Let’s talk legal... Family Mediation

By Evolve Family Law

A family lawyer can help you when you are resolving a family dispute using family mediation.

It’s best to talk to a family solicitor before you start mediation. However, a solicitor can also help you in between the mediation sessions or after the sessions have stopped.

The lawyer’s role in family mediation

Family mediation is all about a separating couple working with a mediator to reach a compromise. A lawyer can help you achieve that by:

• Ensuring you understand your legal rights (a mediator cannot give legal advice, only legal information).

• Explaining your court-based options and the potential court outcomes.

• Working out your priorities and bottom lines (the non-negotiables).

• Advising on court timeframes and costs so you can make an informed decision on whether it is best to negotiate in mediation.

• Explaining the relevance of the financial disclosure received during mediation and helping you to identify what further information you need.

• Advising on how the court would consider a specific question, such as the relevance of your adult children to your future housing requirements.

A family solicitor can achieve these things without inflaming tensions and can actively support the mediation process by respecting your autonomy whilst ensuring you understand your rights. You can then return to mediation sessions and make fully informed proposals.

The mediation proposal

With family law legal advice, you can confidently decide whether a parenting or financial proposal made in mediation:

• Works for you.

• Is not wildly different to what you could reasonably hope to obtain by making a court application for a child arrangement or financial court order.

• Saves you time, money, stress and uncertainty of court proceedings with no guarantee that the court would make the exact parenting or financial order that you would prefer.

When you can have one solicitor working for both of you

In some situations, where matters are amicable, and you and your ex-partner are both able to compromise and work together to achieve a solution, you can jointly receive legal advice from the One Lawyer Service at Evolve Family Law.

The One Lawyer Divorce Service works well when an issue arises during mediation, and both husband and wife want expert legal advice on the same point, such as whether, in court proceedings, the judge is likely to order the sale of the family home.

How Evolve Family Law can help

Whether you instruct Evolve as an individual or together using our One Lawyer Divorce Service, the solicitors at Evolve Family Law truly believe in the benefits of mediation and can help by:

• Identifying when mediation might be suitable for you

• Recommending reputable mediators for you to approach

• Giving clear legal advice on your options

• Working out a strategy on how you can get the best out of mediation sessions

• Reviewing the memorandum of understanding (MOU)

• Converting your MOU into an agreed binding court order – without the need for you to go to a court hearing

• Implementing your mediated agreement