You have been putting money towards your retirement, but will a divorce cause all those years of saving to unravel? The answer to this question depends on the nature on the community property estate as a whole. If you and your spouse have fairly equal retirement savings, then it’s most likely that each of you will simply take your respective retirements to simplify the process.

However, if your retirement constitutes a significant portion of the community estate, then your spouse will need to receive funds from another source (perhaps from equity in the marital home) to offset the assignment of the retirement savings.

If the retirement has to be divided between you and your spouse, you will not need to liquidate the other spouse’s share. Instead, a Qualified Domestic Relations Order (QDRO) will accompany your final decree of divorce and instruct the entity managing the retirement regarding the details of the division. Both portions will remain in the possession of the overseeing entity until either of you decides to withdraw your respective funds. In such a situation, the QDRO circumvents the necessity of liquidating a portion of the retirement, and enables you and your spouse to avoid penalties and fees.

Mediation is a four hour process in which a mediator works with both sides in a family law case to resolve the case through agreement. The parties are kept in separate rooms during mediation, meaning that you may never see your spouse or the other parent at mediation. The mediator then goes back and forth between the two rooms. This is crucial to the process as yelling at each other across a table causes emotions to swell and tempers to flare, making the process more difficult.

Mediation forces the parties and the attorneys to dedicate four continuous hours to trying to reach an agreement. Informal settlement discussions outside of mediation can drag on for months, with offers going back and forth from week to week. Even if an informal settlement is reached outside of mediation, you as the client may well have incurred more fees than you would have in mediation aside from the delay in reaching the settlement. Lots of cases settle informally and are resolved in an efficient fashion. However, when there is some conflict or there is a significant rift between the settlement proposals, then mediation is often the most efficient way to resolve a case.

Mediation resolves a vast number of cases due to a number of factors. First, the mediator shares his or her views with each party on the case, providing an objective perspective. The mediator discusses probable outcomes in Court and the relevant law. These are discussions that have probably already transpired between attorney and client, but sometimes require revisiting by the mediator.