Ask an expert
- Debra Opri
- Litigation attorney
- Founder and partner of Opri & Associates
What’s the difference between a litigated divorce, arbitration and mediation?
If you hire a private judge, you can take everything out of the courtroom, where you’re waiting forever today. It’s very rough sitting in a courtroom — and that’s where the charges come from. When you’re waiting, waiting, waiting — for months.
If you hire a private judge, he can arbitrate it and have what you call a mini trial, in a conference room. You pay the private judge — you don’t pay a judge in the county courthouses that your taxes paid for.
But mediation is where you’re already in a courtroom, and you say: I don’t want to stay in the courtroom. We’ve got to work this out. Let us have a settlement conference. A mediation is non binding if the parties don’t agree, and it’s held in a conference room.
The difference between mediation and arbitration is in arbitration, the judge is paid to make a final ruling. Mediation is where the parties are with a third-party judge who will say this is what I recommend — and you take it or you don’t. And litigation is a battle royale until you get to the courthouse with the judge.
