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Diana Mercer is an Attorney-Mediator and the founder of Peace Talks Mediation Services and gives some tips about divorce mediation. Tip #1: Organize nothing. Either bring none of your financial records or requested documents to your attorney’s office or a court hearing, or bring all your financial records in a paper sack overflowing with miscellaneous papers. Take no responsibility for any aspect of your case. Procrastinate gets documents together and ask your lawyer to handle even the simplest stuff because you don’t have the time and, of course, money is no object. Tip #2 Call your lawyer repeatedly, ideally several times a day, and ask the same question over and over and over again. Never write down his or her response, and never follow the lawyer’s advice and instructions. Ditto for your therapist. Tip #3 Make sure you’re blinded by anger surrounded yourself only by friends who agree with you completely. In fact, make sure your closest friends encourage you to get retribution by doing things like slashing your ex’s tires and throwing their possessions on the lawn. Gossip nonstop to anyone who will listen, including strangers. Refuse to see a therapist or reach out for help. Continue to mine the unresolved relationship issues for tidbits that will inspire you to new levels of anxiety and revenge fantasies. Tip #4 Hire the fanciest, Sharky-EST, most expensive lawyer in town even if you have few assets and mostly debts.Be sure to call and complain and make demands every day. Tip #5 If you owe your lawyer money, pay small sums at a time or nothing at all for your ever-growing bill. Get into terse discussions with your lawyer about the additional work you’d like doing while your over-due bill remains unpaid. Make them chase you for their fees and threaten not to pay. You want to be sure that the entire office staff rolls their eyes when they see your file and that your lawyer gets in a bad mood every time he or she thinks about working on your case. Refuse to pay experts like accountants and appraisers needed for your case until months into the process. Force them to do their reports at the last minute, and be slow to get them required documents and slow to answer their questions. Tip #6 If your relationship is deteriorating daily, be sure and continue to stay in the same house to save money. As tensions escalate, threaten to call the police, and eventually call 911. Flip a coin to see who gets arrested and spends the night in jail. If you’re especially lucky, you both will. Tip #7 Refuse to speak to your spouse except through attorneys. Don’t talk settlement until the court forces you to do so. Say things like, “It’s the principle that matters!” particularly if you have a limited amount of money to spend on your divorce. Refuse to think seriously about settlement proposals and just ask for everything. Maintain that everything is equally important, from the $12 candle holders to your retirement plan. Tip #8 Demand that your lawyer file as much legal paperwork as possible even if you don’t really understand its purpose or what it is. Keep giving your spouse a hard time and running up his or her legal bills as your top priority. Completely ignore the fact that you’re paying for this work, too. Become paranoid and hire a private investigator to follow your spouse around even though you live in a state where fault either doesn’t matter at all or influences the settlement very little. Never be satisfied that you know enough about your finances to make a good decision. Just ask for more and more documentation even though you have never reviewed what was already provided. Tip #9 Blame your spouse for everything. Maintain your martyr status by emphasizing all of the terrible things that have happened, while maintaining that you were (and are) completely innocent and oblivious. Revel in your victim status and tell anyone who will listen. Tip #10 Go to court over even the smallest issue. File as many motions and requests for hearings as possible, and always refuse to settle anything in advance. Spend your time milling around in the court hallway waiting for the judge to get to your case while he or she hears the 15 cases ahead of yours. If you do decide to talk settlement while you’re waiting, be sure and nitpicked every detail, agree with an issue and then change your mind. If you do settle in the hallway, make sure it’s last minute and written up hastily because you want to make sure that there are plenty of misunderstandings about interpretation and what your agreements meant later on so that you can go back to court again. And again. And again. Diana Mercer is a Divorce mediation attorney and the founder of Peace Talks Mediation Services, provides you divorce mediation services and also helps to develop child custody plan and Sample Parenting Plans. She is also the co-author of Making Divorce Work: 8 Essential Keys to Resolving Conflict and Rebuilding Your Life and Your Divorce Advisor: A Lawyer and a Psychologist Guide You Through the Legal and Emotional Landscape of Divorce (Simon & Schuster/Fireside 2001) and writes for the Huffington Post as well as her own blog Making Divorce Work.
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