Couples Mediation

Since 1979

Using “Collaborative Mediation” ™

Unlike Marriage Counseling or Couples Therapy, which have broader goals, Couples Mediation is for addressing a discrete topic, a specific goal or question. Examples of serious goals are:

  • How long to keep a child or parent who is slated to die alive?
  • Whether we should adopt a special needs child?
  • Shall we have our son live in a residential apartment with others his age or continue to live at home?
  • Shall we sue the doctors who gave her mother an overdose of methadone which caused brain damage?
  • We want to do condo improvements, but the only other owners object. Can we mediate with them?

The goals of couples mediation are similar and often overlap with the goals of decision making mediation. Often parents are trying to decide how much involvement their parents should have in their children’s upbringing. Sometimes one member of the couple has been offered a job at a very large distance, inside or outside the country. The children may or may not have special needs that are being well-met within the current school system. Should the family move? Once the discrete topics have been resolved, the Couples Mediation is done, but may be resumed any time other issues come to the fore.

We welcome your questions at mediationboston@gmail.com or 781-861-9847 and will provide each member of the couple with a half-hour complimentary conference call and introduction.

An image of the therapy room

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.