Florida Family Lawyer Blog
Continued from Part I. For issues regarding the children, you can think about the type of time-sharing you want in the case, that you think is best for the children, and works for you and the other parent. For overnight time-sharing, relevant issues include being sure there’s a place in the home, apartment for the child to sleep, and the work schedule for each parent. Safety for the child, and for one or both parents is an issue in some cases. You’ll have to decide on how you want to handle the time-sharing exchanges and transportation, as well as money issues such as paying for extra-curricular activities, and medical, dental, vision expenses that are not covered by insurance, and who is going to get the health insurance for the child. The cost for health insurance is almost always added into and apportioned between the parents as part of the child support calculation. Many if not most mediators will have the family law financial software that will let them easily compute child support for you, once they have the figures to plug into the calculation. You can follow the following link for more information about calculating Florida child support. One good way to review and organize your thoughts regarding the children’s issue in a case, is to look through the form Parenting Plan on the Florida court’s website – www.flcourts.org, in the section of the website containing the family law forms.
If deciding who gets which assets and who pays which debts is an issue, it is a good idea to use some type of financial software or spreadsheet to keep track of how much in “net” assets each party is receiving, to avoid having to continually recalculate on a calculator as you keep trying out different options or scenario. It is also important to have recent account statements and pay stubs available and organized before you go to mediation, which can save you time searching for statements or calling the Human Resources department at you job during the mediation, to look for information regarding your earnings, the balance in retirement accounts, bank accounts, etc. If you need to deal with short selling or refinancing a home and removing one party’s name from the mortgage, you can think about how you want to handle this – how many months to refinance, what happens if it isn’t done or it’s not possible to get it done. Each case can involve different issues, depending on what there is to resolve. Sometimes people will use the first mediation session to help organize the issues and identify financial and other information needed to reach a settlement.
Sometimes, you will be able to resolve all of the issues in one mediation session. As I have mentioned before, in some mediations each party can take in the information they receive during the session, and come to decisions after the session. In my opinion, it’s better for there to be a period of time following a session before you sign an agreement, but many times parties will want to get everything done during the first mediation session, especially if the mediation is done as part of a case that is being litigated and both sides want it over, want to be sure they have an agreement, and want the litigation to end. Hopefully in a litigated case or otherwise, you won’t go into a mediation feeling that kind of pressure.
