Is there a way out?

[timeisrelative]

Oregon

My wife's exhusband owes a $4,000 dentist bill and my wife was sent a thing to go to court because a collection Agency is sueing her and said that she needs to pay it because she was married to him at the time. My wife paid a $100 to go to trial with it. Oregon law states that before you go to trial you must sit down for a mediation with the person sueing you. I told my wife that the mediation visit is no big deal and that it is basically two sides disagreeing and that nothing will be accomplished and you'll then go to trial. I came home from work and I find out that my wife signed a paper agreeing to pay half the bill during the mediation. I said what were you thinking? You paid to go to trial and that the mediation was just something to scare you. Now my wife is stuck paying half the bill without getting a trial that she paid for. Is there a way she can apeal this even though she signed papers agreeing to pay?

Also if she did go to trial would she win and not have to pay anything?

 

[dcatz]

Mediation - even court-annexed mediation - is voluntary You agree or you don't, but you don't appeal.

Perhaps you could motion the Court to nullify it, if the neutral breached the mediation agreement or had an undisclosed conflict of interest, but that's fairly improbable.

As to winning if she went to trial, I don't think we have enough information about the basis for designating her as a defendant. Oregon isn't a community property state, but you don't even say that's where she was married. Clearly, the plaintiff believes she has liability. It's one thing to make bellicose noises and another to initiate suit.

 

[timeisrelative]

I told my wife that mediation was just beauracracy and that you want to go to to trial because you paid for it, but she wasn't listening and was surprised that the collection agency was acting like a car dealer and trying to make a deal right there and then. the mediator she told me wasn't so neutral and sided with the creditor because she thought the creditor had a better arguement. In my opinion even though I wasn't there the mediator did a crappy job and just wanted to get resolved there and didn't make it clear to my wife which was completey surprised when I got home that she could have went to trial. I said what? you didn't know that the mediation was garbarge and that you should've went to trial? She said "I didn't know I could have had a trial." She was a deer caught in the headlights when she was there alone. I wish I was there. Couldn't she claim she didn't know that she could have went before the judge to decide, which is what happened. I was telling her all month that mediation was just pointless because no one will agree and then you'll go to trial because you paid for it. She was more worried about the way she looked. she wore a tiny shirt and no jacket and was only concerned about her make her make up and "surprise" she had to wait 5 hours at the courthouse in freezing cold air conditioning before she entered the mediation because the courthouse was overbooked of trials.

My wife was married in Oregon to her exhusband and was married for 4 years. and she owed the dentist $63 and the exhusband owed $3,988 and the collection agency kept saying to her that since she was married to him during the time he had the surgery for $4000 that she is responsible. To me this is crazy. If you married to a woman/man and they didn't have insurance and broke the back and needed to have $100,000 surgery and they never pay it and you divorce that person. Are you responsible for their bill even after you are divorced legally?