Neighbor Mediation
What is mediation?
Mediation is a voluntary process in most circumstances, where the two parties agree to sit down with a neutral person to help them work through their problem. You can always, without going to court, ask your neighbor to mediate a dispute. If the two of you can't work it out on your own, you can suggest to them, let's get a mediator, some neutral person, to help us resolve our dispute. But you're only going to have mediation if your neighbor agrees to mediation. When you go through the court process, generally these days the courts require some kind of dispute resolution procedure before they'll let you go to trial. That usually means a mediation. Sometimes it'll be a mandatory settlement conference before a judge. It may be your trial judge, it may be a different judge. They're very similar procedures. The major difference between the two is that if you're in a mandatory settlement conference before a judge, that judge has the authority of the court. He can require that you stay and issue some kind of sanctions if you refuse to cooperate properly in the mandatory settlement conference procedures. Whereas a mediator has generally little he can do if one party is being uncooperative, other than to end the mediation and send the parties home.
What does a mediator do in a neighbor dispute?
The mediator will try to look for some common ground where he can move the parties over to that common ground. It may be that he thinks that one party will be inflexible and the other inflexible, and that will help him deterimine where that common ground is. It may be that there is a reasonable resolution that is obvious to the mediator that he will try to push the parties to because he knows in the long run, that's the solution that will work. But mediators do these things in different ways. They all have their own techniques, their own manners. Some of them always do their mediations the same way, and some are actors. They adapt themselves to the parties, to their lawyers, and to the particular facts that are put before them. So there's no one way to do a mediation, or one style that you're always going to see when you go into a mediation. A lot of it is a matter of judging who the participants are and what their attitudes and positions are on the particular issue that's being considered.
Why should I spend money on a mediator in a neighbor dispute?
A mediator can perform a couple of valuable functions. First of all, they may save you a lot of money if they can resolve your dispute without the necessity of you going on to court .Perhaps hiring lawyers perhaps hiring experts and possibly spending a great deal of time resolving the dispute and may be even having an appeal; going upto a higher court . So they can save you a lot of money. The mediator also may be able to come up with some innovative way of resolving the dispute that you and your neighbour haven't come up with, that maybe your lawyers haven't come up with. That may not be something that is a result, that would be achieved by going to court. Sometimes there are no ways to settle cases ,they aren't damages, they aren't in junction but they are more innovative .They just aren't the result, that would be the natural result of a court proceeding. Finally that mediator may be able to narrowly resolve the particular dispute. But help patch up, what's become a deteriorating relationship with your neighbour and you may walk out of there with a friend living next door instead of an enemy .
How do I find a mediator for a neighbor dispute?
Talk to friends, family, lawyers that you know, if you don't know lawyers you might call a lawyer, lawyer's office that you get referred to, maybe through a local bar association and ask if they know people who would be involved in doing this. You might call local bar associations. It may even be that the local court house has a list of mediators who are available. They have both paid and unpaid panels in some places. Some mediators are, will give up an hour or two of their time without requiring payment at the outset of a mediation session. And others may be willing to do it for a fairly modest fee if they're on a court panel. You can also look on the Internet, look in phone books. These days you might find professional mediation and arbitration services that are available in a lot of communities. There will be a wide variation in what the costs are, depending on what kind of service you use.
How do I make sure the agreement our mediator reached is honored?
