Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Page 19

JJittsburciI) osHfiaidlc MONDAY, JUNE 28, 1982 19 If divorce is inevitable, mediation smoothes way Art Buchwald Selling Reagan's economic policies By Bohdan Hodiak Post-Gazette Staff Writer Bitterly fought divorces don't yield any winners, says Judge Lawrence W. Kaplan, "They only produce losers." Couples have the right to try "to eat each other alive in court," but in Kaplan's experience, such divorces damage both spouses, their children, and have effects into the next generation. Kaplan knows of a better way divorce mediation. It initially bypasses lawyers, whose training is adversary litigation, in favor of reaching an amicable agreement. Its proponents say divorce mediation saves money, nerves, and has a high rate of compliance on divorce agreements.

The concept has been growing since the mid-1970s and this week has taken root in Pittsburgh. The Academy of Family Mediators is holding a five-day conference and training program at Chatham College in Shadyside. Its purpose is to train mediators to help couples work out their own divorces. Thirty-two persons are taking the $600 course, which ends tomorrow. Last October, Kaplan, family division judge of the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas, attended a divorce mediation seminar in Philadelphia.

On his return he held a meeting at his home. Thirty persons attended and that was the beginning of the Family Mediation Council of Western Pennsylvania. Mediators are not marriage counselors. They do not try to reconcile a couple. They are frequently lawyers, mental health professionals, even union negotiators.

They deal only with couples who want a divorce. They do not provide legal advice, though mediators need to know some divorce law. Mediators do not take sides. Their job is to help the couple work out a divorce agreement which they can then take to their lawyers. "Mediation is quicker.

It helps the couple retain control of their lives. They take responsibility for their divorce," said Sam Margulies, one of the speakers at the conference. He is an attorney and president of Family Mediation Council of New Jersey. Points at issue which, under the adversary system can take weeks, can be resolved in minutes, Margulies said. They don't have to pass from the wife to the wife's lawyer to the husband's lawyer, to the husband, back to his lawyer A contested divorce can easily cost thousands of dollars while a mediated divorce will cost a fraction of that.

There is generally a $125 administrative fee plus $50 an hour for mediation sessions. An average case takes six hours for a total cost of around $500. Mediators set a limit on the number of David A. Williams Post-Gazette graphic sessions. This forces couples to negotiate rather than bicker.

(A recent study of the Denver Custody Mediation Project showed mediation did not initially save much money for the participants. Those who successfully completed mediation paid an average of $1,324 in legal fees. Those who tried mediation but failed to reach an agreement paid an average of $1,544. Those who rejected mediation paid an average of $1,536. The successful mediators, however, experienced much less relitigation.

They also went through the court system faster and expressed a higher satisfaction with the fairness of settlements. Child support payments were comparable among the three groups.) While couples can work out agreements on their own, trained mediators can make sure they don't overlook areas that can cause trouble or future misunderstandings. They can also nudge a couple back into negotiating when they get recriminatory. Last year more than 6 million women in the United States sought enforcement of delinquent court-ordered child support pay PPT's Shaktman led city's theatrical Sometime back the Republican Party decided to launch a $1.7 million TV campaign to sell the GOP. They sought out an advertising agency and told them, "We've got to convince the American people that the only way to stop bad breath is by using Reaganomics.

We want to show them that the best cure for the 'recession blahs' is a strong dose of supply-side economics. And we have to persuade the viewer that the President doesn't have ring around the collar." The advertising agency boss told them, "You came to the right place. Belch, our creative vice president, has been working on just such a campaign. Show them what you've come up with." Belch went over to a large easel. "Gentlemen, we must treat the Republican Party just like another consumer product.

We have to convince the TV viewer that if he has hemorrhoids it's the Democrats' fault. Now our art department has sketched out a sample commercial. The first one shows actors that look like Jimmy Carter and Tip O'Neill. We will have a lawyer holding a will in which he reads what the Democrats have bequeathed Ronald Reagan, including a recession, unemployment and the highest interest rates in the history of the nation. As he's reading, Tip O'Neill is laughing like hell, and Jimmy Carter has that dumb grin on his face." The Republican campaign managers studied it.

Finally one of them said', "It's the old Brand dirty trick gimmick. We're being negative, unfair, and some people would even say unscrupulous. I like it." Another Republican nodded his head. "It's got the scary message we've been looking for, without the overkill. It will get the people thinking they're using the wrong deodorant." Belch said, "We've tested it in Palm Springs, and 80 percent of the people who saw it said it convinced them to vote Republican." "That's good enough for us," the head Republican honcho said.

