Timing and Family Mediation

Timing is important in family Mediation.

Parties are at times more ready to achieve a resolution than at others.It is important that mediators are aware of the impact and importance of timing and the emotional aspects of separation.

Fisher and Ury “Getting to Yes” (1997) speak of the importance of “getting into step” with the other person and timing is an aspect of this.

Much has been written about the psychological aspects of divorce, the loss it involves and the grief process.

Many writers have interpreted separation and divorce in terms of moving through a number of overlapping stages not unlike those described by Kubler-Ross in her classic book “On Death and Dying” as denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. These days it is more common for writers to describe the parties as cycling back and forth between the emotional stages rather than passing through them in sequence.

I always recall a matter where I represented a party and the other party had been particularly difficult to negotiate with in the course of a drawn out and conflicted divorce. Eventually, after a successful mediation the other party said to me; “Mr. Emerson, you must have thought for a long time that I was a proper so and so to deal with, but I just wasn’t ready”. This was a very helpful lesson for me in understanding the importance of timing in achieving an outcome.

Mediators need to be sensitive to these issues and take account of where parties are in the grief process.


Mike Emerson
Brisbane mediations