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Parting Waters Mediation

With decades of combined experience, your family will have personalized support from your initial consultation to your legal filing. Our partnership is the Parting Waters difference.

Our mediators

Katie Behel

Katie co-founded Parting Waters Mediation with revered mediator, Linda Scher, in 2020. She has a master’s degree in Conflict Resolution from the University of Oregon’s School of Law and has been in private practice as a family mediator since 2014. Katie is a warm, gentle person who believes that mediation provides an opportunity to heal, empower, and practice essential life-enhancing communication skills.

Katie specializes in helping with co-parenting solutions for matters like custody/decision making, parenting time, and child support. Katie is also a skilled financial mediator for matters like property division, spousal support, cash flow and budgeting. Katie brings a unique non-attorney perspective to her work. She loves her job and especially loves helping to iron out the details that come with redefining a family.

Katie grew up in a blended family with her aunt, uncle, and cousins. Her family is diverse in color, gender, and sexuality. Katie now lives with her husband, daughter, two cats, and a dog. She loves art, animals, hiking, and exploring the world. Her perspective on what makes a healthy family is both grounded and expansive.

Contact Katie at katie@partingwatersmediation.com

Kevin McHargue

Kevin joined Parting Waters Mediation in 2023. Before that, he had experience as an appellate attorney, a stay-at-home parent and director of a nonprofit law firm. After many years of helping people navigate the court system, Kevin came to believe that mediation was a healthier process for people trying to make decisions about their family relationships. In addition to mediation, Kevin works with co-parents as a court-appointed parenting coordinator, helping them resolve conflicts on an ongoing basis.

Kevin lives in Southeast Portland with his husband Christopher and their son Carter. He is originally from Texas but moved to the Pacific Northwest in 2009 in search of better coffee and cleaner air.

Kevin supports people as they explore all of their options, finding solutions that are often more satisfying and sustainable than the outcome they would get in a courtroom. He has experience mediating cases involving a diverse range of family structures and financial issues.

Contact Kevin at kevin@partingwatersmediation.com

Emily Shannon

Emily brings expertise, patience and empathy to support creative and collaborative solutions for families and children. She earned a law degree from Lewis and Clark Law School in 2003 where she is currently an adjunct professor of Family Mediation and has been mediating since 2009 both in private practice and as a certified court-connected Family Mediator in Clackamas County. She has also trained and mentored emerging mediation professionals for over a decade.

Emily honed her skills as a public high school teacher, a staff attorney at a juvenile rights law firm and as a mother to three active children. She can frequently be found running, hiking, skiing, rafting, and growing flowers and vegetables in her garden in Corbett. Along with her three amazing and beautiful daughters, Emily tends to two dogs, a grumpy cat and a tortoise. She loves international travel and cooking tasty meals for family and friends.

Emily effectively helps clients explore options, promote collaborative problem solving, facilitate difficult conversations and ultimately reach resolution. Her goal is to help clients shift from a place of discomfort and uncertainty to one of calm and clarity. Emily is particularly skilled at creating space for difficult discussions to occur in a new, supported, and productive way. She specializes in child-focused mediation and helps parents explore the developmental needs of their children to inform decisions about parenting time and legal custody. Emily also has extensive training and expertise in financial mediation, and guides clients through issues pertaining to child and spousal support, asset and liability distribution and property division.

Contact Emily at Emily@partingwatersmediation.com

History of the company.

For 35 years, Linda Scher pioneered private family mediation in Portland. Linda is a member and past President of the Oregon Mediation Association and was honored with their Award for Excellence in Mediation. Linda was a practitioner member of the Family Section of the Association for Conflict Resolution, and served on the Oregon Family Law Advisory Committee (FLAC) for 15 years.

As a member of the FLAC, Linda served and at times co-chaired their Parenting Plan subcommittee, which provides materials and support to parents and professionals in creating parenting plans to suit the unique needs of each family. She was also a long-time volunteer with the St. Andrew Legal Clinic (a non-profit, sliding scale family law firm) and co-founded Clear Transitions PDX (a workshop for women experiencing divorce or separation). Linda mentored many aspiring mediators during her years in practice, hoping one day to pass on her wealth of knowledge and her thriving practice.

In 2019 Linda met Katie Behel who shared many of the same views about mediation and the service mediators provide to the community. Katie and Linda had complimentary styles and started co-mediating cases together. Katie was already working as a mediator in private practice but wanted a partner and a senior mediator to guide her work. Parting Waters Mediation was founded in 2020 and evolved quickly into a thriving practice.

In 2023 Linda and Katie added additional expertise to the partnership when they brought in Kevin McHargue, and then in 2024, Emily Shannon. Between them they have more than 45 years of experience and wisdom and it shows! Linda retired in the Autumn of 2024 and is basking in the glow of her legacy and the families she supported over the years. Parting Waters flows on without its matriarch but remains firmly grounded in Linda’s guiding principles. Linda remains ‘of council’ and actively connected to the mediation community.

Your family deserves the peaceful path.