Over 40% of Canadian marriages end in divorce, most commonly initiated in January which has come to be known as “Divorce Month”. This is because many couples wait until after the holidays to move forward with the difficult process of separation. After decades of working with families in conflict as they struggle through the legal… Read more →
Managing “High Conflict” Behaviours
If any of you are like me, at some point in your life you will have come across a very difficult person (likely, more than one!). You know, the kind that doesn’t seem to respond to typical/traditional/common sense approaches to conflict resolution and problem solving. No matter what you do, no matter how hard you… Read more →
Parenting After Parting
A great resource out of the UK for parents on how to talk to your kids about your separation: Resolution – We Need To Talk from Resolution on Vimeo.
What is ADR?
For decades now, the acronym “ADR” has typically been used as a stand in for the mouthful: Alternative Dispute Resolution. At the ADR Institute of Manitoba, and here at Facilitated Solutions, we prefer to see ADR as APPROPRIATE Dispute Resolution. Here’s why: Mediation, arbitration, med-arb and other non-judicial dispute resolution mechanisms are increasingly become mainstream. Moreover, we WANT them to… Read more →
7 Tips for Starting a Healthy Separation
By Christina Vinters, J.D., Family Law Mediator, “ex” Divorce Lawyer, and Author of Pathways to Amicable Divorce: Directions for the Beginning of Separation Most people have heard horror stories about divorce and would like to avoid such experiences themselves. The adversarial divorce usually involves massive legal expenses, high levels of stress, and prolonged conflict which ends up… Read more →
Why I Don’t Proclaim Neutrality or Impartiality as a Mediator
From Facilitated Solutions’ Family Mediation Basics Training Manual with acknowledgements to David Dyck. From my perspective, the role of the mediator is not best understood in terms of impartiality or neutrality. These words are at best inadequate and at worst quite inaccurate in my view. With respect to the role of the mediator, we talk about balanced partiality rather… Read more →