But most everything else is fair game. In court you have a winner and you have a loser. With ADR you come up with solutions that work best for most people. Arbitration is best known as the method by which professional ball players and reluctant team owners come to terms on multimillion dollar contracts. In general, it involves submitting one's claim to a neutral party whose decision carries the force of law and cannot be overturned by the courts.
Mediation is an even kinder procedure.
It employs a neutral third party to open lines of communication between opposing sides, encouraging them to air grievances that might otherwise fester in the atmosphere of recrimination and mutual suspicion that so often accompanies legal action. Child custody battles often represent the most quarrelsome of such disputes. During 15 years of practicing in Missouri, attorney and court-appointed mediator Daphne Halderman has witnessed such turmoil. A local rule in Jackson County, Mo., where Halderman often mediates, requires that contending parties in custody disputes spend at least two hours with a mediator before a judge will place their case on the court's docket. Both adoptive parents acknowledged that the other loved the kids, but each said they themselves were best suited to take on their full-time care.