John Andrew’s divorce from his wife of 26 years took a turn for the worse last summer when his son filed a petition for guardianship, seeking the legal authority to intervene in the proceedings and negotiate a settlement he thought his father deserved.

But a legal battle that could have torn the Andrew family apart was averted when Deschutes County Circuit Court Judge Roger DeHoog wrote a simple order on a Post-it note he attached to the cover sheet of John Andrew’s case file.

“Mediation seems liked a great idea,” the judge wrote and signed March 4. “Please prepare the order.”

Since January 2009, Deschutes County Circuit Court officials have sent 16 guardianship and conservatorship cases to mediation, an alternative form of conflict resolution in which the parties involved in a dispute come together and work out a solution that meets everybody’s interests.

According to court records, the parties in 12 of these cases — including John Andrew’s guardianship case — reached agreements that allowed them to settle their dispute without spending any more time in court (see “By the numbers,” Page B6).

Based on this success rate, court officials said they’d like to increase the number of guardianship and conservatorship cases referred to mediation each year — something that is especially important given predictions the total number of these filings will rise as the region’s population ages.

The dispute

When John Andrew, 83, and Bette Andrew, 73, filed for a divorce in August , they worked out an agreement that would have allowed each spouse to keep whatever vehicles, property and retirement funds each of them had before they got married in 1984.

But this agreement did not satisfy Michael Andrew and John Andrew’s other children, who argued in a petition for guardianship that their father was “not capable of negotiating the terms of his divorce” because of his age and mental condition .

“I kept telling them I didn’t need all of that stuff,” said John Andrew, who soon found himself in a legal battle against his children. “I just wanted to get everything over with.”

The dispute between Andrew, his wife and his children had been in the court system for six months — costing each party thousands in legal fees and untold amounts of stress — when DeHoog made a simple order that sought to ease everybody’s pain.

After their attorneys signed off on this plan, everyone involved in the dispute got together for a closed-door meeting with two mediators at Central Oregon Mediation’s Bend conference room.

While their discussions were confidential, their agreement was not: Michael Andrew would dismiss his guardianship petition and attempts to control his father’s divorce, while Bette Andrew would pay her ex-husband a small monthly allowance and his car insurance and health insurance premiums.

“The mediators got us all to give a little bit,” said Michael Andrew . “That’s what it’s all about.”

The alternative

Perhaps the biggest advantage mediation has over litigation is that it lets everybody involved in a dispute play an active role in shaping its outcome, said Allan Flood, a mediation coordinator with Central Oregon Mediation, a nonprofit .

“The mediator’s role is to make sure everyone involved in the situation has a voice,” Flood said, adding that disputes resolved through litigation don’t include this aspect because they end when a judge or jury makes a ruling the parties must follow after they argue their case.

“It’s a lot better than having a judge tell them what to do,” said Ernest Mazorol , trial courts administrator for Deschutes County Circuit Court. Mazorol said people may resent the results of a dispute handled through litigation because they see it as a command from an authority figure rather than something they did for themselves.

Mediation sessions are also considered confidential proceedings. The parties involved can talk about what happened if they want to, and while the results of a session are considered to be a legally binding contract, the information is disclosed only if it is part of a public document .

Finally, mediation is a lot cheaper than litigation. Flood said Central Oregon Mediation operates on a sliding scale: There is no fee if someone earns less than $15,000 a year, and the sessions only cost $10 per hour if the person earns less than $25,000 a year.

“About 50 percent of our mediations are done at no charge,” he said, adding that the financial burden of legal fees can further complicate matters for low-income families in the middle of a dispute. “Anytime you are litigating, you are spending money.”

Bette Andrew said she could have spent $1,500 a day in legal fees alone if her ex-husband’s guardianship case ended up in court.

While she didn’t want to comment on what led to the dispute or what happened during the four-hour mediation session, she said taking this route was a better alternative than handling it in court because “that would have just made it longer, nastier and more expensive.”

The expansion

Mazorol said court officials had a history of using mediation to handle several types of cases — small claims court cases, landlord/tenant disputes and parenting time disputes in custody cases — that tied up their dockets long before they decided to use it on guardianship and conservatorship cases in 2009.

“We’ve been doing mediation for years,” he said, adding that 80 percent of the landlord/tenant disputes and 65 to 70 percent of the small claims cases sent to mediation have been resolved without taking up any of the court’s time. “We’re very firm believers in it.”

In a guardianship case, a person asks a judge to declare a loved one incapacitated — unable to make the decisions needed to maintain his or her wellbeing — and appoint someone else to manage the loved one’s affairs. Conservatorship cases are similar but deal solely with financial matters.

The Deschutes County Circuit Court System handles 100 to 150 guardianship and conservatorship cases each year, the trial courts administrator said. Court systems across the state handled 2,119 of these cases in 2011 alone.

But despite their numbers, Mazorol said he knew of only two other counties in Oregon — Multnomah and Douglas — that had considered referring guardianship and conservatorship cases to mediation when Deschutes County started its program in 2009.

The trial courts administrator wasn’t sure whether these counties decided to move forward with its plans to use mediation as an alternative to the court system for these cases or if any other county has decided to follow Deschutes’ lead.

But either way, Mazorol said he is pleased with how the program has worked and would like to see the number of cases it’s used for increase over the coming years — provided a few obstacles can be overcome.

“We need the attorneys to feel comfortable saying this is a better path than going to court,” Mazorol said, adding that once the comfort level increases he expects the referrals to increase. He also wants to make sure enough mediators have the skills needed to understand these complex disputes.

The court system’s desire to increase its use of mediation to handle these conflicts couldn’t come at a more appropriate time, said Flood, who predicts their numbers will increase as the population gets older and the baby boomers start dealing with dementia and other age-related problems.

“There’s a pent-up demand for these services,” Flood said, adding that his center has already seen an eightfold increase in family mediations over the past five years. “As people age there are only going to be more issues that come up involving estates, health choices and family situations.”

By the numbers

The Deschutes County Circuit Court sent 16 guardianship and conservatorship cases to mediation between July 2009 and April 2012. Here is some information about the cases and their results:

13 of these cases were guardianship cases, in which an individual seeks full legal authority to manage someone else’s affairs, and three were conservatorship, in which an individual seeks the authority only to manage someone else’s financial affairs.

8 of these cases involved elders, six involved children or juveniles, and two involved some other type of special-protected person.

9 of these cases were fully resolved after the mediation session.

1 case reached a partial agreement .

4 of these cases did not yield a settlement after the mediation session.

1 case ended with the parties involved deciding to not bring up issues again.

1 case is still working its way through the system.

Source: Deschutes County Circuit Court