Mediation for All Families

You want agreements that take into account your goals and needs, not a one-size-fits-all approach. Family law mediation gives you the ability to craft the agreements that work for your unique life situation and family. In traditional litigation, a judge makes the decisions that will shape your family’s future. When you mediate, you are in control of the outcome. 

Mediation also helps you to avoid the escalation that all too often accompanies traditional litigation. The court system, by its nature, encourages both parties to take adversarial positions. This can make it harder to reach resolution. In contrast, mediation allows you to navigate challenging conversations with care and compassion for each other. 

My mediation practice starts with understanding your underlying goals, interests, and needs. We use those as the starting point for exchanging proposals, which you use to craft agreements. Focusing on interests allows you to bring your whole experience and perspective into the mediation process. This makes mediation particularly well suited for families and individuals who identify as queer, LGBTQ+, non-monogamous, polyamorous, alternative parents, and/or neurodivergent. Mediation also allows us to take into account systemic discrimination, intersectionality, ableism, and other structural inequities when crafting agreements.

Queer, Trans and LGBTQ+ Family Law Mediation

Queer, trans, and LGBTQ+ families and individuals often face an additional layer of complication during family transitions, such as creating your family, navigating relationship changes, or dissolving a long term relationship. I bring compassion, experience with the community, and an understanding of the concerns unique to queer and same sex families. This includes helping same sex partners with confirmatory adoptions of their child(ren), working with unmarried partners to create a cohabitation agreement or a dissolution agreement, and working with out of state couples who want to dissolve a California Registered Domestic Partnership.

Poly, Non-Monogamous, and Alternative Families

You’ve already explained your relationship choices to your family and friends, including steering them toward the right books and podcasts when they had questions. You don’t need to educate your lawyer, too. I have many years of experience working with and part of the East Bay poly and alt parenting communities. My ability to combine this lived experience with California family law allows me to help you create agreements that fill the gaps in the legal structure. In addition, I can work with you to use existing laws in new and creative ways, such as creating a three-parent family for a polycule. I also work with single parents by choice and other families conceiving children with reproductive assistance and/or surrogacy.

Neurodivergent-Friendly Mediation 

It can be challenging for people who identify as neurodivergent to feel seen and understood in a legal setting. Part of my intake process includes having a conversation with you about the ways that you absorb, process, and store information. I work with you to find accommodations that fit your needs, for example, by offering visual decision and process maps, written, pre-session agendas, flexible scheduling, asynchronous communication options, or sensory-friendly virtual meetings. 

Ready to take the next step in deciding whether mediation is right for you? Schedule a virtual consultation, email me, or read the Mediation FAQs