Short Answer: mediation is required for any divorce or custody case in Tennessee where the two parties’ cannot agree to a settlement on their own. However, you should not look at this as a requirement, but as an opportunity to settle your case. Mediation is a highly beneficial process with a good success rate. In mediation, you have control and can have a say in very important aspects of your life, such as what happens to your assets and, more importantly, your children.

There is an inherent risk involved when a judge makes important decisions that impact your life. The judge will certainly do his or her best to do what is legally correct, but the judge has limited information and does not know you or the opposing party. As such, judges do not always get it right.

Trials are expensive, take a long time, and result in you abdicating your power to a stranger in a black robe who will make decisions for you that will impact your entire life.

Mediation has a very high success rate and involves a trained Mediator (normally an attorney who has undergone more than forty hours of training to mediate cases and become certified as a “Rule 31 Mediator” in Tennessee). The Mediator will have the parties in two separate rooms and the Mediator will go back and forth exploring with the parties possible solutions that the parties can implement to avoid a trial. A settlement at mediation allows you to have some input in the result of the lawsuit and many times helps you to preserve the ability to co-parent with the other party if you have children together.

Domestic Mediations with a trained Rule 31 Mediator result in settlements between 70% and 80% of the time on average and a successful mediation will be quicker and cheaper than trying your case.

Chris Pittman is a founding partner at Partner at Patton | Pittman. He has been practicing law for thirty years and has been a Rule 31 Listed Family Mediator for the last thirteen years. In that time, Pittman has mediated approximately 1,500 cases in Middle Tennessee.