Most divorces in Frances that go through traditional litigation cost between $15,000 and $30,000 per person. They drag on for 19 months or longer. Every detail of your marriage, your finances, and your disagreements becomes public record.
Mediation changes that equation completely. You’re looking at $2,000 to $5,000 total for both of you, and most couples finish the entire process in six months. Everything you discuss stays confidential. No courtroom. No judge making decisions about your kids or your assets without knowing your family.
You sit down with a trained mediator who understands California family law and helps you work through property division, spousal support, custody arrangements, and anything else that needs deciding. You control the outcome. You make the decisions together. The agreements you reach are legally binding—same enforceability as a court order, but you wrote the terms.
Your kids don’t get caught in a war. Your retirement accounts don’t get drained by attorney fees. You can actually communicate with your ex after this is over, which matters when you’re co-parenting for the next decade or more.
We work exclusively with families in Orange County who want to avoid litigation. Our mediators are certified in family law and trained specifically in conflict resolution—not attorneys trying to mediate on the side.
Frances families deal with the same pressures as the rest of Orange County: high cost of living, complex property situations, concerns about maintaining kids’ stability. We’ve guided couples through all of it. The flat-fee structure we use means you’re never watching the clock during sessions, wondering what this conversation is costing you per hour.
We’re not here to take sides. We’re here to make sure both of you are heard, both of you understand your options under California law, and both of you can live with the outcome.
You start with a free consultation where we explain the process and answer your questions. No pressure. If mediation makes sense for your situation, we’ll schedule your first session.
During mediation sessions, we work through each issue that needs resolution: how you’ll divide property and debts, whether spousal support makes sense and for how long, custody and visitation schedules if you have kids, child support calculations. We go at your pace. Some couples knock out everything in three or four sessions. Others need more time to work through complicated assets or emotional issues.
Between sessions, you’ll have time to gather documents, think about proposals, maybe consult with a financial advisor or tax professional. We’re not rushing you into decisions you’ll regret.
Once you’ve reached agreements on everything, we draft a marital settlement agreement that spells out every detail. You’ll each want to have an attorney review it—that’s smart, and we encourage it. Then the agreement gets filed with the court as part of your divorce paperwork. The court reviews it, and if everything’s in order, issues your final divorce decree.
The whole process typically wraps up in six months. You pay one flat fee that covers all mediation sessions, document preparation, and filing assistance. No surprise bills.
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Property division in California means splitting everything acquired during the marriage 50/50, but how you actually divide it is up to you. Maybe one person keeps the house and the other takes more retirement assets. Maybe you sell everything and split the proceeds. We help you understand the value of what you own and work through options that make sense for both of your futures.
Spousal support depends on how long you were married, what each of you earns, and what you need to maintain a reasonable standard of living. There are guidelines, but there’s also flexibility. We’ll walk through the calculations and help you figure out an amount and duration that’s fair.
If you have kids, custody and visitation take priority. We focus on schedules that work for your children’s ages, school situations, and both parents’ work commitments. Child support follows California’s guideline calculator based on incomes and timeshare percentages.
Post-judgment modifications come up when circumstances change after your divorce is final. Income changes, kids’ needs shift, someone needs to relocate. We handle those too, helping you modify existing orders without going back to court.
Every agreement we help you reach is legally binding. You’re not creating some informal arrangement that falls apart later. These are enforceable court orders, just reached through conversation instead of litigation.
Mediation with us runs between $2,000 and $5,000 total for both spouses combined. That’s a flat fee covering all your sessions, document preparation, and filing support. You’re not paying two separate attorneys who bill $300 to $500 per hour.
Traditional litigation in Orange County typically costs each spouse between $15,000 and $30,000. That’s $30,000 to $60,000 total for both of you. The costs add up fast because attorneys bill for every email, every phone call, every court appearance, every document they draft.
With our flat-fee pricing, you know exactly what you’re spending before you start. You’re not afraid to ask questions or take time working through an issue because the meter isn’t running. That transparency matters when you’re already dealing with the financial stress of splitting one household into two.
