Hon. Gretchen W. Taylor, Judge Retired
Email: gtaylor@signatureresolution.com
The Honorable Gretchen W. Taylor is a retired Commissioner with 12 years experience as a Family Law Judge in both Los Angeles and Riverside Counties. She retired from the bench in 2009 and has since focused exclusively on providing lawyers, their clients, parties and parents an array of neutral mediator and private judging services. She is a California State Bar Certified Specialist in Family Law and prior to being appointed to the bench in 1997, practiced Divorce and Family law for 18 years.since her retirement she has built a full time practice of mediation of Family Law disputes. Lawyers bring their clients and cases to her for resolution and refer their clients to her for those who wish to work primarily without lawyers during the sessions. Her agility with all manner of issues give her clients the confidence that their own solution will become apparent under her guidance and that the dispute will resolve with a neutral, balanced and intelligent approach.
Judge Taylor's services include:
- Mediation
- Voluntary Settlement Conferences
- Co-Mediation
- Appointment as Private Trial Judge Pro Tem
- Arbitrator (including attorney-client fee disputes and personal property divisions)
- Discovery Referee
- Special Master
- Parent Plan Coordinator
- Consultation Services as an Expert on a Range of Family Law Topics
Judge Taylor is trained in, and committed to, the understanding based model of mediation whereby she assists parties and/or their lawyers to process the emotional, legal, and financial aspects of their dispute. This style of mediation is designed to encourage each side together to brainstorm potential solutions to issues, with sensitive and expert guidance provided by the mediator. This allows previously unnoticed answers to reveal themselves, leading to agreement and satisfying and lasting outcomes. Since mediation processes are not 'one size fits all,' Judge Taylor is comfortable working in a collaborative, consultative, advisory, or directive manner and may use any combination of these modalities within one mediation case.
She is a leader in the growing movement to allow the child's voice to be heard in the mediation of custody and visitation, believing that children's experiences of the breakup of the family unit can easily be lost or ignored when parents are distracted by the emotional attributes of the dispute itself. As a means of preventing alienation issues, a child informed mediation process considers a child's expressed wishes and their unspoken needs in developing parenting plans. Allowing kids to be heard, usually through interviews with mental health experts who then report to the parents and the mediator, enables a creative dialogue to develop that supports parental attachments, co-parenting respectfully, and focuses on children's best interests in light of their ages and stages of development. The mental health professionals can be utilized as co-mediators from the start to finish of mediation, or in individual sessions as needed, according to what best serves each circumstance.
Regarding complex financial matters, Judge Taylor regularly works with forensic CPA's skilled in mediation and who are willing to perform valuation and other accounting expert services collaboratively. Their mandate is to inform the parties of their best and worst possible outcomes and to educate all regarding the most reliable view and outcome which usually leads to resolution.
The professional partnerships, teams and interventions utilized by Judge Taylor reduce conflict, save time and financial resources, and foster cooperation that support the independent futures of the mediation participants, and avoids those people becoming stuck at the level of the possible wreckage that family transitions can engender.
As a Family Law Commissioner, Judge Taylor presided over hundreds of matters each week. She resolved many thousands of Family Law disputes during her 12 years on the bench - mostly by settlements she supervised and managed. She is down to earth and believes in maintaining equality, integrity and dignity for each party at this time of family crisis. She is comfortable with complex balance sheet tracings, tax and valuation issues, support and cash available for support questions, disability concerns, mental health and brain disorders, alcohol and drug addiction, adolescent oppositional behavior and much more.
Prior to her tenure on the Los Angeles Superior Court and the Riverside Superior Court, Hon. Gretchen W. Taylor, a Certified Family Law Specialist since 1991, was a successful Beverly Hills Family Law attorney for 18 years. She helped then to pioneer mediation and family dispute resolution using team approaches. She began her study of family systems and child focused work at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services in 1966, where she ended a twelve year career as a Deputy Director of Children's Services in the Dependency Court System before becoming a lawyer in 1979.
Gretchen Taylor is dedicated to ensuring the confidential and non-public nature of mediation processes, and her wisdom accumulated over decades of serving families and actively developing her skills gives her an equanimity, legal and mental health expertise, and countless solution's focused insights that are unparalleled in their effectiveness, compassion and attention to detail.