EARLY DISPUTE RESOLUTION
The best day to settle is often before the first motion is filed.
Early dispute resolution brings the parties to the table before positions harden and fees compound, while the estate is still intact and the family can still sit in the same room.
Trained in the EDR Institute Guidelines · A structured path to early, confidential resolution.
The estate stays whole
In probate and fiduciary disputes, the fees usually come out of the very fund the parties are fighting over. Every month of litigation shrinks what is left to divide.
Relationships survive
These cases are between siblings, co-trustees, and business partners. What discovery and depositions destroy, an early confidential session can preserve.
The parties keep control
Settled early, the outcome is the parties' own: private, flexible, and final, rather than a ruling imposed after years of expense and uncertainty.
HOW AN EARLY SESSION WORKS
I
Joint request from counsel
Before suit, or in its earliest stage, either side's counsel may propose mediation. Engagement follows agreement of all parties, each represented by counsel.
II
The core dispute, framed
Under the mediator's supervision, the claims, counterclaims, and defenses are simplified to the core dispute, or disputes. The parties then exchange the operative instrument and the key documents, which stand in for years of formal discovery.
III
Risk analysis & negotiation
Working remotely and in confidence, the mediator guides each side through its own risk analysis, then carries offers between them: a mediator-supervised negotiation, conducted separately with each party.
IV
The reserved session: a backstop
A full in-person mediation day is set from the outset, but held only as a backstop, used if settlement is not reached, or negotiations end, before the date arrives.
GOOD FAITH
Candor is the condition.
Early resolution depends on honest dealing. Good-faith participation, including the full and truthful exchange of the operative instrument and the key documents in the matter, is required of every party, not offered as a courtesy.
In some matters the parties sign a certificate of good-faith participation. It preserves a party's ability to seek to set a settlement aside if it later comes to light that exculpatory or otherwise material documents were hidden or withheld, so that any agreement rests on an honest and complete record.
Weighing whether a matter is ready?
A confidential case-fit review answers that question before anyone commits.
EASTERN SHORE MEDIATION
P.O. BOX 1473 · FAIRHOPE, ALABAMA 36533 · (205) 531-1116 · JIM@EASTERNSHOREMEDIATION.COM