Divorce

My first mediation training turned up a big surprise for me. Twenty eight lawyers, some with 15 – 20 years experience, only a couple with any experience of mediation in any regard, got thoroughly hung up in a “Matrimonial Dispute” problem I set. I chose this subject because I’d learned in my visit to the Tamil Nadu High Court Mediation & Conciliation Centre (established in 2006; the first of its kind in the country) in Madras (now called Chennai) that the vast majority of matters they handle are “matrimonial”. The given facts were a husband and wife are divorcing after 18 years of marriage. Both want the divorce. Both want custody of their 2 teenage daughters, who refuse to choose between the parents. They own some good property; the husband had a good job for the first ten years, then had an injury and hasn’t worked for 8 years. The wife became a lawyer while the husband still worked. He hopes for $1,000,000 from the injury (someday, given the average of 25 years for resolution of such a case). The wife’s family gave a big (illegal) dowry at the start. What are the issues to settle in the mediation? It was obvious to me that custody and property were the answer, with some subtlety being thrown in by the fact of contingent compensation in the distant future and the dowry in the distant past. Boy was I wrong! Everyone said the issue was “reunion” – reconciliation of the couple. Everyone KNEW that property was no problem, the wife would walk away with nothing, not an issue, only the imperative to make them not divorce. I repeated several times “Look at the facts given: they both want the divorce; they both are adamant that they will not stay married. Probe them about the property; draw them out about the welfare of the children in the custody discussion.” (Two participants were acting as the couple, doing a decent acting job.) Most people could not do it; to the very end, after agreements were reached about the property division and custody/visitation arrangements, (largely achieved by the actors without mediator help) the people playing mediator were literally saying to the couple “I do not approve of divorce; you should stay together, you do not need to live apart.” We had talked about how mediators need to be aware of their biases, so I finally interjected that there was a big bias in the room, against divorce, against the given fact which the couple brought to them, that they wanted this divorce. Made no difference; the men all agreed trying to get them to stay together was what they should do. Two of the four women present seemed to get it, that the couple gets to make this decision. In further discussion, they repeated how much it was wrong to divorce and argued with me about the welfare of the children, etc. etc. and could not get off the dime. And p.s. they were right that the wife gave up all property rights just so she could get away from the husband. And p.p.s. after an agreement was written, the husband started to sing to the wife and she changed her mind, and they reconciled. I’m not in Kansas any more, much less California!
And they pronounce it “DIworce”, confusing me at first that they were saying “diverse”. One man started to adopt my pronunciation; he’ll have an American accent before I leave.