Ray Hrdlicka – Host – Attorneys.Media
How do you resolve conflicts that arise during that, you know, two people butting heads? How do you resolve the conflict that is invariably going to happen or else they wouldn’t be there in the first place?
Bill Leininger – Divorce Mediation Attorney – Richmond County, NY
The training that we take, and I’ve taken training in three different states over the last 30 years and every year we have to keep up our training. So a lot of it will deal with dealing with emotions, you know, dealing with people who love to push the spouses buttons and stuff like that. And so, you know, we’ve been trained.
Sometimes we will break the people up. Traditionally, 95% of my mediations are together in the one room or on the one room screen. But about 5% of the time, something happens. Somebody’s pushing the other one’s buttons, giving the golden stare here or something like that.
And I ask the people, would you mind if I met privately with you guys for a few minutes each? I think we’re stuck here, you know? And sometimes someone will have drawn a line in the sand.
“I’ll give you $700 a week. I’m not going to give you $701, you know, take it or leave it. You know, you can dumpster dive for all I care.”
So, to get into something like that, you ask the people if they can and you let them know. Anything you tell me for the caucus session will remain confidential with me. I’ll never share it with your spouse unless you tell me I’m allowed to discuss that with your stuff, OK?
So, it’s very important that the person knows that they can tell me anything they want.
I had a case where the fellow had spent several sessions about this, where the visitation drop-offs were going to be on the New Jersey Turnpike and that type of thing. And then when we went into caucus, he said, “Oh, Bill, I’m just been pulling her chain. I already have an apartment for my girlfriend in Fort Lauderdale. I know exactly what I intend to do”…. and I yelled at him, I shouldn’t have, but I yelled at him. I said, “you know, you got to be straight because when you’re spending money, if you’re playing games with your kids, not a good idea.”
So, you see how a caucus can sometimes be very, very valuable. You just can’t use it all the time, you know.
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