We used a mediator because we thought we had only a house and child support to work through. We had been separated for 10 years and had a child payment plan and custody plan that worked. Our mediator never reviewed any of the hours and hours of work we had done to illustrate who paid what throughout the marriage, and during the 10 years of separation. She never spoke with us separately to hear what each wanted, and never considered both sides views or offered to provide any compromise. She vaguely threw together a plan using very bad math calculations off her head, and acted as though we would do the real numbers later. I went along not to waste more of her time since we were being charged an excessive amount of money for her to just sit in the room with us and let us figure it out. I ended up royally screwed out of my profits from my house (which husband had not lived in, or contributed to, in more than 10 years). He is getting close to half the profits! My advice. Pay a lawyer. Its about the same amount of money but at least someone is looking out for your interests and not just their own payday. This mediator did not take any time other than the 3 hours we sat with her to review our information and never offered recommendations. Just used a standard form for our agreement and used formulas to enter numbers. Maybe spent 1 hour of her secretaries time. We spent over $5000 for this service that we could have done ourselves online - they added no additional value.