Attorney Keith M. Wallace has practiced law for 30 years and has substantial experience in civil litigation, family litigation, representing small businesses, contract issues and negotiation, and all aspects of family law.  He started Southern Indiana Mediation to help families minimize and possibly eliminate the consequences of emotional family conflicts and disputes. The hurt, pain and scars children suffer from their parents’ bitter divorce battles must stop.

I approach mediation with two purposes in mind.  The first purpose is to assist parties in resolving their conflict in an acceptable manner. The second purpose is to provide family members with the tools and procedures to resolve future issues before they become emotional conflicts with potential emotional damage.
I have seen first-hand how the legal system tears families apart. While the adversarial aspect of the US legal system typically works well in non-family disputes, it does NOT work well for family disputes.

Going to court is an emotional experience where relatively small disputes can become major fights that are costly, lengthy, and destroy any hope for a resolution with the parties being able to maintain a relationship. My goal is to help families learn how to constructively resolve disputes outside of court in a positive environment.

What is Mediation?

Mediation is a process where a trained mediator (or neutral) in conflict resolution helps and guides parties through a procedure to resolve their issues.

The mediator is not a judge, and does not have any authority to award a decision to either side.  The mediator also does not represent either side in the mediation.

The Benefits of Mediation

Mediation has a number of benefits, including:

• *The parties can be creative in the types of solutions that can be developed which is unlike in a court proceeding where a judge or jury usually rules in favor of one side or the other side along statutory requirements.
• *Mediation is significantly less expensive than going to court,
• *Mediation usually takes place much faster than going to court, and
• *The parties to a mediation do not have to hire lawyers.

The Role of the Mediator

The role of the mediator is to help guide the parties through a process with the goal of reaching a mutually-acceptable agreement.   Often the mediator will start by helping the parties to identify areas of agreement, and then will work forward to tackle other areas in which agreement is needed.

At SI Mediation, we give parties the tools they need to help resolve conflict.  With many conflicts, such as issues that arise in the context of a divorce, not reaching a resolution on matters (such as property division) is not an option.  The fact is, if the parties cannot amicably reach an agreement, the court will make a decision.  Because the court will usually not understand all of the underlying issues and concerns of the parties, in most cases such decision usually may not be in the best interest of either party.  We help both sides to recognize that whatever agreement they can reach is likely to be better than leaving the outcome to the court.

Mediation Has a High Rate of Success

Mediation has a high rate of success for a number of reasons:

• *In many cases, what the parties really need is a skilled, unbiased expert to help them negotiate and resolve problems in a non-confrontational setting,
• *Ultimately the parties to a mediation recognize that reaching an agreement in which each party gets most (but not all) of what they want is a much better outcome then spending significant legal fees and leaving it up to a court to determine the outcome,
• *The parties recognize that in many cases it’s better to reach a resolution in mediation than to have the matter prolonged over many months or years in the court system.

To find out more about our mediation services, please call us.

Southern Indiana Mediation