If you're in a situation where you're considering divorce, it may feel like your family is falling apart and your world is spiraling out of control. This feeling may even intensify if your divorce goes to court and you suddenly find yourself unable to influence whether or not you'll get custody of your children and so on. Fortunately, if you choose mediated divorce, there may be a way to find a more amicable and less risky option. Here are three ways mediated divorce can offer more control than a court divorce.

1. By allowing you to guide the process

A court hearing schedule can be restrictive and demanding, and the long hours on display in a courtroom can induce anxiety even in self-assured individuals. If you choose a mediation process, you and your spouse will be able to set up a schedule that works for you, your mediator, and any lawyers you may have hired, and you won't be required to appear in a courtroom while someone else makes decisions about what your future relationship will be like.   

2. By allowing you to make decisions together as a family

Although you won't be living together as a family after the divorce, you may wish to continue the tradition of cooperation and working together, especially if you have children and you're trying to make the process as minimally invasive to their lives as possible. The mediated divorce process allows you to spare your children the sight of their parents in court and helps keep the process more civil and less adversarial.  

3 By helping you control time frame and expenses

Instead of being ordered to appear in court at a certain date and time, you can make the process work with everyone's schedule when you opt for mediated divorce. It's also possible to get everything wrapped up more quickly, rather than having it drag on for multiple hearings and court dates. And unlike a litigated divorce, a mediated divorce allows you to choose whether or not to have legal counsel. If you can afford a lawyer, that's fine; if not, you don't need to go into debt to pay one because you can simply do without.  

These three points show how mediation can help your divorce be a less stressful event all around, with less required investment of time and money, less antagonism, and less of a feeling of having a broken family. Of course, mediated divorce isn't for everyone; in order to have it work out well, you and your spouse need to be able to agree on terms (with help from the mediator, of course) and to discuss things amicably. For more information, contact lawyers like Maury K Cutler.