The New York Times published a piece yesterday by Abby Ellin titled “Strengthening Troubled Sibling Bonds to Deal With an Aging Parent.” It appears in the Saturday Personal Business section in the print edition and the Your Money section of the digital edition, here.
In the article, three sisters in their fifties describe how working with a mediator helped them cope with the challenges of making decisions surrounding the care of their 84 year-old mother and their disabled brother, who lived with her. The goals of elder mediation are to help those in conflict to find solutions to current problems and develop ways to deal with future challenges.
Similarly, family wealth mediation and family business mediation have as goals both the resolution of whatever current conflict is simmering or boiling and also helping family members develop tools to help them more address future challenges in a way to minimize the number and intensity of future conflicts and effectively deal with those that do occur.
