Constitutional Rights in Family Court Mediation: Mandatory county court mediation programs cannot legally coerce fit parents into surrendering their constitutional rights to equal custody. Under Fourteenth Amendment Due Process, parents retain the supreme authority to negotiate parenting plans that preserve equal shared custody (Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57). Court mediators possess no lawful authority to impose unequal schedules.
Mediation in Kern County
This Kern County Court video makes a lot of suggestions. The following are the suggestions that they make when building a "good" parenting plan.
But first a couple of things that they stated about their mediation that you need to be aware of.
The video says that "Children 8 or older must go to mediation" in Kern County, California. And that "The mediator is only going to tell you what your child says they can tell you."
Attorneys are not allowed in mediation.
Mediators cannot make suggestions to the court about custody or parenting plans. They only report whether they got a "full" agreement, "partial" agreement or "no" agreement. They submit the agreements to the judge. If there are issues that the party did not agree on, the judge makes the decisions on those issues. So mediation in Kern County can be a way to limit the issues that you have to go to trial on.
A mediator can recommend to the judge that a child attorney be appointed or that a child custody investigation be done.
A very important thing that this videos notes, even though we don't believe that they truly understand the child's rights, the video says:
"The children have a right to have a relationship with both parents."
This Kern County Court video also contains many suggestions for how to have a successful mediation. It says:
You might be grieving the loss of your relationship and these feelings might be interfering with your ability to think about the issues.
The Five stages of grief:
1. Shock and denial "I can't believe this is happening to me."
2. Bargaining "where you might try to make deals where the divorce doesn't happen.
3. Anger
4. Depression
5. Acceptance
The 7 steps to finding solutions to a problem:
1. Define the problem
2. Analyze the problem
3. Brainstorming
4. Identifying the solution
5. Evaluate the solution
6. Develop an action plan
7. Put your new plan or modified plan into action with a time frame to evaluate it.
"Most children feel lost and sad when they are separated from one of their parents because the family they've known doesn't exist anymore."
"Putting Children First in a Changing Family" video:
http://www.kerncourtvideo.com/PublicWatchVideo.aspx?video=MED-1
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