Under the current system, parties going through financial settlements in their divorce, or custody negotiations in children proceedings are encouraged by the Courts to attend mediation as a first port-of-call before escalation to a court application. The reasons for this vary: mediation can help both parties avoid unnecessary legal costs, can help to keep tensions between the parties to a minimum, and also assist the Courts in dealing with the significant backlog of family applications currently being lodged.<\/p>\n
The Government\u2019s new proposal, however, makes it so that parties who refuse to try mediation before issuing a court application could face fines for their failure to mediate outside the remit of the courts. The Government cites the primary reason for this proposed change is to limit the damage that lengthy, acrimonious \u2018courtroom battles\u2019 can have on parties\u2019 children.<\/p>\n
While there is merit to this proposal, there is also the need to consider the implication of compulsory mediation in cases where parties are victims of domestic abuse or coercive control. It has been suggested by the Government that those who are victims of domestic abuse will not be required to attend mediation under the new scheme. However, this stance raises the question of what this means for those who do not seek help and are therefore not identified by the current proposals as victims. There is strong weight to the argument that placing parties in this position may well lead to an imbalance of power at the bargaining table during mediation.<\/p>\n
To encourage parties to mediate prior to lodging court applications, the Government proposes to provide mediation vouchers up to \u00a3500 that can be used towards sessions with a registered mediator. The number of sessions required for mediation will ultimately depend on the number of issues to be resolved and the complexity of the case, so how far this voucher will stretch is yet to be seen.<\/p>\n
It is hoped that questions of the nature featured in this blog will be addressed during the consultation process of this proposal, which are due to continue until 15 June 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Under the current system, parties going through financial settlements in their divorce, or custody negotiations in children proceedings are encouraged by the Courts to attend mediation as a first port-of-call before escalation to a court application. The reasons for this vary: mediation can help both parties avoid unnecessary legal costs, can help to keep tensions… Read More »The Potential for Compulsory Mediation<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1225,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"off","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[442,170,400,369,364,10,370,312,175,332,443],"tags":[444,3,12,13,77,169,42,9,19,339,44],"class_list":["post-1326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-compulsory-mediation","category-divorce-law","category-divorce-lawyer","category-divorce-lawyers","category-family-court","category-family-law","category-family-lawyers","category-family-solicitor","category-lund-bennett","category-lund-bennett-law-llp","category-mediation","tag-compulsory-mediation","tag-divorce-law","tag-divorce-laws","tag-divorce-lawyer","tag-divorce-settlement","tag-family-law","tag-family-law-lawyers-altrincham","tag-lund-bennett","tag-lund-bennett-law","tag-lund-bennett-law-llp","tag-mediation"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t