Everything else is settled.
You’re stuck on spousal support.
Eight factors. No formula. Two very different numbers.
Minnesota gives you a calculator for child support. For spousal support it gives you eight factors and no formula. So you each landed on a different number, both of you are certain, and the file stopped moving. $1,495 per person, one three-hour session.
Your mediator
Ryan McLaughlin
Both of you sign, one of you pays, then we schedule. You can start it without your spouse.
- Flat fee
- $1,495
- per person, flat. Not hourly, no running clock.
- Scheduling
- Within a week
- usually. Evenings and weekends. All over Zoom.
- Time
- One session
- three hours, after your prep steps. One to two weeks start to finish.
You Decide
Your number, not a court's and not mine
No Formula
Eight statutory factors and no calculator for the amount
One Session
Three hours together, after your individual meetings
$1,495
Per person, flat. No hourly billing, no retainer
The same case, given to different judges
There is no right answer waiting to be found.
In one survey, Ohio judges handed an identical vignette — a lifelong homemaker married to a doctor — returned answers ranging from $5,000 to $175,000 a year. Same marriage, same money, same everything.
So nobody can honestly tell you what a court would order here. Not your attorney, and certainly not me. That isn’t a gap in your preparation; it’s a gap in the law.
Which is why you each arrived at a number, and why each of you is sure the other one is being unreasonable. Neither of you is lying. You’re working from different definitions of fair, and nobody has said so out loud yet.
It’s the spread that matters, not the figures. No one can tell you where your case would land. Reported in Alexandra Harwin, Ending the Alimony Guessing Game, The New York Times (July 3, 2011). Illustrative of judicial variation generally; it says nothing about any particular case.
Watch first, if you’d rather
Me, explaining how the deadlock breaks.
Under three minutes, no slides. Why two reasonable people land on numbers this far apart, and what the structure does about it.
It walks the first three parts. The fourth — putting three equivalent structures side by side instead of one number — came out of a later review and isn’t in the recording yet.
What the statute does and doesn’t say
The law gives you a number for almost everything else.
Minnesota law produces a number for nearly every money question in a divorce. Spousal maintenance is the exception: since August 1, 2024 the statute sets rebuttable presumptions for how long support runs, but it contains no formula, percentage, or dollar guideline anywhere for how much.
The last two presumptions apply if the subdivision 1 factors support an award. Statute text verified against the Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes, Minn. Stat. § 518.552, August 2026. This table describes what the statute says. It is not legal advice and it does not predict what any court would order in any case.
A presumption is a starting point, not a verdict. It’s rebuttable on your facts, and the shape is still yours to build: stepped down over time, scheduled around a retirement date, reviewed at a checkpoint, or closed out entirely. You’ll see every one of those levers in the session.
I will never tell you what your case is worth. That’s exactly why you can both trust me.
Some neutrals size up your case and tell you what they think it’s worth. That’s evaluative mediation, a different service, and it means one of you leaves the room feeling graded. Flannel People Mediation doesn’t do it. I run a structure that gets the two of you to your own number, and then I write it down.
Run the structure
- Meet each of you privately first, so nobody hears anything for the first time in front of their spouse
- Put both post-divorce cash flows and both incomes on the table, documented, so the conversation runs on real numbers
- Show you what published frameworks from other places produce on those numbers, as information, all of it public
- Name the competing definitions of fair in the room, and treat all of them as legitimate
- Walk you through the shape of a deal: step-downs, review dates, retirement, what it looks like after tax
- Write down what the two of you agreed to, in plain language
Put a thumb on it
- Tell you what a Minnesota court would order. Nobody honestly can, and a number that comes from the neutral stops being your decision
- Evaluate whose position is stronger, or recommend a number
- Give legal advice, or represent either of you
- Complete or file court forms, and mediation alone doesn't finalize a divorce
How the session actually runs
Build the number. Test it. Anchor it. Then shape it.
Most of what people mean by “mediation” is one part of this: everyone in a room, arguing toward the middle. Three things happen around it, and they’re why this takes an afternoon instead of four months.
01
Build the number
From documents, not positions
What each household actually costs, and what each of you can actually pay
I meet each of you separately, before you're ever in a room together. We build a post-divorce cash flow for each household — starting from twelve months of your actual spending, not a forecast. Anything the divorce changes (new rent, new health insurance, added childcare) goes in a separate column with a source next to it.
Alongside it, documented income: returns, current paystubs, K-1s if someone's self-employed.
At the end of part one there's a documented shortfall and an ability-to-pay figure, and both are built from documents rather than from either of your opening positions.
Self-serving estimates need room to move, and ambiguity is that room. The fuzzier the facts, the further apart two sincere people drift. Pinning the numbers down first shrinks the space the disagreement can live in.
02
Test it
Each of you, privately
What a professional stranger would circle on your own page
Not what's wrong with you. What a neutral forensic accountant would flag if they read your statement cold. Whichever side of this you're on: the person asking for support does this too, and so does the person expected to pay it.
