Since 1979
Decision Making Mediation was invented and designed by Janet Miller Wiseman
Clients and their mediators or psychotherapists typically describe marriage counseling or couples therapy as a forum to address issues of faulty communication, parenting, finances, lack of emotional and physical intimacy. The outcome is hoped to be the creation or re-creation of healthy, even thriving relationships and family.
If one partner has misgivings, is indecisive or ambivalent about the future of the relationship and the “counseling or therapy” doesn’t work and the partners don’t stay together, both clients and helpers feel the process has been a failure.
Decision Making Mediation, in contrast, has as its goal addressing the individual goals of each member of the couple; one goal may be to make a decision about their future direction, while the goal of the other partner is to work hard to stay married.
Janet Miller Wiseman custom formulates a list of essential questions for the couple to answer which informs them of what they want and need in a good long-term relationship, what they know they can’t tolerate, their own strengths and limitations, asks what advice they believe their parents would give them at this point in time and a myriad of other questions. They combine the insight received from the questions with their own observations over the years, their intuition, heart and gut feelings and observations to reach “ah ha– now I truly know what direction this relationship must take”. Sometimes they take a pause from working on the relationship, or separate inside or outside their home, with more mediation sessions, or restructure into a longer separation or even a carefully considered, thoughtful divorce.
Parents
Parents make thoughtful decisions about residential or at home living arrangements for special needs children, or their elder parents, or their own future living arrangements.
Individuals
Individuals make decisions about their careers, career changes, weddings, marriages, when to have children or adopt, educational planning for their children, directions for their marriages or relationships. Clergy and co-clergy, although angels, of course, often have issues to deal with between themselves.
Family
Family members with small businesses, high school, universities, municipal organizations and many other pairs, individuals and groups successfully use Decision Making Mediation every day.
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.