About Barney Connaughton

I have been practicing family law in Chula Vista and San Diego since 1993. My practice has included representing clients in contested divorces and serving as a mediator.

I took my first divorce mediation training in 2003. For the first time I was introduced to the notion that I could act as a neutral divorce professional guiding both spouses at once, rather than an attorney for one of them trying to tip the scales.

Despite my best intentions, I witnessed way too much scarring of families that I helped to usher through the court process. That was not because I was a good or bad attorney. The process of a litigated divorce is a naturally devastating one.

My parents taught me the importance of family, which has always been at the center of my life. The flexibility of owning my own practice let me coach each of my three children and chaperone the class trips. My aspiration in becoming a divorce attorney was to help families get through a divorce in the best way possible, and to limit the impact on the children involved. I wanted families to be okay after divorce.

Mediation is the way I found to do that. I took mediation cases alongside litigated ones for years, and by 2020 I had shifted my practice to mediation. More than 1,700 couples have now sorted out their divorces with my neutral assistance.

I have written the longer version of this in my own words: my journey to a healthy divorce.

I have tried to do my small part in letting the world know that contentious fighting through a divorce should be the exception and not the rule, by publishing my book Untangling Together: A Healthy Divorce Guide and Workbook. It is written for couples getting started, and its worksheet pages in the appendix help couples get organized as they handle their divorce.

I am not in a hurry. Most of the damage I watched litigation do came from decisions made under pressure, so my sessions are built to slow that down: nobody is asked to decide anything until both spouses understand the law, the numbers and the options in front of them.

I do not take sides, and I will not be nudged into taking one. That sometimes disappoints the spouse who arrives expecting an ally, and it is the reason the other one can trust the room. If one of you goes quiet while the other talks, I will ask you directly what you think, because an agreement one of you did not really agree to is not the result we are looking for.

I will tell you when you are considering doing something out of the ordinary. Then I will step back and leave the two of you to make the decision. I will also tell you honestly if I think mediation is the wrong room for you, which happens, and it is better said in the first thirty minutes than six weeks in.

Most couples meet with me online via Zoom and plenty come into the office, which is at 397 Third Avenue, Suite C, in Chula Vista, one block from the courthouse. Either works, and you can mix the two. You do not even have to be in the same city: each of you can join a Zoom session from wherever you are, and the divorce itself is filed here in California.

The step by step version of the process is on how divorce mediation works, the pricing for each package is on what it costs, and directions and parking are on the contact page.