Kevin Hartley

Review of Northern Virginia Mediation Se...

The mediators refused to listen to both my ex-wife...

The mediators refused to listen to both my ex-wife and myself. Neither of us were happy with the services provided. They were biased against anything in MD (including me) and even joked about it. They would "listen" to what each of us had to say, write up half of what she said in the agreement, make up the rest, and ignore my concerns. They also took over a month to finalize the draft, which we ended up doing ourselves and sending back them AFTER it was executed because we got tired of waiting. Not only that, but the MSA was full of ambiguities and errors. In addition, they included some clauses which are specifically recommended against in cases like ours by much of the mediation community, which I've only learned about well after the fact.

I even brought up most of these concerns during the mediation process, was told that we would be getting different mediators, and then later told that it was too late to change mediators and that we had to continue with the biased, slow mediators who wouldn't listen to what was said.