This document does not offer formal policy guidance from the Office of Special Education Programs at the United States Department of Education. This article suggests that the adoption of a maximizing mediation approach by the mediator in family and other matters is permissible and advised. There are no barriers to mediators moving beyond the world of barely sufficient processes and barely sufficient results to stimulate maximized processes and maximized results. It is important that maximization is understood as an aspirational goal, not a minimum standard.
Maximization is a goal never fully achieved.
It is a guiding light for realizing mediation's potential. Rather than empower a bit, or some, or comparably or to balance, a theory of maximization suggests that the only way one can empower participants consistent with the mediator's duty to be impartial is for the mediator to maximally assist each participant to be at their best in seeking maximum satisfaction of their interests. In fact, it is suggested that empowerment without maximization may be ethically challenged as partial mediator behavior. It should be immediately noted that mediation participants will commonly have different personal needs and different ideas about the process and substantive interests that they would like maximized. One participant may want to maximize simply getting the matter over as quickly and cheaply as possible.