Some interesting news has emerged within the last week in the Law Society Gazette and the Times.
Divorcing and separating couples would be compelled to consider mediation before going to court, under plans being drawn up by ministers.
At present only couples funded by legal aid must consider mediation as a method of sorting out arrangements over children and finances.
An interesting objectio from Baroness Deech, the Gresham Professor of Law who this week launches a series of lectures calling for reform of divorce and maintenance laws, said the idea would not work. “You can’t mediate a person or couple who is adamantly opposed to it,” she said to the Times.
“Mediation also tends to be disadvantageous to women, who may be persuaded to enter into agreements far less generous to them than the courts would make. The women are less likely to know what their legal rights are, whereas the husbands may be more well informed and more persuasive. Research shows that female mediators seem to believe husbands more than wives.”
There seem to be 2 key points raised here namely the motive for promoting mediation and is mediation disadvantaegous to women?
The Costs Issue - A (dated) survey for the National Audit Office (NAO) found that one person in three who had been through a family breakdown case was not offered mediation. Of those, 42 per cent said that they would have been interested in the schemes, which allow families to resolve disputes such as divorce and child custody with the help of a trained professional.
The NAO calculated that use of mediation would have saved the taxpayer £10 million in these cases.
Between October 2004 and March 2006, only 29,000 out of 149,000 potentially suitable cases tried mediation.
The NAO found that on average a mediated case took 110 days to resolve and cost £752, compared with 435 days and £1,682 in cases where it was not used. This excludes some 30,000 domestic violence cases which would be unsuitable for mediation.
This represents your finanacial incentive to mediate.
What about the fact that mediation tends to discriminate against women?
I really cannot say that I agree with Baronness Deeech namely that female mediators believe men more than women but in fairness to her, I have not read the research.
However inadvertently she is focusing in on a key point namely that mediation can lead to imbalance and by extension if women are in a more vulnerable position, could they not be forced to settle?
Nevertheless the ultimate imbalance to parties is the cost of Court proceedings and for those not on legal aid, they are vulnerable.