I want to compliment and honor those of you who have seen the terrible destruction and waste that is characteristic of family court litigation, and who have been inspired by this insight to inquire about and undertake mediation with LAFMS - or who have been encouraged within your locale to find peacemakers, rather than legal warriors to battle senselessly over unresolved issues relating to your marriages and domestic partnerships. Whether you retain LAFMS or any other mediation firm to help you through these traumatic relational times, by opening yourself to mediated outcomes in divorce and family law conflict you become pioneers in entertaining the possibility that there is an alternative to the tone of warfare and acting-out that seems to distract and entertain a large part of our popular culture - personified by the talking heads on so much television and by our national politicians.

I write this Blog tonight to honor a couple who successfully completed a complicated mediation today after about two months of mediated sessions (less than 12 hours overall). They showed such great dignity and fairness, while necessarily needing to contain and respond to their respective fears and concerns about finances and how they could move forward in this new world of single and not dual incomes, that I was almost stunned at how easy mediation can be for some. One member of this former couple had interviewed a storm trooper of a local attorney, and she recognized immediately (as she told me) that that attorney's agenda sounded hollow and self-serving and that the red flags had flared. This person chose differently, but most importantly she made a choice. Few do.

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Thurman W. Arnold, III, LAFMS Mediator