"If the Democrats yell foul, we'll know we're on the right track." Belch said, "If the campaign proves as effective as I think it is, we have some other great ones in the can. We plan to show Carter and Tip O'Neill driving by an unemployment office in a long limousine, and when they see the lines outside they start laughing their heads off. And we will have the two of them walking through a school lunchroom watching the kids eating ketchup and chuckling to each other." The Republicans started slapping their thighs. The chief said, "Gentlemen, we've come to the right agency. You people can have our account.

Now let's run it up the flag pole and see how it plays in Peoria." The first commercial was made. CBS and NBC refused to air it, but ABC decided it needed the money. Also, the independent stations put it on. To everyone's surprise it wasn't selling Reaganomics. The head Republican honcho called up Belch in anger.

"Our warehouse is full of supply-side economics. Our sales are just a trickle. What's wrong?" "It takes time for a negative message to sink in," Belch told him defensively. "You have to play it over and over again." "Baloney," the Republican said. "Everyone thinks we're doing a commercial for probate lawyers.

We keep getting calls from people asking if we will write their wills. Besides, every time the damn thing shows it reminds the voter we're in a recession." "But you people said you wanted to blame all the country's economic troubles on the Democrats." "You guys couldn't sell a Chrysler car to Lee Iacocca." "Look," said Belch desperately, "maybe the commercial isn't doing everything we hoped it would. We'll change the campaign by being more positive. We could show the president eating jellybeans in the Oval Office, and then looking into the camera and saying 'The question you have to ask yourselves is, "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?" "Don't bother," the Republican shouted. "Your agency is fired." "But why?" "Because, thanks to your stupid commercial, everyone in Peoria is going to vote for the Democrats." But like to a Iff i ments.

This figure does not include additional millions of women who have given up or are seeking collection through private channels. The Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement reported this month that noncompliance with child-support orders has increased 50 percent since 1979. Also, the Census Bureau has reported a 50 percent increase in the divorce rate compared to the early 1970s. There are now more than 1 million divorces yearly. In a mediated divorce, because the couple works out the agreement instead of having it imposed, compliance is high.

A Columbia University study of 100 mediated families found 90 percent less post-divorce litigation than that among adversary-type divorces. "Mediation saves people anger and vindic-tiveness," Marguilies said. "In adversary divorces 'winning' may cause everybody to lose. If you destroy their viability the other party will default." Another speaker at the conference, Stephen K. Erickson, director of the Family Mediation Service in Minneapolis, mentioned one event that helped get him, as a lawyer, into mediation work.

He got an extremely good divorce settlement for a woman. A few months later her ex-husband killed her. Margulies got into mediation after, from the legal point of view, doing an excellent job for a client. "I won a custody fight for a psychotic. I got the two kids for a raving lunatic!" he said.

The legal profession has not embraced divorce mediation. "There is a hell of a lot of resistance. They've put up legal roadblocks in (Continued on Page 20) renaissance He seemed impervious to statistics which demonstrated that a four-week run of a Playhouse show drew more people than the average three-night run of a symphony program. Ben Shaktman helped change that. And in doing so, he not only made the Public Theater a success, he revived theater in Pittsburgh.

The early '70s were a theatrical dark age here. The Nixon was wastefully allowed to be torn down for a tiny parking lot, a blunder for which we are still paying. And the Playhouse, site of the city's first regional theater experiment, was shuttered for two years before being relit under the aegis of Point Park College. Until Shaktman, the money people and the theater people didn't seem to speak the same language. William Ball and John Hancock, who headed professional companies at the Playhouse, left vivid memories with audiences and nightmarish recollections for board members, some of whom still grow livid when those directors are praised in print.

Shaktman was different. He spoke authoritatively to artists and bankers alike. He conveyed serious intentions to both groups, and they respected him. He built slowly. In 1965 Ball sent a corporate board member into shock by asking for a $1 million budget.

Now the Public Theater spends twice that amount yearly. But Shaktman built up to that figure and to the present year-round schedule by slow, deliberate, well-planned, well-thought-out steps. Extravagance was not the public image of his theater. He was brought to town by community (Continued on Page 22) kneel or squat during delivery, and is the work of Michel Odent at Pitivers, south of Paris. Hello, Jorgy: Transsexual Christine Jorgensen, 56, who made world headlines 30 years ago by becoming a woman in a sex-change operation, is about to take on another change of roles she's going on the stage.

