BAKER & BAKER

         Family Lawyers

During your thirty minute complimentary consultation you will receive a free copy of the Ontario Divorce Handbook by Donald S. Baker, LL.B.

We ensure that all your questions are answered.

Baker & Baker

1176 Yonge Street

2nd Floor

Toronto, Ontario

M4W 2L9

dbaker@bakerandbakerlaw.com

Mediation - Our Recommended Solution

If your goal is to leave your marriage with your dignity, your sanity and your net worth intact, I cannot recommend mediation strongly enough. Both parties work with the same impartial, trained mediator. Together, all your divorce issues are ironed out in a mature, dispassionate way. Mediation is quick and effective.

 

For mediation to make sense for your situation, you must be willing to negotiate, directly or indirectly, with your spouse. You must be able to agree on the same mediator, who will represent both your interests and help you and your spouse decide how best to handle the major divorce issues that confront you.

Mediation Process

Mediation is a series of settlement meetings between couples and a third party, to work through divorce related negotiations and make every effort possible to keep divorce out of an acrimonious court system, improve communication and minimize legal fees. Once the issues have been settled, the separation agreement then goes to each of the spouse's lawyers for review to ensure their client's best interests are met.

Without a doubt mediation is cost effective and expeditious. Mediation eliminates the need for case conferences, legal paperwork, and on going legal costs between opposing counsel.  Where children are involved in relationships, mediation is for your benefit and theirs to maintain communication and settle matters in an amicable fashion.

The Benefits of Mediation

• Avoid destructive divorce battles, which impact upon children of the marriage. 

• Improve communication between parents.

• It enables you to get on with your life.

• It yields better solutions because you have greater input on the terms of the settlement.

• Negotiate the terms of your settlement without the ambiguity of going to court.

• Promptly resolve divorce matters.

• Significantly reduce legal costs.

Special Note: If you are considering mediation, talk to your spouse first so that you can both contact a mediator at the same time. This will ensure that you both have confidence in the impartiality of the process.

How to avoid the Unwinnable War - Manage your legal costs effectively

A contested divorce can easily consume tens of thousands of dollars as well as leave emotional devastation in its wake.  The following is a fee projection based on a divorce in which a negotiated settlement is arrived at with both spouses, each represented by their own lawyer.

You each pay:

• Initial consultation: establishing the background facts with the lawyers each spouse pays for 2-3 hours.

• Drafting of documents each spouse pays for 3-5 hours.

• Negotiations between the lawyers 1-2 hours total.

• Meeting with both spouses and both lawyers 2-4 hours total.

• Drafting of separation agreement by one of the lawyers. 2-4 hours, paid by one spouse.

• Other lawyer reads and amends. 1-2 hours, paid by one spouse.

• Redraft 1 hour, paid by one spouse

Twelve to twenty-one hours multiplied by $300 an hour means that you will spend from $3600 to $6300 each. This assumes that the lawyers and clients are able to reach an agreement in one meeting, which is not always the case. In this scenario the total amount paid to lawyers may be between $4000 and $12,000.

In the case of a divorce which goes to court, costs can escalate into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. In many cases, affluent couples have lost their properties and savings and ended up in debt after bitter, protracted and acrimonious divorces were finally settled. We strongly recommend that you take all reasonable steps to avoid such a situation.