New Jersey Mediation Lawyer

Ending a marriage can be an emotionally stressful and complicated endeavor. In New Jersey communities like Montclair, Nutley, and Saddle Brook, couples planning for divorce need legal representation to help them navigate the dissolution process as painlessly as possible. Divorce mediation has become a popular choice for this, and an experienced New Jersey mediation lawyer at Shore to Shore Mediation can help you prepare for mediation with confidence.

Experienced Mediation Counsel for New Jersey Clients

Shore to Shore Mediation helps clients approach divorce with peace of mind, clearly explaining the various options for completing the process efficiently. When many people think of divorce, they imagine heated courtroom exchanges, but this is not guaranteed for every divorce. Alternative dispute resolution, like mediation, offers an easier path to completing the process with greater control over the outcome.

When you hire a mediation lawyer from Shore to Shore Mediation, you will have a dedicated legal representative ready to provide compassionate support through every step of these proceedings. Divorce requires careful review of various financial records, planning for the future, and meeting procedural deadlines with the court. You have limited time to prepare, so it’s important that you consult a New Jersey mediation lawyer right away.

Understanding Divorce Mediation in New Jersey

According to a recent study by Bowling Green State University, the state-level adjusted divorce rate for New Jersey was 10.41 per 1,000 married women in 2022, placing New Jersey’s statewide divorce rate in the bottom quartile of all states in the country. Over the past several years, divorce mediation has grown to be one of the most popular options for resolving divorce cases throughout the United States, and you should understand what this process entails.

Divorce is more than just ending a marriage contract. It is also a formal process of dividing ownership rights of the couple’s shared property, resolving child custody rules if the couple has children, and establishing financial agreements for things like child support and alimony. Every divorce case is different, but divorce mediation offers tangible benefits whenever the divorcing spouses are willing to explore this process.

Your New Jersey mediation lawyer can help you identify all of the issues you and your spouse will need to cover in mediation. These issues may include spousal support or alimony, child custody, child support, and property division. If you were to resolve these issues in litigation, the final outcome of your divorce would largely be in the hands of the court. Mediation offers more control, privacy, and savings of both time and money.

Resolving Your Divorce With Mediation

Mediation allows divorcing spouses to meet privately with their respective attorneys to negotiate elements of their divorce. This is usually more affordable, more streamlined, and less time-consuming than divorce litigation as long as the spouses are willing to negotiate. While some issues, such as child custody, cannot be firmly resolved through mediation, it’s possible for the couple to negotiate certain financial elements of divorce through this process.

For example, property division in a New Jersey divorce is resolved according to the rule of equitable distribution. This means that the couple must reach the fairest possible division of their marital assets, but this does not necessarily mean each spouse will receive a perfectly equal half of their marital property. Each spouse must also show proof of ownership of any separate property they intend to keep in the divorce.

Separate property can include property owned prior to the marriage, gifts given solely to one spouse, and anything they inherited from blood relatives. Community or marital property, on the other hand, can include both assets and liabilities acquired by either spouse during the course of their marriage. This can include income earned by either spouse, property purchased using shared assets, and any property the couple holds in joint ownership.

Mediation can enable the spouses to divide marital property in the manner they deem to be the most equitable. This allows for more customization of this aspect of divorce. Conversely, if the couple resolved divorce through litigation, the court would decide the most equitable distribution of marital assets, and it could lead to disputes from either party or both parties.

Spousal support is another issue that can be contentious in a divorce, and mediation offers an avenue to resolve this aspect of dissolution with less stress than what you might expect in litigation. Spousal support or alimony is often required when one spouse has been financially dependent on the other for an extended period of time. A New Jersey mediation lawyer can help you reach an agreeable set of terms for this aspect of your case.

While the family court will need to review and approve any proposed custody agreement the divorcing spouses create, mediation offers a chance to create structured parenting plans that suit the spouses’ respective interests and their children’s needs. Ultimately, mediation allows the couple to draft the framework of their divorce agreement, and then they can take this to court to streamline the finalization of their divorce.

Benefits of Working With a New Jersey Mediation Lawyer

Ultimately, ending a marriage can be one of the most difficult experiences of your life, but you can make it much easier to manage by taking advantage of the benefits offered by divorce mediation. During mediation, the divorcing spouses and their attorneys meet under the supervision of a neutral mediator who guides discussion, clarifies legal statutes, and helps the couple draft their mediated divorce agreement.

Shore to Shore Mediation believes in facilitating respectful, mutually beneficial, and streamlined divorce mediation. If you are unsure whether this process is a viable option for your divorce, our team can review the details of your situation, explain what to expect, and provide ongoing support through all stages of the mediation process.

Shore to Shore Mediation is ready to help with all aspects of divorce mediation for New Jersey clients. If you are ready to explore this process and learn how a skilled attorney can help, contact us today and schedule a consultation with an experienced New Jersey mediation attorney. We look forward to helping you through this difficult process.