What're the Odds?

 I do a fair amount of custody mediation for the court in family cases, and over the last three months, I have had three very different cases. In all of them, both parents loved their children and wanted to participate meaningfully in their lives.  In one of them, the parents had sufficient money and education, and shared similar backgrounds and values.  In another, the parents had no money, no education, and dissimilar values and backgrounds.  In the third, the parents had sufficient money and education, somewhat similar backgrounds, but a huge difference in values that was brought to light by a major deception of a material fact by one of the parents.  Two cases did not settle, and one did.  Can you guess which one settled?  Did you guess the third one?  I’m thinking not.  Why did the third one settle, against all odds, while the other two did not?  I’ve thought long and hard about this, and here is my conclusion.  The first two cases were about the parents, and not the children.  The parents in both of those cases were ostensibly fighting over one overnight every two weeks (you heard me - 26 overnights a year). What they were really fighting over was which parent was primary, which parent was the better parent, and which parent had more time than the other (which of course would prove which of them was better).  The long term effect of their continued dispute on their children was lost on them, as well as the minuscule harmful effect of that extra overnight, because they were so raw and emotional and focused on their own needs.  The third set of parents had moved past the raw emotion, and the deceived parent had put the betrayal in its proper place in relation to the children.  They both had thought long and hard about what the children’s future would look like, both concerning the access schedule itself and the effect of their relationship and behaviors on the children.  They thought about all the issues that could affect the children, and researched and discussed them.  They considered each of their roles in the children’s lives and respected those roles.  They understood that each of their parenting changed post separation in many ways that were positive to the children.  In short, the third mediation was all about the children, and not about the parents.   In that mediation, we settled custody and discussed really specific details in the custodial arrangement in under two hours; in the other two, we didn’t even settle basic custody in almost six hours, and the first two sets of parents started out with closer positions than the third.  It’s all in a day’s work - here in the Trenches.