During a Mediation, the parties to the dispute meet with a neutral Mediator who has personal experience with the type of dispute involved and the law governing the dispute. The Mediator does not make decisions for the parties. Instead, a Mediator works to help the parties understand the strengths and weaknesses of their positions and to identify why reaching a settlement makes the most sense for them. The parties make the decisions about what they each are willing to give up in order to reach that settlement and put an end to the dispute.

You want your Mediator to provide you with real help in getting your case resolved. That requires someone who has extensive knowledge of the legal issues facing you in the dispute. You also want a Mediator with training and experience in assisting people with resolving the kind of dispute you are facing.

Merrianne Dean is such a person, with more than 25 years’ experience in the probate court representing people with the kinds of disputes identified on this website. She has been assigned by the probate court to serve as a Settlement Conference Officer for the past 10 years, helping people like you resolve their disputes.

Ms. Dean has formal training in mediation and currently offers her services as a Mediator through West Coast Resolution Group, where she is part of a panel of skilled mediators who focus their work on disputes involving estates, conservatorships and elder abuse.

Disputes rarely occur in a vacuum and when they don’t resolve with a meeting or conversation, dealing with the dispute can take up valuable time and emotional energy, not to mention the financial cost of legal representation. If you’ve consulted with or hired an attorney, they’ve probably explained how a legal dispute proceeds - in or out of court - and identified the estimated cost for dealing with it.

Your attorney should be proactively focused on helping you get your dispute resolved as early as possible, so you can get on with your life. That includes having a plan for gathering enough information about the claims or defenses raised by the other side so you can prepare for mediation and resolve the case - without going through the additional time and expense of taking the case to trial. Getting a dispute resolved as early as possible benefits your wallet and your mental health.

Finally, although it may be appealing to “have your day in court”, trials are tricky things and you don’t always know how they will turn out - because you simply cannot control how well your witnesses will testify and if they are nervous or stumble that can affect how the judge or jury views their testimony. If your witnesses perform poorly, but are entirely truthful, but the witnesses for the other party perform well (even if you know they are lying), you could lose everything. Resolving your dispute through mediation removes the uncertainty, and it also allows the parties to be creative in crafting a resolution everyone can accept.

During a Mediation, the parties to the dispute meet with a neutral Mediator who has personal experience with the type of dispute involved and the law governing the dispute. The Mediator does not make decisions for the parties. Instead, a Mediator works to help the parties understand the strengths and weaknesses of their positions and to identify why reaching a settlement makes the most sense for them. The parties make the decisions about what they each are willing to give up in order to reach that settlement and put an end to the dispute.