Jorgensen will play the lead in "Hello, Dolly!" in San Diego and San Francisco this summer. "Everybody else has tried it, why not me," said Jorgensen, who lives in Laguna Beach, Calif. "I've seen Carol Chan-ning and Pearl Bailey in 'Dolly' they're good friends but I plan to play a more flamboyant character." Jorgensen was born George Jorgensen in the Bronx and underwent the operation in Denmark in December 1952. Newsmakers: Actor Charlton Heston is visiting India, Bangladesh and Pakistan to produce a documentary film aimed at raising money in the United States for relief in developing countries. Bv Vince Leonard By George Anderson Post-Gazette Entertainment Editor "Let's face it, son.

Meanin' no disrespect, Pittsburgh never was much of a theater town. Ruth Gordon in an interview in 1973. It all seems so long ago. Can things really change that much without everybody realizing it? Just three weeks ago, Bob Fosse's "Dan-cin' and Lana Turner's "Murder Among Friends" played the Stanley and Heinz Hall simultaneously to a combined gross of $400,000. In the same week, "Tartuffe" was grossing $24,000 at the Public Theater.

Not much of a theater town? Only four cities in the United States New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco spent more that week to see live theater. Of course, it doesn't happen every week. it did happen here that week. Pittsburgh theatergoers had a choice of 27 stage productions that first week of June, performed by professional, semi-professional, amateur, community, campus and dinner theater companies. Can it be only a decade since the Nixon Theater lost touring productions of shows "Company" and "Applause" because the owners couldn't risk guaranteeing the producers Even taking inflation into account doesn't explain a change that drastic.

When did Pittsburgh become such a busy theater town? If a single date could be chosen mark the beginning of this theatrical renaissance, it would be Sept. 17, 1975. "We won't be brilliant, but we will pass People Co-founders of Pittsburgh Public Theater, from left: Margaret Rieck, Ben Shaktman and Joan Apt. proved to foundations and corporations that there was an audience here. The head of what was once the city's richest and most influential foundation used to turn down requests for aid by a former Pittsburgh Playhouse manager by saying, "There's just no audience for theater.

If you had audience support like the symphony, it would be different." inspection." Amanda Wingfield in "The Glass Menagerie," opening production of the Pittsburgh Public Theater. The city's newest professional theater passed inspection that night. And in the seven years since, it has often been brilliant, too. But there can be no doubt that the success of the Public Theater proved to Pittsburghers that they did indeed like theater, and it Marie's marriage: Entertainer Marie Osmond, 22, wearing a glittering dress made of 35 yards of silk taffeta, married Stephen Craig, a Brigham Young University student and former basketball player, as 150 fans waited outside Salt Lake City's Mormon Temple to cheer her. The couple left on an undisclosed, three-day honeymoon after a reception for 4,000.

Later, the bride will leave on a summer tour with her family. The couple said they planned to live in Provo, where the singing Osmond family has a studio, and said they "absolutely" planned to have children. "It feels wonderful; I got the best," Marie said following the private ceremony. Craig, 25, wore a white dinner jacket. His brother and the Osmond brothers Verl, Tom, Alan, Wayne, Merrill, Jay, Donny and Jim, served as groomsmen.

Beau geste: It was a unique and belated curtain "call" for actress Helen Hayes. The redoubtable Hayes, whose performance in a New Orleans play helped trigger the audience, telphoned the couple 44 years later. In 1938, Laurence Jun-gling took his girlfriend, Mathilde, to see Hayes in the play "Victoria Regina." Later that night, fortified with the romance of the play and New Orleans, Jungling proposed. They were married that summer. Hayes called the couple at their home in Natchez, to congratulate them.

French-style birth: Britain's Princess Diaaa may have given birth to the heir to the British throne by a natural method rediscovered and developed in France. The Sunday Times said equipment for a French-style standing birth was ordered by the hospital, and remarks by Diana and Prince Charles suggest the princess "did not have the passive type of delivery under anesthetic which was given to the Queen Elizabeth Charles said: "The princess had a natural birth well, very nearly. It was a very grown-up thing." Diana went home with her baby 21 hours after the birth. The Times said the Frerjrh apparatus is -iO. Associated Press Mr.

and Mrs. Stephen Craie after wedding eeremtytv..