed away. We went through a box of tissues that last day because everyone was crying. The sisters were happy and hopeful about their relationships with each other. Yet they also mourned the years they lost by fighting.
Mediation helped this family address tough issues and discover ways to move forward. Even though I enjoy going to court, I'm certain the legal process could never have achieved this level of healing.
