你。。。我。。。他。。。

Third Party

After the minor (really minor) accident, I filed a report with Texas Tech Campus Police, just a standard procedure I should follow. Then following the Campus Police advice, I called up my insurance company to file a report as well, in case if the other party called her insurance. Sure enough, she filed a report with her insurance company. Then, I began to get phone call from both my insurance company and the other party's insurance company investigating the accident. And all this while, I never deal directly with the other driver, at all. The only time I talked to the driver was getting her information after the accident.

In this country, whenever anything happened, they will go through a third party to get things resolved. Probably why insurance company charged a higher premium on anything, compare to other countries, for all the arbitration and mediation job they have to provide in addition to regular services. That's probably why too there's a large number of arbitrators and mediators in local legal office. Mind you, I know a mediator personally ....

This incident, couple with things that happened, I began to think that this '3rd party solution' phenomenon is not limited to legal issues only. Even the relationship also required a 3rd party. (by relationship, I don't mean divorce, child custody or anything that involve legal issues)

A friend's friend was having problem his wife, instead of talking and solving the problem personally with his wife, he went to a mutual friend and ask the friend to solve it. And of course, as expected, that failed. He ended up in lock-up for 2 days because his wife report to the police that he kicked her. And now, he is asking his friend if he should file a divorce and cancel the green card application for his wife.

Another case. He found that that he had problem with the girlfriend ('she'). He claimed that he tried to make things work and everything failed. He broke up with her, putting all the blame on her, saying that she kept upseting him and things of that nature. He told her that: ".... I had been telling XYZ (their mutual friend) about our problems since months before we broke up and XYZ certainly know what I had been through and ...."

Of all the people in the whole world, the relationship is between 'he and she', if 'he' has a problem with 'she', 'he' told a third party instead of telling 'she'-- the person involved in the relationship. 'He' did not tell her anything about the problem and expecting that 'she' will change.

A good start. For whatever happen, go to third party. But these 2 'he' forgot about something real important. In legal issues, when you get a mediator, before he/she can begin to provide mediating service, you must get the consent from the other party involved and that party has to agree on the mediator you chose in order for the result to be valid. In the 2 cases above, there's no such thing as 'consent' or 'agreement' that occur.

posted by Trouble @ 3:57 PM