You don’t need to agree on everything before you start. That’s the whole point of mediation. You come in with disagreements, and we help you work through them.
What you do need is a willingness to have the conversation. If one person refuses to disclose financial information, won’t discuss the kids’ needs, or just wants to punish the other person, mediation becomes difficult. But if you’re both willing to be honest about your situations and listen to options, we can usually find solutions.
Some issues resolve quickly. Others take multiple sessions and creative problem-solving. We’ve seen couples who couldn’t be in the same room at first eventually reach comprehensive agreements they both felt good about. Our job is to keep conversations productive, make sure both voices are heard, and help you see possibilities you might not have considered on your own.
Most couples complete mediation in four to six months. That includes all your sessions, time between sessions to gather information or think about proposals, drafting your settlement agreement, and filing with the court.
Compare that to litigation, which averages 19 months in California and often stretches longer if your case is complicated or the court calendar is backed up. You’re waiting for court dates, waiting for responses to motions, waiting for discovery deadlines.
Mediation moves at your pace. If you want to schedule sessions weekly and push through quickly, you can finish in a few months. If you need more time between sessions to process emotions or consult with financial advisors, that’s fine too. You control the timeline instead of waiting on a judge’s availability.
Once your settlement agreement is complete and filed, California has a six-month waiting period from the date you initially filed for divorce until the court can finalize it. But all your actual decision-making and negotiating is done long before that final date.
Once your marital settlement agreement is signed and filed with the court as part of your divorce judgment, it’s a legally binding court order. It has the exact same enforceability as an agreement reached through litigation.
If someone violates the terms—doesn’t pay spousal support, doesn’t follow the custody schedule, doesn’t refinance the house like they agreed—the other person can go to court to enforce it. The court can hold someone in contempt for violating a mediated agreement just like any other court order.
Before you sign, you should absolutely have an attorney review the agreement. We encourage that. You want to make sure you understand what you’re agreeing to and that it protects your interests. Once both of you sign and the court approves it, you’re both bound by those terms.
The only way to change a mediated agreement later is the same way you’d change any divorce order: file a motion showing that circumstances have substantially changed, or go back to mediation and agree to modifications together.
The flat fee covers all mediation sessions you need to reach full agreement on every issue in your divorce. There’s no limit on sessions. If you need three, great. If you need eight, that’s covered too.
It includes preparation of your complete marital settlement agreement with all the required California language and provisions. We draft the custody and visitation schedule, the child support calculations, the property division details, spousal support terms—everything the court needs to see.
You also get guidance on filing procedures and what documents you need to submit to finalize your divorce. We don’t file for you (you’re not required to have an attorney do that), but we make sure you understand the process.
What’s not included: attorney review of your final agreement, which we strongly recommend you each get. Court filing fees, which run around $435 in California. Any consulting you want to do with financial advisors, tax professionals, or therapists during the process.
The flat fee means you’re never surprised by a bill. You know your total cost upfront, and you can budget accordingly during an already expensive life transition.
Yes. We offer virtual mediation sessions that work just as well as in-person meetings. You can both join from wherever you are—different cities, different states if someone’s already relocated.
Virtual sessions use secure video conferencing. You’ll see and hear each other and the mediator clearly. We can share documents on screen, work through spreadsheets together, and have the same productive conversations you’d have sitting in an office.
Some couples actually prefer virtual mediation because it feels less confrontational than sitting across a table from each other. You’re in your own space, which can make difficult conversations a bit easier.
The legal requirements are the same regardless of format. At least one of you needs to meet California’s residency requirements—living in the state for six months and in the county where you’re filing for three months. But the actual mediation sessions can happen anywhere with a decent internet connection.
We’ve worked with Frances families where one spouse took a job in another state before the divorce was final, military families dealing with deployments, and couples who just found virtual sessions more convenient than driving to an office. The format doesn’t change the outcome or the quality of the agreements you reach.
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