{"id":34,"date":"2011-11-19T18:05:21","date_gmt":"2011-11-19T23:05:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/?p=34"},"modified":"2021-04-19T16:01:07","modified_gmt":"2021-04-19T20:01:07","slug":"michigans-proposed-standards-of-conduct-for-mediators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/michigans-proposed-standards-of-conduct-for-mediators\/","title":{"rendered":"Michigan’s Proposed Standards of Conduct for Mediators"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Standards of Conduct for Mediators <\/a>were proposed by Michigan\u2019s State Court Administrative Office last week. They can be viewed at by clicking on the title above, or by going to this web-site: \u00a0http:\/\/courts.michigan.gov\/scao\/features\/mailings\/2011\/11-10-11\/MediatorStandardsOfConduct.pdf<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The public comment period runs through the end of February 2012. I hope many people comment on them, because they break new ground and could be a significant contribution to the field of mediation nationally.
\nThese Standards break new ground in that they apply to both general civil and domestic relations mediators. We could not find a set of Standards of Conduct for Mediators that did this, so we basically developed our own. I had the privilege of serving on the sub-committee that developed these standards, and on the larger committee that refined them for general approval, both convened by the State Court Administrative Office.
\nThe American Bar Association joined with the Association for Conflict Resolution and with the American Arbitration Association to develop the Model Standards of Conduct for Mediators<\/a>; these were first published in 1994, and revised in 2005. Michigan\u2019s current Standards of Conduct for Mediators are based on these Model Standards. However, they do not address some of the ethical issues that arise in divorce mediation, so divorce mediators are advised to consult the Model Standards of Practice for Family and Divorce Mediation,<\/a> which were first developed by The Association of Family and Conciliation Courts in 1984, and thoroughly revised in 2000 by a consortium of family mediation organizations, including the ABA\u2019s Family Law Section, the Academy of Family Mediators and the AFCC.
\nOur sub-committee, comprised of Zena Zumeta, Barbara Johannessen, Susan Butterwick and myself\u2014all mediators and mediation trainers who do both domestic and general civil mediations\u2014yearned for one set of Standards that would cover all aspects of mediation. Not only is it cumbersome to be familiar with two sets of Standards, but some cases \u2013 such as child neglect placement or adult guardianships — do not clearly belong under either Standards. Barb J gets credit for undertaking the daunting task for overlaying the two sets of Model Standards to try to develop a common thread. We ultimately opted to adhere to the format of the general civil Model Standards, with its nine categories, incorporating many of the principles from the Family and Divorce Mediation standards.
\nWe followed some \u201cguiding principles\u201d as we developed these standards:
\n\u2022 Adhere to Model Standards language as much as possible; unless we had a good reason to alter the language, we retained the Model Standards phrasing. Thus, many portions of these Michigan Standards mimic the Model Standards, including the first sentences of most of the nine major Standards.
\n\u2022 Knowingly redundant; some principles apply to more than one topic so we mentioned the same principle in two locations. For example, the requirement that the mediator continually assess whether a party is physically or emotionally unsafe is found under both \u201cCompetence\u201d (IV.B.) and under \u201cQuality of the Process\u201d (VI.A.4.a)
\n\u2022 Distinguish between \u201cparties\u201d and \u201cparticipants;\u201d the mediator owes a slightly different obligation to the decision-makers in the mediation than to the other people who attend the mediation so we carefully determined where that line was. Thus, the Standard on Self-determination applies only to parties (Standard I), whereas the Standard on Impartiality (Standard II) applies to all participants.
\n\u2022 Distinguish between \u201cshall\u201d and \u201cshould.\u201d In general, the first sentence of each standard is the \u201cshall\u201d \u2013 the ethical principle \u2013 and subsequent provisions flesh out the principle with both \u201cshall\u201d and \u201cshould.\u201d Thus, a mediator shall conduct a mediation impartially, and should neither give nor accept a gift from a party (II.A.2).
\n\u2022 Everything in this set of standards is part of the standard itself, in contrast with the Model Standards, which include both principles and commentary.
\n\u2022 Everything is stated as a standard, and not simply a suggestion. Thus, for example, we omitted the observation in the Model Standards (I.A.2.) that a mediator should make parties aware of the importance of consulting outside experts.
\n\u2022 Omit general statements; e.g., we omitted this statement found in the Model Standards: \u201cThe role of a mediator differs substantially from other professional roles.\u201d
\nThe one aspect of these Proposed Standards that differs significantly in format from the Model Standards is Standard VI, \u201cQuality of the Process.\u201d In the Model Standards, this Standard simply enumerates a variety of topics 1 through 10, dis-connected from one another. We chose to organize the principles in this section under several sub-headings: Diligence and timeliness; Participants and participation; Procedural fairness; Safety and appropriateness of mediation; and the Role of the mediator. We did this to make these Standards \u201cuser-friendly,\u201d so that a mediator who needs specific advice can more readily find it in the Standards.
\nWhile these proposed Standards contain much more information than Michigan\u2019s current Standards, which are only two pages long, they do not depart significantly from either set of Model Standards in substance. However, for general civil mediators who have never consulted the Family and Divorce Mediation standards, the provisions relating to safety and well-being of participants, and reporting suspected abuse, will be unfamiliar.
\nThe most challenging aspect of these Standards for the committee concerns the role of the mediator: when a mediator offers to propose a resolution, is the neutral still acting as a mediator, or is the neutral now serving in another role, namely, as an arbitrator? The proposed Standards advise a mediator to undertake an additional role carefully, mindful of maintaining impartiality and party self-determination (VI.B).
\nMichigan mediators would do well to review these proposed Standards carefully, to consider whether these articulate the Standards of Conduct that should guide Michigan mediators. Some courts\u2019 ADR Plans (such as Kent and Grand Traverse) permit a court to remove a mediator from the court roster for failing to adhere to the Standards of Conduct for Mediators, so these Standards may not be merely advisory.
\nIt is hoped that these Standards set a high bar for the unregulated \u201cprofession\u201d of mediators, instilling public confidence in mediators and making us proud to be practitioners of this wonderful process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New Standards of Conduct for Mediators were proposed by Michigan\u2019s State Court Administrative Office last week. They can be viewed at by clicking on the title above, or by going to this web-site: \u00a0http:\/\/courts.michigan.gov\/scao\/features\/mailings\/2011\/11-10-11\/MediatorStandardsOfConduct.pdf. \u00a0The public comment period runs through the end of February 2012. I hope many people comment on them, because they break […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":835,"href":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions\/835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}