divorce mediation

[sarahontheboat]

Hi, I'm trying to find out what experiences people have had using mediation, as it seems to be a one way track these days! Good, bad, indifferent? Mine was pretty useless, but maybe that was a one off?

Not a one off. Last full year the legal aid board sent 56000 cases in family law to mediation. 3000 were successful but 53000 resulted in cases being funded to go to court. Draw your own conclusions from that.

I don't know how it's going to work. I met a solicitor the other day from Dorset in quite a poor area where all her clients are publically funded. The nearest mediator is 12 miles away which is a big deal when you're on benefits and there are few new mediators coming through the pipeline as it takes four years to qualify.

We have a reasonable service here (Berks) but I normally only send maybe one client in twenty (or at least, I suggest it, but only 1 in 20 takes it up).

There simply aren't enough mediators to see everyone. Our local court today emailed us with a list of exceptional circumstances where clients don't need to go, including "the applicant contacts 3 mediators within 15 miles of the app's home and none is able to conduct a mediation info and assessment meeting within 15 working days of the date of contact. I guess that'll apply to quite a lot of people.

I think the problem the solicitor I was chatting to had encountered was that you need to have a certain amount of experience under your belt before you can "graduate", and that in her area (Dorset) it took four years to get that much experience.

While I applaud any attempt to encourage mediation it is still completely reliant on co-operation from both parties and there is no penalty for non co-operation. I tried to get my ex to go to mediation. Initially she agreed but then, for no apparent reason, refused and decide to drag us straight to court. This was, obviously, very expensive and there was nothing to stop her doing it.

"anyone can just get on with training and then do it!"

isnt that a worry?
while i am sure many are really good - some might have the legal training but not the know how/expereince to be a good mediator and deal with tricky situaitons.

if striaghtforward - yes I am sure is fine -

but for cases where for whatever reasons it falls short of being declared domestic abuse - yet one person is very controlling - it would need a very skilled mediator....

babyb - you're right that it can often narrow the issues. However the legal aid proposals involve withdrawing legal aid completely from most family proceedings on the basis that mediation will solve everything, which obviously it won't.

The law society's response to the consultation on LA was very well argued.

I have to say I'm very suprised that you can undertake a training course in 2 weeks. I trained as family mediator a few years ago in London with ADR, approved by both Law Society and UK college of family mediators. It was a very intensive course, 3 weeks full time in London spread between February and June with a lot of other work/assignments in between. At the end, we still were not ready to go out and mediate as had to do further training with a supervisor. If it was that simple to do it in 2 weeks, I wish I'd known that at the time and hadn't spent over 2k on the course

Not this year. My firm's too skinflint to stump up.