Addressing Parenting Disputes Between Estranged Parents Through Community Mediation

Madhawa Palihapitiya and Kaila Obstfeld Eisenkraft

SAGE Open, 2014, vol. 4, issue 3, 2158244014542085

Abstract: Mediation provides a means of resolving disputes that promises to reduce litigation while avoiding further damage to party relationships. The present study addressed the question whether parents engaged in parenting disputes generated by divorce or separation received the promised benefits of mediation when services were delivered by means of community mediation, which combined the dual features of free services and volunteer mediators. Reported outcomes such as agreements, party satisfaction, relationship changes, and court involvement, as well as the connection between these outcomes and party factors of custodial status and income level, were examined, and several encouraging trends emerged. Results indicated that an economically diverse group of disputing parents were provided access to mediation services delivered under community mediation. Moreover, the prospect of avoiding litigation motivated a majority of parents to participate in community mediation. The positive outcomes reported by most parents, irrespective of income level and custodial status, included agreement and process satisfaction rates consistent with national trends, the development of parenting plans, and for a sizable minority of parents, reduced court involvement and improved between-parent interactions. However, non-custodial parents tended to be significantly more positive about mediation’s helpfulness with parenting issues than were custodial parents.

Keywords: mediation; alternative dispute resolution; conflict resolution; community mediation; parenting disputes; divorce mediation; volunteer mediator; free mediation services; mediation outcomes; custody; child support; child access and visitation; parenting plans; divorce agreements (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2158244014542085 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:sagope:v:4:y:2014:i:3:p:2158244014542085

DOI: 10.1177/2158244014542085

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in SAGE Open
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().