What the editorial did not say is that most divorcing adults, if they receive any kind of counseling at all, do not receive the information that would be offered in this seminar or a perspective focused on the needs of their children. When one is in great pain it is difficult to think about the needs of someone else. But parents have an obligation to know what the impact of their decisions will be on their children and to find ways to ease that impact. The Sun objects that divorce lawyers and judges already can do this. If the couple is forced to try to work out these details in advance, to come to some kind of a shared understanding of how children will be raised after divorce, it can dramatically limit the damage of divorce for children.
Mediation using recognized principles of conflict resolution is always preferable to litigation.
It solves problems by joint agreement rather than by going to legal war, winner take all. Sensitive divorce lawyers, whose profession involves watching former spouses savage each other in court, can only agree that mediation is a far better option. People get divorced because they believe it solves a key problem in their lives. But divorce creates other problems. The legislation under consideration in Nashville simply is an effort to deal with the real impact of this trade-in.