Family Mediation in the Comox Valley

Family mediation is a voluntary, confidential process. A neutral mediator — someone who doesn’t take sides — sits down with both of you, helps you understand your options, and guides the conversation so the two of you can reach your own agreement. The mediator doesn’t decide anything for you and doesn’t take anyone’s side. You stay in control of the outcome.

That’s the key difference from going to court. In litigation, you each hire lawyers to argue your case, and a judge who has only just met your family makes the final decisions. It’s adversarial by design, it’s a matter of public record, and in British Columbia a contested family file commonly runs $25,000 to $100,000 or more per person and takes six months to three years or longer.

Mediation flips that. You keep the decisions, the conversations stay private, the cost is a fraction of litigation, and — because you built the agreement together — it tends to hold up far better over time. For families who’ll keep sharing a calendar and a couple of kids long after the paperwork is signed, that preserved relationship may be the most valuable part of all.

This meeting is not a sales pitch. Sometimes we finish a pre-mediation meeting and tell someone that mediation is not the right process for them right now. We would rather say that at the start than partway through. There is no pressure you proceed with mediation.

Regardless of whether you proceed with mediation after this meeting – you will receive useful legal information and a checklist to help you in your family law matter.

If after the pre-mediation meetings you and your spouse want to proceed, we will recommend a tier based on your family’s needs and you can decide whether to move forward. 

You are not paying separately for phone calls, emails, or the preparation work behind the scenes. It is one fee per person.

Whichever tier fits your file, your fee covers:

• All communication with our office to prepare for mediation — you are not billed each time you email us a question
• Document collection and organisation — we provide the checklist, review what you send, and tell you what is still missing
• Preparation of your property and debt schedule and, where applicable, child and spousal support calculations
• The mediation session itself, up to the hours included in your tier
• Drafting the outcome of your mediation — usually a Separation Agreement
• Basic revisions to that draft

We will recommend a tier after the pre-mediation meetings, because that is the first point at which we have enough information to make a sensible estimate. Four things tend to drive how much time a file needs.

None of these make you a difficult client. They are simply features of a file, and we would rather price them honestly than pretend every mediation takes the same amount of time.

1. The level of conflict and disagreement between you

Two people who are hurt or angry but able to stay at the table can move quickly. Two people who need to revisit their history before discussing the future will need more hours.

2. The complexity of your finances

A house, a mortgage, and two pensions is straightforward. Add a business, a rental property or exclusions and there is more to work through.

3. Business ownership or self-employment

Determining income for support purposes is more involved when income comes from a business rather than a T4, and property division may involve valuing the business itself.

4. The reliability and availability of your financial information

This is the factor people underestimate most. When documents are missing, out of date, or slow to arrive, mediation time gets spent tracking down information instead of resolving issues.

You have more influence over your final cost than you might think. The clients who finish comfortably within their tier tend to do these things.

• Send your documents early and completely. This is the single biggest cost factor within your control. Working from a complete financial picture means we can spend session time on decisions rather than on gaps.
• Tell us early if something will be hard to get. A pension valuation or a business financial statement can take weeks to obtain. If we know at the start, we can work around the timing. If we find out the week before mediation, we may need to reschedule.
• Come with your priorities sorted, not your position locked. Knowing what matters most to you is enormously helpful. Arriving with a single non-negotiable outcome usually costs time rather than saving it.
• Keep communication between you businesslike. Short, factual, child-focused messages between sessions keep the temperature down. Long messages about the past tend to raise it, and a higher temperature costs hours.
• Choose your battles. Every issue you resolve between yourselves before mediation is time you do not spend on it in the room. Many couples arrive having already agreed on things like which household items go where.
• Arrange your independent legal advice promptly. We encourage each of you to have your draft agreement reviewed by your own lawyer. Booking that review early keeps your file moving.
• Use the process for the hard conversations, not the small ones. Mediation is designed for the genuinely difficult issues. Save your hours for those.

Sometimes a file turns out to be more involved than it first appeared. If that happens, we will tell you before you run out of hours, not after — and we will explain what we think is still needed and roughly how long it will take.

At that point you can add session time at our hourly rate ($250.00 per person), or move up to the next tier, whichever works out better for you. You will always know the cost before we proceed.

If mediation stops working for you, you are free to step out at any point. Mediation is voluntary from beginning to end.

If we think your file will need any of these, we will flag it early so you can budget for it.

To be completely clear, the following are separate costs:

• Independent legal advice from your own lawyer on the draft agreement (we encourage this; it is not mandatory)
• Third-party reports such as business valuations, property appraisals, pension valuations, or actuarial reports
• Court filings or applications, if your agreement requires a court order
• Wills and estate planning updates after your agreement is signed (we can help with this separately, and we recommend it)

As mediators as also lawyers, but as your mediator we do not act for either of you and cannot tell you what you should do. Our role is to guide the conversation, provide information, help you explore options you may not have considered, and record what you agree. The decisions are yours. That is the whole point.