WHAT ARE THE MAIN BENEFITS OF MEDIATION?

  • Mediation offers clients the opportunity to resolve their differences in a way that allows them to be heard. This promotes dialogue and puts the clients in the driver’s seat. In litigation, the parties are at the mercy of the legal system and the final decision is handed down by a judge. The legal process can be brutal, and the nature of litigation is to create and foster acrimony between the parties. In family law matters this has a particularly devastating effect on children, who in addition to the trauma of the divorce, have the added trauma of warring parents.
  • An added benefit of mediation is that it is not as lengthy a process as litigation, and this saves the parties a considerable amount of money in the long run. Fighting a legal battle within the courts can drag on for months or even years.

HOW DOES MEDIATION DIFFER FROM TRADITIONAL SETTLEMENT NEGOTIATIONS?

The mediator is a neutral third party and is there to assist the parties in reaching agreement. The mediator doesn’t give advice but can provide information which assists the parties in coming to an agreement.

HOW TO ENSURE A SOUND AGREEMENT?

  • The parties need to commit to being completely transparent with regards to their financial positions;
  • The parties must be open to discussing any and all issues that come up during the mediation in a respectful manner.
  • For there to be a sound agreement, both parties must understand that neither of them will be completely happy with the outcome of the agreement. If one party’s wants are entirely appeased, then this usually means that the other party is impaired.
  • Successful mediation relies on parties deflecting confrontation and being completely open to dialogue between one another.

FAMILY MEDIATION

Within the Family Mediation sector, Riva Lange strongly advocates the use of the co-mediation model whereby one of the mediators has a psychology background and the other, a legal background. Both will assist in the formation of an agreeable settlement. Riva Lange Attorneys offers this model at a competitive rate. However, at the parties’ discretion, Riva Lange is equally comfortable on her own in the cases where clients prefer to have only one mediator.
Family mediation ranges from disputes around divorces, post-divorce conflict and even mediation between family members that is not related to divorce as well as co-parenting disputes where parties were not married.
Riva Lange is accredited through NABFAM as a family mediator and has been practicing as such for more than ten years.

COMMERCIAL MEDIATION

Riva Lange is excited to announce that she is now qualified and accredited as a commercial mediator through Conflict Dynamics, one of the foremost training institutions in South Africa. I bring my extensive knowledge and experience gleaned from my work as a family law mediator to my work as a commercial mediator. My experience in family law mediation has prepared me to deal with highly emotive situations and to assist parties in finding creative solutions. This requires thinking outside of the box, which is not possible in a litigation process. This gives the parties the control to reach an agreement that meets their needs in an environment of trust and respect. It allows for the resolution of conflict so that the parties can move forward.