Sorry to have started two threads in quick succession. But I have two different questions for anyone who might be able to help.
So, dh and I are going through mediation and I am starting to feel it is a big waste of time and money. Dh is not providing the information or documents requested, so the meetings are taken up with asking where various documents are and him trying to justify why he doesn't need to provide them (bank statements, as an example). Three meetings down the line and I feel we have barely made any progress. Also, I suspect he has not bothered getting any legal advice whatsoever and so keeps talking about what he is going to do, and what he has decided, and what is going to happen even when the mediator tries to explain that "that's not how it works". Last meeting he did make one proposal which so outrageously one-sided that even the mediator struggled to maintain her neutrality and asked in what could only be described as a surprised tone: "and that's what your solicitor suggested, is it?". No reply was forthcoming.
Anyway, starting to wonder about another way of reaching a settlement and came across the idea of arbitration, which I hadn't heard of in a divorce context before. It seems a barrister takes statements, reads through all the documentation and decides the case on the way a judge might do. But supposedly quicker and cheaper.
Wondered if anyone had had any experiences of it? Or indeed any other advice. Sometimes I feel at the end of my tether with it all. Talk about seeing the worst side of someone once you try to divorce them.