Then you write your number down again, with one line on whether it moved and why. That last step is the part that does the work — and you keep both numbers in your own handwriting.
It's private and it stays private. If it comes up again, it comes up with you, alone, in your own words. I don't show it to your spouse and I don't keep it after your case closes. Each of you is told the other one did it too.
This is the counterintuitive one, and it's why the process runs in this order. Researchers have tried several ways to close the gap between two sides' ideas of what's fair. Explaining the bias to people didn't work; they applied it to the other side. Having them argue their spouse's case didn't work either, and slightly backfired. Asking each person to find the weak points in their own position is the one that worked. Most of the industry sells the version that failed. These are experiments on negotiators, not a promise about your divorce, but it's why I ask.
03
Anchor it
Five published frameworks
Five other legislatures, run on your documented numbers
Illinois, Colorado, Massachusetts, Florida, and New York. Five published ways of sizing support, all of them written for final awards rather than temporary orders, applied to the figures from part one.
You commit your own numbers in writing first, both of you at once, before you see where the frameworks land. Then it goes up on one screen for both of you at the same time.
Some will cluster. Some won't. The spread is the useful part.
In a conversation with no legal formula, the first number spoken governs the range. That effect is well documented, and expertise doesn't protect anyone from it. So the question isn't whether there'll be an anchor. It's whether it's a published framework with a stated origin, or whichever one of you speaks first. None of these five is my opinion, and none of them is Minnesota law.
04
Shape it
Three structures, side by side
Support is eight decisions, not one number
Amount is one variable. There's also how long it runs, whether it steps down, review dates, what happens to bonuses and variable pay, life and disability insurance, remarriage and cohabitation, and whether any of it can be bought out or traded against property.
So you don't get one proposal. You get three structures of roughly equal value, side by side: higher amount over a shorter fixed term; a lower amount that runs longer with a scheduled step-down; or a buyout or property offset.
Which one each of you reaches for tells us more than another hour of arguing about the monthly figure would.
People who pay and people who receive usually want different things, and both are usually available. One side will pay for certainty and an end date. The other will trade dollars for security and a floor. Those aren't the same currency, which is where the room to agree actually is.
Part three, in detail
Five frameworks, on one screen, on your numbers.
No Minnesota court will apply any of them, and none of them is my opinion of your case. They’re public documents other places decided were defensible, which is exactly why I can show them to you. It’s information, not evaluation.
Some will overlap. Some won’t. What you make of that is yours, and the arithmetic stays on screen where either of you can ask me to re-run any line.
All five are published guidelines for final support awards, verified against the current statutes in August 2026: 750 ILCS 5/504(b-1); C.R.S. § 14-10-114; M.G.L. c. 208 § 53(b); Fla. Stat. § 61.08; N.Y. Dom. Rel. Law § 236(B)(6). None has any application in Minnesota and none is offered as a prediction.
What you leave with
A memorandum of understanding, in plain language.
You leave with what the two of you decided, written clearly enough that each of your attorneys can turn it into the documents the court needs.
It says in its own words that it isn’t binding until each of you has had independent counsel review it and it’s incorporated into a judgment and decree. That isn’t fine print. That’s the design.
I don’t complete or file court forms, and I won’t tell you mediation by itself finalizes a divorce; courts still process filings. I can’t promise every couple reaches a full agreement, and I’m not going to quote you a success rate on spousal support, because I don’t have one I’d stand behind.
What gets written down
- The income figures each of you used, and where they came from
- Anything estimated, flagged as estimated
- The amount, and how long it runs
- The shape: flat or stepping down, and on what schedule
- Review dates, with what happens by default if you don't re-agree
- What happens on remarriage, cohabitation, retirement, job loss
- How bonuses and variable pay are treated
- Whether cost-of-living adjustment is in or out
- If there's no support: whether you intend it reserved, waived, or set at zero — three different things, and your attorneys handle the legal form
- Life insurance details, if you're using it as security
- What it looks like after tax, in each household
- An honest list of what mediation did not resolve
Pricing
Not hourly. No running clock.
$1,495
per person, plus a 3.9% card processing fee split evenly between you.
What the flat fee covers
- Your individual meeting
- Written work back to both of you
- The three-hour mediation session
- Your memorandum of understanding, written up
- Every other issue too: parenting, property, debts, not just support
Who you’ll be working with
You’ll be in the room with me, not a firm.
Ryan McLaughlin, mediator and founder of Flannel People Mediation, at 971 Sibley Memorial Hwy in St. Paul. I’m the mediator. I’m not anyone’s attorney, I don’t represent or advise either spouse, and I don’t decide anything for you.
Every session runs over Zoom, anywhere in Minnesota. Evenings and weekends included, because one of you is usually taking the call from a parking lot between shifts.
