Mediation Agenda:
Parenting, Support & Property Distribution

Whether you're in person or online, when you arrive, I'll meet with you each individually in separate rooms. This gives us an opportunity to meet together individually and talk about any updates or concerns you may have before we get going.

When we sit together, I'll make sure everyone has a coffee or tea and feels ready to begin. I'll talk a bit about confidentiality and some of the "rules of the game". I'll review the overall session and the structure of the discussions.

To be honest, I do this mainly to let you catch your breath and get situated. Most people feel anxious at the beginning of the meeting, so I take center stage first and once you're settled in I'll turn the discussion to you.

Now the conversation becomes yours. I'm there to facilitate, but you and your spouse will start to flesh out the important aspects of the discussion.

I'll ask you each: What you want to discuss in mediation?

This is to establish a shared agenda. As you're reading the Mediation Agenda right now, you can see that there is an overall method to discuss the topics we generally need to cover, but this is your opportunity to confirm the pieces that relate to you and your family and you may add on some matters that might be pressing or unique to your family.

Common Topics are:

• parenting responsibilities

  • communication

  • decision making

  • managing conflict

• parenting time

  • schedule

  • holidays

  • travel

  • how to handle new romantic partners

• Child Support

  • Monthly payments

  • Special Expenses, such as child care, school tuition, medical expenses, and extracurriculars

• Spousal Support

• Distribution of Property

  • Property means all assets and debts

  • It includes your house, businesses, financial accounts and pensions

• Don't forget to discuss your pets if you have them!

The next question I'll ask you is:

What was the reason you agreed to be here today? To work together as opposed to agains one another?

This is an opportunity to set the tone for the conversation and share how you'd like to approach the conversation. This is when you can share what is important to you about how you handle your separation, how you want to honor your relationship, or maybe it's simply about cost and efficiency. What ever is driving you through the discussion, you want to share that.

Some common reasons may be:

• I want to have an amicable relationship moving forward

• I didn't want to involve lawyers and ramp up conflict

• I believe we have the capacity to figure these things out

• I want what is best for both of us and I want to collaborate to find a solution

• I wanted to keep costs down and not spend unnecessarily on court or fighting about things

• I wanted to get this done relatively quickly so that we can both begin to move forward

We want to create a joint vision about what is in the best interests of the Children. Under the law, the best interests of the Children is the only consideration. This is your opportunity to define what you believe is in the best interests of your children.

I'll start by asking you: Imagine your Children when they're in their mid-twenties and they're sitting in a coffeeshop with a new friend and they're talking about their childhoods. Imagine the friend says, "I didn't realize that your parents separated when you were a kid, what was that like for you?" What would you want your child to say?

I ask this from the perspective of the Children, because it forces you to take a child-centered approach to the conversation, but you can also approach these topics from your own point of view.

What would you want them to say about their observations of you and your spouse as co-parents?

• What was the overall approach to co-parenting

• How did you communicate?

• How did you keep each other informed about parenting matters?

• How did you make decisions?

• How did you approach and manage conflict?

What would you want them to say about their experience of time with each of you?

• What was the quality of time?

• What were the principles that were important in creating a schedule?

• How did they experience holidays, special days, celebrations and travel with each parent?

• How did you create stability for them?

We'll take this vision to form the intentions for our conversations around Parenting Responsibilities and Parenting Time.

Parenting Responsibilities

We will sort out parenting responsibilties which includes decision making. It's always wise to have a conversation about how you will approach decisions and possibly create a process that you can each follow to communicate smoothly and efficiently.

Parenting Time

We're going to discuss a general parenting time approach, which may include a schedule, but doesn't have to. There are a few popular schedules that you may wish to review: Primary Parenting Schedules

Shared Parenting Schedules

With regard to Holidays and Special Days, you can look at this spreadsheet to familiarize yourself with how we'll approach the discussion. Enter your names on the first page and then navigate to the Holiday Schedule Tab at the bottom. This one can feel a bit overwhelming, but ultimately for any day, you have three options:

1. Keep your current schedule

2. Change the current schedule, in a flexible way that allows you agree each year on how you'll approach it

3. Change your parenting schedule in a specific way.

If you choose specific, then look to some of the other options in the table.

