Supplemental Agreement: Beaverton Mediator Matthew House, J.D.
Matthew House is the only Portland-area divorce mediator who provides you with a second, full-length written agreement at no additional cost.
If you're like most of Matthew's clients, you didn't expect on your wedding day to find yourself later in front of a divorce mediator. Maybe your divorce was a mutual decision, or maybe one of you is driving the bus, so to speak. Either way, Matthew sees his role as accepting your circumstances and making them significantly better.
Matthew's tools are: his law degree; specialized training in finance that has resulted in an almost-finished e-book; 20 years as a collaborative divorce coach for parenting plans; and a protocol from day one to give teens and 'tweens a voice in the process by encouraging their direct and confidential involvement. Not among those tools is a magic wand that can be waved to revert clients' lives to what they once were, despite how helpful it would be if there were a way to make peace appear on demand. Because Matthew does not have the tools to make things perfect, he is compassionately realistic about the limits of his role.
However, all is not lost. Not even close. In the chaos and the many "unknowns" of divorce, you have more choices than you might have thought of. You can use your mediation with Matthew not only to "get divorced" but also to implement in writing a host of things that maybe you thought were just aspirations that depended on the other spouse's voluntary goodwill.
That's where your divorce mediator and his uniquely diverse skill set come in. Remember Apple's 2009 slogan for the App Store? ("There's an app for that.") More than 16 years later, Matthew brings it back with a divorce mediator's twist: "There's a clause for that."
Details Make the Difference
Matthew House deliberately endeavors to dig beneath the surface to find new ways for clients to help themselves in future years by taking a thorough approach while they are still sitting at a table together and have a divorce professional on hand to draft the details that most others would leave out.
After all, what is the goal of divorce mediation? Is it just to fill out the forms and be done? No. Otherwise, you'd be doing that on your own. Instead, the primary purpose of choosing mediation for a thoughtful and individualized divorce experience should not be limited to what is minimally adequate to satisfy the court or comply with the basic procedural requirements of Oregon law.
A useful agreement must do more than divide assets, divide debts, calculate child support and spousal support, and draft a basic parenting plan. Fulfilling the minimal requirements of the court is not enough. To thrive post-divorce, you need a foundation built on dozens of provisions that you didn't even think about, and many more that you conceptualized but didn't think you could make official and binding.
Matthew offers you multiple options for each of your decisions not just to give you more choices, but also to glean your additional needs by what you say about each of the alternatives.
The Supplemental Agreement is a middle ground between having Matthew's session notes and having a written record of only the stipulations you actually included in your MSA.
Because a mediator's session notes are a confidential work product and cannot be released to clients or anyone else, the Supplemental Agreement can provide you an overview of many of the things that were discussed in mediation and why you did not prefer the alternatives as much as the option you ultimately chose. It will also allow you to include details that might be too minute or personal for a judge to need to read. A divorce is a public record. There may be details you want to agree to between yourselves but not make available for others to see.
Additionally, the Supplemental Agreement will include a recap of things that Matthew explained to you in session. You will have that written reference As the months and years go by, you will retain that written reference of discussions and explanations that no person could possibly remember perfectly. That approach will prevent you from saying, five years from now, "I wish we'd talked about that in mediation." Then, you look at your Supplemental Agreement and realize, "Oh, yes. We did talk about this, but we decided not to implement it because we agreed that it would be too micromanaging at a time when it was challenging enough to handle all the new things we already had on our plates."
The Supplemental Agreement will still be signed by both of you and will become a binding contract between the two of you; it just won't be sent to the court. Only the MSA will be submitted to the judge as a part of your divorce paperwork. The Supplemental Agreement allows you confidentiality while still being legally enforceable.
When you hire Matthew House, you don't have to choose between thoughtful and thorough. You get both.
Additionally, the Supplemental Agreement will include a recap of things that Matthew explained to you in session. You will have that written reference As the months and years go by, you will retain that written reference of discussions and explanations that no person could possibly remember perfectly. That approach will prevent you from saying, five years from now, "I wish we'd talked about that in mediation." Then, you look at your Supplemental Agreement and realize, "Oh, yes. We did talk about this, but we decided not to implement it because we agreed that it would be too micromanaging at a time when it was challenging enough to handle all the new things we already had on our plates."
The Supplemental Agreement will still be signed by both of you and will become a binding contract between the two of you; it just won't be sent to the court. Only the MSA will be submitted to the judge as a part of your divorce paperwork. The Supplemental Agreement allows you confidentiality while still being legally enforceable.
When you hire Matthew House, you don't have to choose between thoughtful and thorough. You get both.