Mediate Michigan

An Op-Ed piece in the New York Times (“No Fault of Their Own”, by the marriage and family therapist Ruth Bettelheim, Feb. 17, 2010) has proposed “no-fault custody proceedings” as a solution to bitter struggles about child custody when couples divorce. Bettelheim suggested “fixed formulas” for child support as an approach that would take money out of the argument. She also proposed that binding mediation is a way to develop custody agreements that could not be discarded later on. Importantly, Bettelheim noted that in practice, the principle of the child's “best interests” may mean energy spent as each parent tries to show that the other parent is worse, rather than trying to determine the true best interests.

via Divorce and Child Custody: Complexities and “No-fault Custody” | Psychology Today.