What is Family Mediation?
What is family mediation? Family mediation offers a constructive way to discuss the issues that arise when a relationship ends. An impartial mediation can help you communicate more effectively and work towards agreements about children, property and finances, so you can make plans for the future and move forward.
Family mediators can help you to turn your arguments into agreements. They help you focus on the issues affecting both of you, for example, parenting, property and money, and what to do about it all now that you are separated.
Family mediation is faster, cheaper and less stressful than going to court to try to reach agreements on issues connected to your divorce or separation.
What is the mediation process?
Family mediation typically involves attending a series of face-to-face meetings together, either face-to-face or online. Discussions are facilitated by a professional, trained mediator who will help you identify the issues, find a workable solution and gain clarity about the next steps. The mediator will provide a written summary at the end of mediation.
Before any joint meetings, the mediator will have met with you both individually, at a Mediation Information & Assessment meeting (MIAM) to find out more about the issues that need resolving, give you more information about mediation and answer any questions or concerns you have about what happens next.
Our family mediators know that communicating after a separation is tough. So they are skilled at helping people work through issues they have to consider. These include emotional, practical, legal, financial and technical things. They are highly skilled at helping when feelings are running high, at a time when cooperation is the last thing somebody expects from their ex.
Our mediators typically support joint meetings – either face-to-face or online- but we understand that isn’t always possible. In certain situations – such as high conflict, emotional safety concerns, or distress – shuttle mediation may be offered. With shuttle mediation, each person remains in a separate room (physical or virtual) while the mediator moves between you to share proposals and responses. This ensures discussions stay safe and balanced, even when seeing or speaking with the other person directly isn’t feasible.
If English isn’t your first language, translators can be arranged to ensure you are fully supported and able to take part in the mediation process.
Not everyone who calls themselves a family mediator has professional training. At NFM, all our accredited mediators are registered with the Family mediation Council, which means they have been trained to nationally agreed professional standards, have extensive experience, and have demonstrated that they meet strict criteria for accreditation. They are also recognised by the courts as the only professionals authorised to sign the MIAM section on relevant court forms.
What does Family Mediation cover?
The agenda can be anything that you both agree to discuss and mediate but typical issues discussed in family mediation can include:
Parenting Issues such as :
- When and where the children will spend time with each of you
- Helping grandparents keep in contact with their grandchildren
- Agreeing child maintenance and support payments
- Arrangements for school holidays and key events such as Christmas, Birthdays etc.
- Any other issues you wish to agree on – such as schooling, holidays, relocation, change of name, introducing new partners
Financial & Property issues such as :
- How your assets will be divided
- What happens to your family home, including who will move out and when this will happen
- Support payments to be made
- Division of pensions and investments
- Spousal maintenance
- How any upcoming bills will be settled
You can also view our Family Mediation Checklist for more ideas on topics you may want to cover.
Why use Family Mediation?
If you face divorce or separation, or ending a civil partnership, and don’t know which way to turn, our family mediation service can help. That’s because it can enable you to agree arrangements for your children, property, finance and other important matters.
- Family mediation is also much quicker, less stressful and usually cheaper than heading straight to court.
- It enables you to shape long-term solutions that are in your family’s best interests.
- The process allows families to keep control of their own destinies, instead of handing it over to the court to decide.
To take this a step further, our NFM LegalEyes service provides a seamless transition from mediation to legal advice, ensuring that the collaborative spirit of mediation carries through to the legal aspects of your divorce or separation, keeping costs low and stress to a minimum.
Family mediation can also help in the years following your separation or divorce. The agreements you made when you first separated may no longer work for you as your circumstances change. Family mediation can help you to agree new arrangements that work for your new circumstances.
Find out more about National Family Mediation’s expert, professional, affordable mediation services
Watch this short video below to see how family mediation works
Who can use Family Mediation?
Our national mediation service is open to anybody affected by family breakdown including separation, divorce and dissolution of civil partnership.
Our family mediation service is also available to other family members. Grandparents may be having difficulties with contact arrangements, for example. And step-parents can use the process if they would like to support their new partner.
