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Child custody is a messy and complex issue. You want to know why mediation is a really great alternative to you? And here with some strategies for child custody mediation, my friend, the attorney, Sid Unrau. Sid, you and I've been involved in child custody cases for most of our careers. I kind of left that field years ago as I went over to positive psychology. And there's a piece of this that I just really wanted to pick your brain on a little bit. Because we've got some viewers who are really curious about strategies for mediation and what that is. Maybe you could help us to understand what that is first of all and then help us out with some strategies. So, when it comes up, mediation in the context of a child custody case. What are we talking about here? Mediation is one of my favorite parts of the law. It's one of the things I was able to study in law school and I had no idea at the time that it would turn out to be one of my favorite things that I do as an attorney. Mediation is an alternative to going to court. Basically, it's an alternative to getting a solution instead of having a judge decide for you. Because in mediation, you are in control. And that is just a wonderful thing. Mediation is a situation where you have a neutral mediator who doesn't take sides but who is expert enough to know what the issues are and how to come up with creative solutions to or the least creative suggestions so that you can get some solutions that you might want to have. Mediation is a confidential process. You can't bring anything from mediation into court. You can't say, "Well, mediation, this person was willing to do this and that. But now she's taking an opposite position." It's all confidential. It's a place where you can let everything out on the table. There are some caveats. You can't talk about abuse and expect that to not be brought to the court's attention or to be brought to the authorities attention. And also, another caveat is you can't talk about hiding assets. You can't secretly hide assets from one side. Mediation is in good faith. That means that everything's on the table. But the best part about it is that you are in control. And if the law says, "Well, here's exactly what visitation is", for example. Or here's how custody looks. You can say, "Hey, we have another idea. We want to do it this way." And so, mediation is just this beautiful process where we get to be creative. Where we get to come up with our own solutions. And it sounds like I'm repeating myself over and over again. I just can't say enough good about mediation. I'm a trained mediator and I also mediate. And I realized as an attorney, most of our negotiations are really mediations. So, let me give you some strategies for mediating. Sid, you're describing a process that a lot of us have heard of. It really is an opportunity to avoid some of the pains and pitfalls of actually going into full-blown litigation or a trial. Because you get a chance to sit down with a neutral mediator. Who can help you to negotiate some kind of a settlement or an agreement that you're in control of instead of something that's being dictated or handed down to you. Did I capture that? That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That sounds a whole lot better. And many states require this prior to litigation. Yes, I believe more and more states. It may be in every state. I know in California, it's the law. In Utah it's the law for most cases if they're contested. And I've actually been consulted from I don't know, maybe 15 or 20 states other attorneys have called me and asked me some mediation strategies because it's come up in their States over the years. So, I think that that's it's a beautiful thing. Help us out Sid, if you would next with some strategies. So, let's say that we have an opportunity to do this mediation. Maybe we can avoid the litigation and the trial if we can come up with some agreements beforehand. What are some strategies that you would suggest in that case. This is where it gets very interesting. Everyone, I just want to mention this. Almost everyone tells me why do we need to go to mediation? Why can we go to mediation? "I know what my position is, I know what her position is, or his position is. I'm not going to budge, she's not going to budge. Why do we have to go?" I tell them it's the law and I also tell them this, "90% of the time (It's actually more than 90% of the time) but I just say 90% of the time, we come up with a solution." So, I realized that everybody says, "Why should we go to mediation? It's just not going to work?" But I also realized it works. And so, I love to reassure my clients that it works. The problem is, it's one of those things that well you get to experience it if you don't really understand it. Two or three things that I want to share with you about strategies. The first one is to have an idea of what you want. I realize that that sounds a little bit nebulous. I want custody especially when they're children involve. And I want this much money, I want you know to keep my lifestyle. Divorce is a change. I get that you want custody, I get that custody is important. But what does custody look like? That's what you can discover and decide and create in mediation. The law says custody looks like this. And there are very few boxes and if you go to trial, the judge can say, "Okay, we're going to do custody this way." And that's all the judge house. Whatever the law says. But in mediation, you can be creative. People say, "I want joint custody." I ask them what does that mean? 50/50. What does 50/50 look like? Kids are in school, their work, they're doing different things, they're napping, they're sleeping. What does 50/50 look like to you? Or what does joint custody look like to you? And then I start pointing out that it doesn't really work that way. I and my wife, we are happily married and we have 6 children and I'll tell you right now, we don't spend 50/50 of our time with the kids. Our kids barely spend time at home after their teenagers anyway. So, I point out to my clients that their ideal and their idea of what joint custody and especially 50/50 means is different. But think about what you want. What you want and I had coached them a little bit. I say, "What you want is quality time