Other Parenting Matters

There are other topics that we'll cover such as travel, telephone calls and facetime, and introducing new people to the Children. You are always encouraged to bring up any other matters that you feel are important to discuss.

We always start the financial discussion at a high level. We need to understand what is important to each of you financially so that we know the direction we're heading. There are thousands of different ways to structure your financial separation in a legally fair way, but you should be in charge of the direction you go.

As yourself:

1. What is important financially?

2. What do you need us all to consider when we're making decisions?

Some values may include:

• House

  • Keep House

  • Sell House

  • Maintain interest in real estate market

  • Co-own House for a time

• Business

  • Keep Business

  • Continue to Run Business

• Go Back to School

• Retirement

  • Save for Retirement

  • Maintain Pension

• Children

  • Maintain Stability for kids

  • Keep Kids in their activities

  • Keep Kids at the same school

  • Sharing kids' expenses

• Lifestyle

  • Financial Security

  • Financial Independence

  • Making ends meet

  • Affording a similar lifestyle

  • Having similar lifestyles in each home

We'll run a calculation for Child Support and maybe Spousal Support, as well. For thes calculations, we focus on your incomes to figure out support. It's important to upload your last three years of Income Tax Returns and Notices of Assessment. If you own a business or run a corporation, we'll also need your financial statements. We're trying to figure out:

What is your income likely to be for the next 12 months?

What is available to pay support?

This is a prospective question, so most of us will not have a perfect answer, but we'll all be able to make an educated and informed guess based on past earnings and information about how we'll earn income into the upcoming year. Things can and may change. Don't worry. Child Support and Spousal Support may be adjusted upon a material change of circumstances and Child Support particuarly will adjust each year. You're not locking in forever.

We may review lump sum Spousal Support options as well if predictability and finality are important to you.

You've likely input your information into Divii. If you haven't, please take the time now to update that form. If the form is missing information, we have to use our time in mediation to update it. Search your inbox for the invitation I sent you. You must follow this specific link to login to our shared file. When we come together to talk about property we'll use the information you provided to define what assets and liabilities you currently have and a plan for who will retain each one or if you'll sell it or continue to hold it together.

Make sure you have your values. If you want a value for your house, your pension, or your business or corporation, you may need to hire a professional to help with that. See the Professional Directory in the Client section of the website (you'll need to login).

It's always wise to explore your options before you come to mediation. Talk to a lender to see if you can take over the mortgage and buy your spouse out.

We may also talk about:

1. Shared expenses until property transfers are complete.

   1. many people continue to pool their incomes and expenses and share them until the Agreement is signed, but if you choose to separate income and expenses earlier, you can use this spreadsheet as a way to ensure you are on the same page about excluded expenses and shared responsibilities.

   2. Enter your names on the first page and then navigate to the Expense Schedule Tab at the bottom. You can list expenses and think about the options for how to deal them.

2. Household Furnishings, if you need to agree on a specific item or group of items

   1. You can look at this spreadsheet to familiarize yourself with how we'll approach the discussion.

   2. Enter your names on the first page and then navigate to the Personal Property Schedule Tab at the bottom. You can list items and think about the options for how to deal them. You do not need to do this for everything, but only items you both want or can't agree on. As a general rule, you each keep personal items such as clothing, jewelry, sporting equipment, etc. and then agree on the rest of the items between you. You don't need to list every fork and lightbulb in this spreadsheet, but can use it to outline significant items you each value.

3. Holding Extended Health Benefits (check to see if your plan allows you to continue to hold your spouse)

4. Naming other Parent as a Beneficiary of your Life Insurance Policies

   1. this is recommended to secure support payments

   2. in order to discuss the options you'll want to check in with your plan to see how much life insurance you have

Once we have a sense on your Financial Interests and some calculations about sharing income and property, we're ready to approach the final structuring. We often have this part of the discussion separately so that you're able to bounce ideas off me, ask questions, and process the information without your spouse present. Often people aren't sure what's reasonable or fair, so doing this separately allows us to discuss various options without judgment or upset.

Once you've settled on the structuring of your agreement, I'll tell you about the next steps. I've outlined a lot of this in the After Mediation section of the Client Area of the website (you'll have to log in to access these steps).

And that's it. You'll have negotiated all the terms of your Separation Agreement and the actual document will follow.

I always recommend looking your agreement over with a lawyer before you sign.