(continued)
Q: WHEN DID YOU DECIDE TO BECOME A MEDIATOR? After succeeding with my friend and his ex, I thought there probably were not many people who would be willing to put themselves into the middle of that kind of hostility, and maybe even fewer who could help the parents succeed in developing an agreement. So, I thought maybe that was the work I was supposed to be doing. It felt like a calling.
Q: CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT THE TRAINING AND CREDENTIALS? The legislature created and the Supreme Court of Virginia oversees one of the best training programs for mediators in the country. You have to complete a specific set of programs to learn the information and skills you will need as a mediator. Then you have to co-mediate several cases with certified mentor mediators, do child support calculations, and write the agreement that two or more of your clients have developed. When one of your mentors says that you are ready to handle cases on your own, you can be certified. I got my training and apprenticeship opportunities from Northern Virginia Mediation Service, which has been doing a great job training mediators for decades. Our state also has continuing education requirements, including ethics training, for mediators who want to retain their certifications.
Q: HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN MEDIATING AND WHAT KEPT YOU IN THIS FIELD? Professionally I have been mediating for 10 years. What keeps me in the field is seeing again and again how valuable mediation is for families. For example, in divorce cases, people who hire two attorneys to help them fight with each other spend tens of thousands of dollars, get angrier, more anxious, and more depressed, and have little control of the outcome of their disputes. In divorce mediation, people have professional support working together to solve their family’s shared problem. Most of our clients only spend $1,000 to $3,000 for our help creating and then writing their Marital Settlement Agreements. We don’t make the emotional distress worse, and the two clients have complete control of the decisions that get written into their agreement. “I still have a missionary feeling about this work. The world needs skilled, professional family mediators. That keeps me in the field.”
Q: WHAT SPURRED THE GROWTH OF YOUR PRACTICE AND CONTRIBUTED TO ADDING MORE MEDIATORS? Before I was trained, mediators told me you cannot earn a living as a family mediator. I thought that was crazy. With so many families obviously in need of mediation services, how could it not be possible to earn enough money helping them? I set out to prove my advisors wrong. It took time to develop my practice, but after five years I realized that if I was
getting one more new case per week than I already was, it would be more cases than I wanted to handle on my own. So, I invited other mediators I knew, including two of my mentors, to join my practice. I help the people who need us find us, the other mediators each take some of the cases, and we share the income.
Q: WHAT TYPES OF CONFLICTS ARE IDEAL FOR THE WORK OF A MEDIATOR? The topic of a conflict is less important than the willingness of the people involved to try to find solutions. Ideally, each person is willing to negotiate in good faith, each person wants to find a solution, and each person is able, perhaps with help from the mediator, to keep emotions from overwhelming his or her ability to think. When the people involved want to solve the family problem, it does not matter whether the problem is elder care planning, family business succession, marriage mediation, or reconnecting family members who have been estranged from each other.
Q: HOW MUCH TIME AND MONEY CAN MEDIATION SAVE, LET’S SAY IN AN AVERAGE DIVORCE? When going toward divorce through lawyers and court hearings, people usually spend $10,000 to $30,000 each, and sometimes spend as much as $100,000 per person. That’s a lot of money going out of the family and into the accounts of lawyers. Our clients rarely spend more than $3,000 total, for both parties, and often get better outcomes.
Virginia L Colin, Ph.D., Director
“THE WORLD NEEDS SKILLED, PROFESSIONAL FAMILY MEDIATORS. THAT KEEPS ME IN THE FIELD.”
Formerly a research psychologist, Virginia Colin has been providing family mediation services professionally since 2009. She specializes in helping couples and ex-couples develop parenting plans and financial agreements that support their children’s security and healthy development and their own adult well-being. Focusing solely on family mediation, she is a founding member of the Academy of Professional Family Mediators and in 2018 served as its President. Dr. Colin is also a certified mentor mediator. She is the co-author of The Guide to Low-Cost Divorce in Virginia and the solo author of Human Attachment, “Divorce in Virginia”, “Infant Attachment: What We Know Now,” and a variety of other print and Internet publications. She was also the host of Family Matters, a Internet talk radio show you can still find on VoiceAmerica. com. She has experienced parenthood in many ways — single parent, foster parent, married parent, divorced parent, and remarried stepparent. She enjoys reading, gardening, walking in the woods, and playing Eurogames.
N ovember/December 2019 | FA IR FA X WOMA N .C OM
17