Alternative Dispute Resolution
Apr. 30, 2016
Family law mediations require confidentiality
It has long been recognized that the sine qua non of mediation is the assurance of confidentiality, which is crucial to the open discussions which are necessary to reach agreement.
Fern Topas Salka
Fern is an attorney based in Los Angeles. She writes on behalf of FLAMES (Family Law Mediators Engaged in Study, a group of attorneys composed of Jill Cohen, Kimberly Davidson, Franklin R. Garfield, Frederick E. Glassman, Jeffrey Jacobson, Michelle Katz, Dvorah Markman, Judith C. Nesburn, Joan Patsy Ostroy, Ronald Rosenfeld, Fern Topas Salka, Elizabeth Potter Scully, Peter Spelman, Joseph Spirito, Ronald Supancic, Heidi Tuffias, and Bonnie Yaeger).
Frederick J. Glassman
Email: fglassman@fglawcorp.com
Frederick is a past-president of CPCal, the statewide organization for collaborative law process and has been at the forefront of the collaborative law movement in California.
Confidentiality of communication in mediation has been established by and through California Evidence Code Sections 703.5 and 1115-1128. For almost 20 years, the California Supreme Court has rejected challenges to the existing statutory protocol for mediation confidentiality and has upheld excluding evidence of mediation communications. The most recent Supreme Court decision is Cassel v. Superior Court, 51 Cal. 4th 113 (2011). Cassel again confirmed that even for the limi...
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