with your kids, right? And you want as much of it as possible. And you also need time for yourself." This is also true. One time my wife and I were at a party, I don't know if I should admit this story. But one time we were at a party and we were talking about custody arrangements where each every other weekend the kids aren't with a particular group of people. I mean, one of the sets of parents. And my wife said, "Wouldn't it be nice if every other weekend we didn't have the kids to worry about?" I said, "Yeah, but in order to do that, we'd have to be divorced. And that brings other complications. Yeah. So, I just thought that was sort of a funny thing. But in mediation, you can actually determine things that the law doesn't say. So, the first thing is to have a clear focus on what you really want. And what you really want isn't a number of days. And it's not even 50/50. What you want is happiness. Really? And that's what you want and what you want is a good relationship. So, think about that. That's my favorite thing to help people see. And then I give them ideas. There's one idea, for example. 50/50 could look like. Each parent switches off weekends but they switch off a fad weekend. So, maybe Mondays and Tuesdays with one parent, Wednesdays and Thursdays with another parent. And then Friday Saturday and Sunday, you switch off. So, that gives a great an idea. So, the kids always know where they are on Mondays and Tuesdays. They always know where they are on Wednesdays and Thursdays and they know that each other weekend, they switch off. That works beautifully for many times of the year. Sometimes during vacation time and during holiday time, we have to adjust that a little bit. But that's a beautiful way. And that also gives parents the feel of 50/50. I will tell you right now, you're never ever, even if you follow the law exactly going to get exactly 50/50. Can I jump in on this too Sid? Because as I'm listening to that, it makes so much sense to me that psychologically we're looking for something that's fair, right? Right. And that feels like 50/50, half and half. If we could just dispel that myth and I think you've done a nice job of doing that. We're not looking for fair. I don't even think it exists. We're looking for appropriate and functional and healthy that these are better ways to look at structuring what it is that you really want. bceause honestly, fair, 50/50, probably both mythological creatures at this point. Exactly. Being flexible is point number 2. And here's what I mean by that. No matter what your goals are, you have to realize you are here to be flexible and to realize that your goals may not look like at the end like they looked like when you were just thinking about them. For example, think about when you go on vacation. I'm going to, I went on vacation recently to Denmark. I had this idea in my mind here's exactly what I was going to do. Here's exactly who I was going to see, here's the day to day what I wanted to accomplish. It didn't turn out like that because the weather was different than we thought, there were some holidays that came up, there were just different considerations. But it all turned out beautifully. And that's what you can have a hope for. This could all turn out very beautifully. So, realize. Well, maybe if the switching off every other weekend doesn't work for some people that's great. Figure out a way to work around that. And figure out a way that you can still get to happy and still get to as much time with the children as possible and still get to a workable solution. That's what I really like. So, be flexible. People have this idea that you have one person on this side saying, "Here's where I am." And the other person on this side, "Here's where I am and we're going to meet in the middle and that's the solution." I don't believe it. I don't think that that's really ever what happens. I think it's more like we have an array of things on one side an array of things on the other. And we sort of see where the arrays sort of coalesce or sort of where they they overlap a little bit. And we find a solution in that overlap. There is always overlap. And that's what I like to point out to people. Go to the overlap part and work from there rather than go from these polarized positions. And it may not... If we were to continue on with the line analogy, it may end up, instead of in the middle, it may end up over here on some issues and over here on other issues. So, just don't have this notion that mediation means that I'm going to lose some stuff and he's going to win some stuff for she's going to lose some stuff and he's going to win some stuff. Realize that maybe you're all going to win. That's a possibility that this pie is a giant pie. And maybe it just never ends. And I like that kind of thought rather than winner and loser. We're talking about these as strategies. That really powers up your position in the mediation. So, I'm hearing from you that, that first point was about focus. Get clear about what it is that you want and then your second point is about flexibility. The strategy of, "Okay, here's what I want but there's going to be some overlap and there's going to be some meshing and some give-and-take and some flow." Yes. And also to help you with both of those things with both focusing and compromising, I find it very helpful to have a list of all the issues, if you have an attorney, it's good to go over that list with your attorney. But if not, you just come up with all the issues. Because here's what often happens. Sometimes, in mediation, you get focused so much on one aspect of it exactly how holidays are going to work or exactly how child support is going to work or exactly how the clothes are going to go back and forth. Are we going to each have our own clothes or whatever. That you forget that there are other issues that you also want to get to. And sometimes and I hate to say this, but sometimes we spend 90% of the time on the big issues. But we spend 90% of the time on certain issues and then everything else has to fit into the last 10%. And that to me, sounds like the wicked stepsisters trying to force their feet into the glass slipper. It just doesn't exactly fit that way. And you don't feel as good about those things. So, have a list and sort of pace yourself. That's sort of a