Common questions
The things people ask on the call.
Does Minnesota have a formula for spousal maintenance?
No. Minn. Stat. § 518.552, subd. 2 directs that maintenance be set in amounts and for periods of time as the court deems just, after weighing eight listed factors. No formula, percentage, or dollar guideline for the amount appears anywhere in the section, unlike child support, which has a statutory guideline calculator.
Didn't Minnesota change the spousal maintenance law in 2024?
Yes, on duration only. Effective August 1, 2024, § 518.552, subd. 3 created three rebuttable presumptions by length of marriage: under five years, no maintenance presumed; five to under twenty years, transitional maintenance presumed lasting no longer than half the marriage; twenty years or more, indefinite maintenance presumed. The last two apply if the subdivision 1 factors support an award. Length runs from the date of the marriage to commencement of the action. The reform added no formula for the amount.
What's the difference between spousal maintenance and alimony?
They mean the same thing. "Spousal maintenance" is the term Minnesota's statute uses; "alimony" is the everyday word. Minnesota also distinguishes transitional maintenance, which runs for a set period, from indefinite maintenance, which has no set end date. Those labels replaced "temporary" and "permanent" on August 1, 2024.
Why won't you tell us what our case is worth?
In facilitative mediation the neutral runs the process but never assesses whose position is stronger, recommends a number, or says what a court would do. The two of you decide, and I write down what you decided. In evaluative mediation the neutral does offer an opinion on the merits. That's a different service, and it isn't mine.
Which five frameworks do you show us, and do they apply in Minnesota?
Illinois, Colorado, Massachusetts, Florida, and New York — all of them published guidelines for final support awards, verified against the statutes in August 2026. None of them has any application in Minnesota, none is a prediction, and none is my opinion of your case. They are shown because a conversation with no formula will get an anchor from somewhere, and a published one with a stated origin beats whichever of you speaks first.
Can our attorneys come?
Yes. If either of you has counsel and wants them in the session, they're more than welcome. It doesn't change the price or the process.
How does paying work if we're splitting it?
It's a single payment link, so one of you can cover both halves, and plenty of couples do it that way, or you can split it. Nothing about booking the free call depends on sorting this out first.
Do we both have to be on the free call?
No. The free 15-minute call is just you and me. Mediation itself needs both of you, but nothing about the introductory call does.
Spousal support is our only real sticking point. Is that normal?
Yes, it's the most common single sticking point I see. The flat fee covers all issues either way, so nothing is priced separately if other questions surface.
Are we in the same room the whole time?
The first part is deliberately separate: each of you meets me alone, and neither is present for the other's meeting. The final part is a joint three-hour session over Zoom.
What does it cost?
$1,495 per person, plus a 3.9% card processing fee split evenly between you. That covers the whole process: the individual meetings, the written work, the three-hour session, and your memorandum of understanding written up. It is not hourly.
How are maintenance payments taxed?
For federal income tax, maintenance under a divorce or separation instrument executed after December 31, 2018 is not deductible by the payer and not income to the recipient, following the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. That's why the session looks at the after-tax picture in each household rather than the headline number. General information, not tax advice.
Do we still need attorneys?
I recommend each of you have your own Minnesota attorney review anything you agree to before signing. I'm neutral, represent neither of you, and don't give legal advice. The memorandum of understanding says in its own terms that it isn't binding until independent counsel has reviewed it and it's incorporated into a judgment and decree. I don't complete or file court forms, and mediation alone doesn't finalize a divorce. If one of you has counsel and the other doesn't, I recommend in writing that the unrepresented spouse get review counsel before the session.
Getting started
Both of you sign. One of you pays. Then we find a date.
No deposit call, no intake queue. The participation agreement is the whole front door, and it takes a couple of minutes.
01
Each of you signs the participation agreement
Same link, once each. It sets out what mediation is, what I do and don't do, and what stays confidential.
02
One of you pays
$1,495 per person plus a 3.9% card fee, split evenly. Either of you can put the whole thing on one card and settle up between yourselves.
03
We schedule
I'll reach out with times once both signatures are in. Usually within a week, evenings and weekends included.
Not ready to sign anything yet? Book a free 15-minute call instead. You don’t need your spouse’s agreement to do either.
Sources. Minn. Stat. § 518.552, verified against the Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes, August 2026. Negotiation research: Babcock & Loewenstein, 11 J. Econ. Persp. 109 (1997); Babcock, Loewenstein & Issacharoff, 22 Law & Soc. Inquiry 913 (1997) — experimental studies of negotiators, not of divorce mediation outcomes. Judicial variation as reported in Harwin, The New York Times (July 3, 2011). Reference frameworks are the published final-award guidelines of Illinois, Colorado, Massachusetts, Florida, and New York, verified against the current statutes in August 2026; none has any application in Minnesota and none is offered as a prediction. Page last reviewed August 2026.