How Mediation Helped Me Name My Son (and Maybe Saved My Marriage!)

While traditionally lawyers think of mediation as a way to resolve lawsuits without going to trial, the potential for mediation is vast and limited only by our own conceptions of how we use it. In fact, mediation will be helpful whenever opposing parties are interested in gaining a deeper understanding of their conflict and possible mutually beneficial resolutions to the dispute.

It sounds fairly simple, but the truth is that solving conflict requires understanding our own motives and that of the other party. Sometimes the conflict causes so much anger and pain that it’s difficult to undertake that task. Resolution also necessarily requires that both parties see that conflict is always a two-way street, even if responsibility for the conflict is 90/10. One has to own their part in order to take ownership for resolving the conflict, instead of getting stuck in the idea of being a hapless victim. Victims lose their will to compromise very quickly.

Here's a story to illustrate my point. About fifteen years ago, my husband and I found out we were having a (male) child. When we got married, we both kept our surnames. My husband, a self-avowed feminist, said he did not want me to change my name since I would be the primary breadwinner and already had a good amount of name recognition in my career.

As we awaited the birth of our child, I naturally assumed we would hyphenate our son’s last name. I was thrilled that my child would carry my name as well as my husband’s. I figured that given that I would be carrying the burdens that a husband traditionally does (being responsible for the financial upkeep of the family), I would also receive the benefits of being in the patriarchal role, such as having a child who carried my name, no questions asked.

However, to my shock, when we actually discussed it, way too late in the game, my husband told me that he was opposed to hyphenating the name. Perhaps I should have seen this coming. My husband loves design and visual order, and linking two names together with a hyphen offended his love for simple and clean aesthetics. However, he was also adamant that our son take his name, pointing out that he would likely be the only male grandchild.

For various reasons, the conflict felt intractable. While I kept suggesting creative ideas to solve the issue, my husband was in a place where none of the compromises appealed to him, and he stubbornly refused to offer ones of his own. I became angrier and angrier, thinking how I’d been duped into believing I was marrying a feminist, and recklessly assumed that of course he’d want our child to have my name!

Good mediator that I am, I finally suggested that perhaps mediation could open up some neural pathways we had not yet tapped into. So far, we were making no headway and we were both getting more and more mired in our positions. Ironically, as is often the case in conflict, both of us felt we had the moral upper-hand and were indignant that the other did not see our point-of-view as the only fair solution to the problem.

During mediation, however, what my husband and I found is that we hadn’t really heard and understood one another, nor the reasons for our strong views. What we found in common was a deep love of our fathers (and in my husband’s case, particularly his grandfather) and a desire to honor their surname; a name that otherwise would die out if not passed on to our kids. I felt particularly strongly about this given that my dad had narrowly escaped Nazi Germany and, by all rights, our lineage could easily be extinct.

In the end, our compromise was this: our son took as his middle name the first name of his paternal grandfather (David) immediately followed by my husband’s last name, Kaplan. So, Jesse (our son) was named Jesse David Kaplan-Maier although the custom is usually that the woman’s name comes first in the hyphenation. In this way, David Kaplan’s full name was preserved, and Maier did not get punted into a middle name position or otherwise lost along the way. It was such a simple solution in so many ways, but one we could not get to until we had a space to air our grievances as well as deeply listen to the other’s perspective. Today Jesse is 15, and the sweetest kid I have ever met. He is super smart, an incredible big brother, a huge advocate for social justice and the environment, obsessed with music, and proudly tells me he loves me as he exits my car in the morning — even when the other kids can hear. In short, I am so proud that he carries both our names.

In part two of this post, I’ll discuss some other interesting examples of using mediation to solve interpersonal conflict.

Author: Diana Maier, Partner. Diana is a mediator with a specialty in resolving employment and business dispute litigation, but also enjoys mediating interpersonal conflict, such as in a personal or professional relationship that is struggling.

This article has been prepared for general informational purposes only and does not constitute advertising, solicitation, or legal advice. If you have questions about a particular matter, please contact the Maier Law Group directly.