A Fresh Approach to Your Fresh Start
When selecting an appropriate course for divorce or separation agreements, ensuring that your needs will be met through an established, systematic process is paramount.
The Fresh Start focus is to understand what you need to get the agreement you want. From coaching to mediations, our process asks the important questions to ensure you have a stable, long-lasting agreement through a confidential process that reduces time, expense, and stress.
The cornerstone to our philosophy is the Orange Story - This is the simple story of two people arguing over who can have the remaining Orange in the pantry. Typically, these situations result in a third party simply slicing the orange in half and providing each person with half the satisfaction.
At Fresh Start we believe in doing better. Instead, we ask each person questions to gain an understanding into their underlying needs - Why do you want the orange? The first person wants to eat it, while the second desires the zest for baking. By taking that one more step, we can now offer complete solutions that help build goodwill and trust.
Our process consists of multiple steps curated to your unique needs, created to ensure the agreement will not only meet your individual needs, but also stand the test of time.
Initial Consult – This no-charge, no-commitment consultation is designed to answer your questions, and curate a process unique to your needs. We answer all your questions and gain an initial understanding of the Emotional, Financial and Parenting complexities you are experiencing.
Goal Setting and Foundations Meetings - These individual, one-on-one sessions, help us understand not only what is important to you, but also why. We help refocus the circumstances of the mediation into one of understanding and a commitment to resolution.
Financial Disclosure and Asset Division – We help make what could be a complicated process easy. Our financial experts and assessors help you collect and understand your financial situation and walk you through several scenarios that help meet your needs now, and into the future.
Parenting Plans – We not only help answer the questions for today but create an agreed upon process for future decisions. We help answer the important questions you will need to navigate as your children grow, with different interests, challenges and realities.
We believe in providing you with an agreement that works, that is why we say we represent the integrity, longevity, and stability of our agreements. Should you ever need to discuss any aspect of your agreement in the future and as situations and realities change, our mediators are standing by.
Don Schapira, Founder of Fresh Start Mediation in Calgary, believes that “a Fresh Start begins with a fresh and talented team.” It has been his mission to create that. Since 2020, Fresh Start Mediation has grown to serve more communities in Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and now Ontario. Strong, talented voices and skill sets by our mediators help our clients ensure their voices are heard, and agreements finalized.
It was announced in the summer of 2022, that Fresh Start has created a vital partnership with the team at JD Law and Associates in order to create, compile and file your paperwork into the court documents you need to finalize your agreement. This is in addition with the Eau Claire Financial partnership announced in 2021 to ensure your financial disclosure is collected, assessed, and explained to our clients in the way they need to understand the complexities of Division of Assets.
We continue to add to our list of services through technology. In 2023, we look forward to rolling out the Fresh Start Mediation App for iOS and Android.
This app will help make financial disclosure easy to compile right from your mobile phone. Fresh Start Clients will also be able to create a new meeting, see their mediation status, and complete all of their paperwork all from the click of a button on their mobile.
We will continue to work to create Fresh Thoughts. This year we have brought on Fresh Faces, Fresh Locations, and many Fresh Ideas, including representation in Central Alberta with Ann Davidson, in Saskatchewan with Linsey Nixon, in Manitoba with Lisa Huberdeau, in Victoria with Philip Be’er and growing in 2023 to represent the Great Vancouver and Toronto Areas.
When you find yourself needing to proceed with a separation or divorce, you need the best people behind you to assure you get the fresh start you truly deserve. The growing team at Fresh Start Mediation blend fresh ideas, experience, and innovation.
It's our passion to save you money and see you happier and more stable than when we first meet for that free consult. We look forward to seeing what the next year will bring not only for our Fresh Start, but for yours.
Take the first step: let’s talk about you. We offer free, no obligation conversations to people like you all across Canada.
Let’s talk about your situation. Really.
