- You’ve decided that separation or divorce is the right thing for you, but you’re not sure how to go about it…
- You’re on relatively good terms with your partner and don’t want to ‘fight it out’.
- You want to come to a sensible, workable and amicable arrangement for you, your children or your finances…
- You don’t want to expose your children to unnecessary stress…
- You want to remain in control of your separation and decide what agreements are best for your children and which financial arrangements will suit your individual requirements…
But –
- You don’t want the expense or stress that going to court to sort out your relationship issues can have on you and your family, and you don’t want your issues exposed to outsiders…
What can you do?
Family mediation could be the answer
Family mediation is all about you, your future, and the future of your children.
Mediators are trained to assist you in finding the middle ground between you and your partner and to help dispel any demands and expectations that are getting in the way of finding an amicable solution. Mediators are neutral.
Neutrality
All of the mediators at Family Matters are fully trained and highly experienced in dealing with people who are separating or divorcing. They are there to listen and are non-judgemental. This allows the best ideas to be heard. Mediation allows you to speak for yourselves and make decisions about your future. We also have mediators who are specially trained in child mediation and child consultation, allowing your children to have their say.
Control
You remain in control at all times and are never locked into any of the recommendations or suggestions made by the mediator, and even when you do both come away with an amicable agreement – it will be something you can keep working on, whereas the court process means that a judge will often make the final decision for you and that can’t be changed without further court intervention.
Confidentiality
The discussions you have in mediation are confidential. If your mediation breaks down, they cannot be referred to in any subsequent court proceedings. However, any financial information provided is open and can be referenced later.
Children and finances
Mediation works if your issues relate to children and finances. However, you don’t have to use mediation for both if you feel that you only want to deal with one issue in mediation. You may be able to access government funding if your mediation is about your children.
Cost
There are obvious cost benefits of using mediation instead of the court route to sort out your family issues.
The first is time. Time is money! The less time you spend dealing with your issues, the less it will cost, both from your own time point of view and that of the route you chose to take.
If you want to come to mediation to talk about children, there is government funding to cover the cost of mediation up to £500. Ask about applying for voucher funding at your first meeting with a mediator.
There is still legal aid funding for mediation. You can ask about this when you open your case.
The current Government situation regarding the mediation
Statistics produced in December 2022, show that there is still a significant backlog in the family courts, which means that your court case could be significantly delayed.
At present, there is a requirement to attend a MIAM before an application can be made to the court to deal with financial or children matters. The Ministry of Justice has just published a significant consultation to look at howthese measures could be enforced to ease the burden on the courts, and whether people could be held accountable for not making reasonable attempts to resolve their disputes via mediation or otherwise outside of court. This includes seeking views on the use of costs orders and compulsory participation at a co-parenting course before attending court. This consultation ends on 15th June 2023.
The consultation document pays credit to the impressive 69 percent success rate of the Government’s Mediation Voucher Scheme that has helped over 13,500 families to enlist the help of mediators, and of which Family Matters has been one of the firms to use the vouchers the most. It looks at making this scheme permanent for child cases and considers opening it to financial cases.
Overall, mediation reduces stress and conflict and is more constructive than going to court. Read our article on why mediation works, for further information.