bonus one that goes in between both of these other ones. The third point I want to make is to move on and be happy. Once you've come up with a solution, don't second-guess yourself. Don't keep going over and over, "Oh, I should have done this." Just don't. Trust that. If you've covered your list, if you've got the things that you really want, that you can make it work. That's what people sometimes get stuck in. They think, "Oh, if you had done this slightly differently. I want to give an example." It doesn't have anything to do with mediation but it taught me a lot. I met 10-year old kid in Alabama at my cousin's house. One of them has a pool table set up with a civil war battle. Why? "Because if only this person had done this differently, the South would've won." This is more than 100 years later and they're still talking about how the South could have won. "What life would have been like had Dixie risen and stay in a separate country from the United States? Really? You can do that in your life? You can. Well, if we just done this, my child would have been here more. Gone to this score. I would have been able to move to France or whatever. I don't know. But the point is don't beat yourself up over what might have been or could have been. Make what you decided and trust that what you decided was good. Because you're informed. You trust yourself. You're a parent and you have an idea of what's in the best interest of your children and you deep down, I think we know what's good. And we can make it work. And I think that's generally a human trait. We can actually, we can survive under lots of circumstances. Just for example right now, I'm living in my basement. We left town for 10 days. The operation on our house was supposed to take 4 days. While we're two weeks later and the operation we hope is going to end today. But you know what? We're surviving, we're thriving. I talked to Dr. Paul when I first got here about I was worried about my socks today. Only have 3 pairs of socks that I'm cycling through. We always get to the laundry every 3 days because we anticipated getting back from vacation and moving right back in. So, I I don't even know where my other socks are. Things like that. The truth is, no matter what you've decided in mediation, you can make it work. And you can make it work well. And you can be happy about it. And think of what it does for the children. If you think... If they see you making it work and being happy and you can do it. And not only that, this is sort of a bonus as well. One of the things that we can do in mediation is come up with, "Well, what if we have disagreements in the future that we hadn't thought of?" What if this there are unintended results?" Guess what? You can go back to mediation, you can create ways for a conflict resolution right in the mediation agreement. You can say, "Okay in the future, if something comes up that we had not anticipated, here's what we're going to do about it." We'll make a tentative agreement to do this, we'll talk about it and if we can't talk then maybe we'll go to mediation before we go to trial again or before we take it to the judge. That is an awesome solution. Because if it works the first time, it's most likely to work again. I'll also say this, a lot almost always requires that you go to mediation before you go back to the judge if you really want to change something. But think about it. It's a beautiful thing to be able to have a plan to resolve conflicts because things are going to come up. People get sick, people get injured, somebody gets an opportunity to go to the summer in another country or something like that. And so, all of a sudden what does that do to visitation. If one parent gets her 2 weeks or 3 weeks. But the other parent has to give up all of his time because the child is going to be on a study abroad or something like that. Well, there are ways to work it out. And there are ways to work it out and they're in the best interest of everyone. And really the best interest of the children is the most important thing. So, when you go to mediation, just to recap a little bit. Make sure that you have what's most important to you in mind. Make sure that you put everything on the table that you are willing to compromise and that you're willing to recognize the places where you guys agree on things and build from there. And also remember to be happy about your agreement. Just decide to be happy about it. Sometimes people, I think just beat themselves up over stuff over and over again. What if, what if. "What if I had taking this other road." I don't know. There are just so many times when we play the wet if game. Stop it. Just be happy and move on. And remember, you could always revisit mediation in the future. I love mediation. It feels good. It feels so much better and I guess I got to give you this example. I've had 27 trials for custody in my career. I've had a lot of hearings about temporary custody but when it comes down to final custody trials, I've had only 27. And I've been practicing for 27 years. I don't know of a single time when anybody was really happy after a trial. And here's why. When the judge says, "Alright, I've taken the evidence, here's what I'm doing." And from the judges perspective, he's probably, I'm giving mom some stuff I'm giving dad some stuff. Maybe the judge feels like he's trying to be even-handed. But what the judge is really doing, he's saying, "Here's what the law says, here's what I'm doing." Nobody's really happy about that. You're not creating anything. You're responding. You're being told what to do. I love being in control of my own life. And I think you do too. And I think that's the best. That's what Live on Purpose is all about. Exactly. Sid, your expertise is so valuable here. Thank you for those strategies about mediation and especially your wrap-up point which is what you create from this process, you can and will adapt to. So, learn to love where you are and participate in that process in the way that you've expressed here, Sid. I think that's a powerful alternative to some of the less favorable alternatives. Exactly. I don't know about you but I'm picking up things I didn't even know about that industry. And I worked in it for a long time. I hope you found that helpful. 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