Will Liz or Leslie be their Prospective Baby’s Birth Mother? Liz and Leslie made a series of appointments for marriage mediation. They had been a couple for seven years and married for two of those years. They had decided that their careers, finances and home were in place and stable enough to have their first…
Author: Janet Wiseman
Janet Miller Wiseman, principal and owner, who works with several Certified Divorce and Financial Analysts, is an original co-founder of The Negotiation Collaborative in 1979 and the co-founder of the Mass Council on Family Mediation in 1982, an organization which provides high-level, bi-monthly continuing education to its members. Janet is a two-year past President of MCFM, the designee of the John Adams Fiske Award for Excellence in Mediation in 1982, and the original Director of Public Relations. Janet has thirty-nine years of experience in suggesting and co-crafting cost-effective, thoroughly researched, genuinely creative alternatives for settlement, not simply legalistic formulas.
Whether you are beginning a friendship, a prospective relationship or you’re in a relationship that is becoming oh so stale, these twenty ways to introduce and keep romance in your relationship are bound to help. Let’s begin with the story of a couple in Havana, Cuba, with whom I was staying in an Airbnb type…
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Collaborative Divorce Mediation
Eliza and Karl came in this summer for collaborative divorce mediation. They were one of the most cooperative couples presenting for mediation in my thirty-eight years of mediation practice. They had sold their marital home in the Boston suburbs in the last few months and deposited the balance in a “joint child-related expense account” checking…
Changing the Goal in Marriage Counseling From “Do We Have Another Child” to “Where Do We Go on Vacation?” in Decision Mediation Laura and Caleb were a bright and thoughtful couple in their late 30s and early 40s. They were established in their careers, she as a radiologist and he as an environmental field engineer.…
Colleagues and friends frequently ask me “your work must be so hard with all those angry divorcing clients?” To tell the truth, most divorcing clients are gracious to one another, thoughtful, ready to problem-solve, frequently laughing together. Often enough, when this is not the case, a couple presents before they are prepared to divorce. Let’s…
Kristina and Todd came into the office after the holidays ready for divorce mediation Lexington Ma. Now in their mid- 50s, they had met at the University of Virginia’s lovely campus, in the Thomas Jefferson library, when they bumped into each other as they rounded the bookshelves. They became fast friends and decided to get married…
Talking to children about divorce carefully and gently is critical. It helps to find a quiet time and place, maybe after dinner, in the play yard when the children are fairly calm. The parent who is ahead of the other in the process may begin to speak first. One of two longest established, most respected…
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Therapy Reveals ADHD Surprise
Mark and Marissa came into Couples Therapy in Lexington, Ma. when their twin daughters Jodie and Andrea were 7 years old. Mark was the director of a NGO and Marissa, a free lance writer and photographer, working very part-time while being with the children. The girls were super active; it might even be said that…
Adriana and Peter Gordon had been married 9 years, and were still living together when Adriana, who had discovered her husband’s affair with his secretary, appeared in a lawyer’s office to discuss the possibility of divorce. After finding a room-service-for-two charge on Peter’s hotel bill, he admitted that he had been having a hidden affair with…
Sophie and Seth were not an ordinary couple, nor were they business executives or international diplomats, those people who often use decision-making mediation. They were extremely conscientious, dedicated parents, who were involved in their church, and in an “ethical humanist” society, where they met at Boston University. The couple sensed and then learned for certain…