Can mediation correspondence be used in court?

[bluegardenflowers]

Inheritance act claim by spouse for reasonable financial provision.

We worked out a really fair division and provisional agreement in formal mediation.

Since then the defendants (daughters of the deceased) have tried to add unreasonable conditions to the agreement. Such as claimant (husband of deceased) must pay all fees for the secondary property of which they own a 50% life interest.

Our solicitors are not having any of this nonsense and the amended agreements are going back and forth.

Initially they were insistent on taking it to court and we wonder if all this nonsense is an attempt to do this?

So can the correspondence of the last few months be used in court? Their deviation from the normal agreements (they are demanding the primary property is sold at auction after 6 months) is unreasonable, but can we use this as it shows they did mediation (which the court expects) but then sabotaged the actual agreement.

The general rule is that mediation is confidential and nothing that goes on in mediation can be disclosed or used in subsequent court hearings. This is likely to be set out in the mediation agreement you signed. Even if it isn't, mediation proceedings are always confidential and this extends to any documents created for the mediation.

@prh47bridge
Thank you. I thought this was the case. Yes agreement did say something along those lines, but was hoping it only referred to the actual meeting. Beginning to wonder if it was just a box ticking exercise for them, but we'll see.