FAMILY MEDIATION AND NEVER-MARRIED PARENTS |
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| Authors: | Joan K. Raisner |
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| Affiliation: | Joan K. Raisner, a mediator with the Circuit Court of Cook County (Chicago, Illinois), leads the team that provides mediation services to never-married parents who are referred from Expedited Child Support Court. She also conducts the Marriage and Family Counseling Service (MFCS) in-house training for new court mediators and is a member of the MFCS Committee on Family Violence &Emerging Issues. She has presented several workshops on mediation with never-married parents at state and national conferences and, with other MFCS colleagues, has provided required training for Illinois private mediators on issues of family violence. |
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| Abstract: | Parents who were never married to each other are increasingly court-ordered to mediate disputes over their children. The author reviewed 441 cases of divorcing and never-married parents to compare their experiences with family mediation. Client situations, adjustments in mediator behavior, and outcomes of mediation such as mediation did occur and agreements reached were compared. Factors external to mediation had a different impact on never-married parents than on divorcing parents. The review indicated never-married parents had a higher no-show rate than that of divorcing parents, yet when never-married parents did appear for court-ordered mediation, they reached agreements at the same rate as divorcing parents. Surprisingly, the never-married parents with a history of violence were more likely to appear for appointments and reach agreements. Overall, with modifications in mediator assumptions and behavior, divorce/family mediation appears to be useful to never-married parents. |
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