NFM’s approach to Family Mediation
Our style of family mediation gives you time to express yourself. We understand this is a difficult time. Our mediators will not rush you to solutions, or push you to make a hasty agreement. Instead, they focus on ensuring the outcome is truly what both people believe is best in the circumstances.
Our mediators can help you resolve all the practical, legal, emotional and financial issues that arise from separation. They help families make long-lasting arrangements that benefit everyone in the family, especially the children.
You may be surprised at the level of agreement you can achieve with the help of our expert, experienced family mediators. Only in exceptional cases is no agreement reached.
Our fully qualified mediators are trained in all aspects of family law. And we are the leading training provider for family mediators.
We are the largest provider of family mediation in England and Wales. And we have 40 years of experience delivering expert professional family mediation (established in 1982).
We are local to you, as our network works in over 500 locations across England and Wales. Use this link to ‘find family mediation near me.’
What is the mediator’s role?
The mediator’s job is to make you aware of the things you each need to do to achieve a legal separation. So they help you to gather the information, facilitate the discussions, and help you develop options and solutions.
You can think of the mediator as the chair of the meeting, guiding people through their agenda. The mediator ensures each can express and spell out their thoughts and suggestions without interruption.
The mediator is there to help the discussion. The mediator ensures each person has time and space to put their views across. And they keep the discussions productive and safe.
If at any point you feel that the mediator is not the right fit for you, you have the option to request a change. It’s important that you feel comfortable and supported throughout the process.
Expertise and experience
Family mediators do not express a point of view or make a value judgement. Their expertise and experience allows them to give information to help you understand the legal and financial issues involved. And they can guide you to the best legal solution in your case.
Mediators are able to draw on their experience of what other people have done in similar circumstances. They help you look at the pros and cons of any particular course of action.
Making decisions
Decisions made will be noted by the mediator, and each of you will receive a written summary of these. You will also get any proposals that have yet to be agreed, and any actions that need to follow.
It means you don’t need to take notes. Instead, you can concentrate on the discussion and create your own solutions for your separated futures.
Our expert family mediators use a range of skills to help people plan for the future:
- Helping you identify the things that you need to discuss.
- Managing the agenda in a timely way.
- Using questions to help people identify priorities and needs.
- Listening to ensure your points are really heard and understood.
- Summarising understanding.
- Not taking sides, but encouraging self-determination.
- Ensuring access to necessary information.
- Helping people spell out arrangements to check they will work.
- These skills are designed to help you decide for yourself what is best in all circumstances.
Things came to a head when Tom moved out of the family home and into his new girlfriend’s flat. Tom and his wife Bryony, both acknowledged that their relationship was over but arguments about contact with the children escalated to a point where both 7-year-old Declan and 5-year-old Luci-Anne, were clearly being affected by the conflict.
Declan’s teacher had noticed he was being unusually disruptive and sullen at school, whilst Luci-Anne was having difficulty sleeping at night.
As part of his bid to ensure continuing contact with the children, Tom had approached a solicitor and it was she who had suggested mediation at their local NFM service as a possible way ahead.
Although Bryony admitted that she had been sceptical about the idea of mediation at first, she and Tom agreed to try it as a means of breaking the deadlock.
Their mediator, Elaine, helped them to understand each other’s position and their children’s needs, and after three meetings they managed to arrive at an agreement, which meant Declan and Luci-Anne were able to spend time with both mum and dad. Tom and Bryony also agreed to schedule a review of arrangements for six months later to see how things were going.
“The kids are definitely happier and more settled now that Tom and I aren’t at each other’s throats every time he rings,” said Bryony. “Elaine helped us to get on with making things work on a practical level. To some extent, we had to put aside the angry feelings we had towards each other. This wasn’t easy, but we both felt that doing so would be best for the children.”
“We are confident that mediation helped us move things on in a way that wouldn’t have really been possible if we had just carried on slugging it out.”
This is a real case study from our trained mediators, though names have been changed to protect identities
How much does
mediation cost?
£500 towards the
cost of family mediation
Child Inclusive
Mediation