What is Mediation?

Family Mediation is a service that helps couples or other family members deal with any or all of the questions relating to their separation or divorce in a thoughtful and co-operative way. The mediator is an impartial third party who helps the parties involved work through any or all of the issues relating to the separation or divorce. The issues may relate to children, property, finance or any other issues which are important to the parties involved. The mediator will help the parties make their own informed decisions in a non-adversarial way; as well as helping them to consider the needs and feelings of their children.

Is mediation just about divorce?

Primarily, family mediation is a way of resolving disputes after separation or a divorce. In mediation, couples are helped to look for their own solutions to their disputes without recourse to the court room.

Increasingly family mediation is being used to solve other types of family problems, such as:

• disputes between a parent and child;
• disagreements over care for elderly or seriously ill relatives;
• grandparents contact with grandchildren, and;
• homelessness caused by family arguments.

Both parties explain their concerns and needs to each other in the presence of a qualified family mediator. The mediator is impartial, which means that they do not take sides. They are there to help both parties. Sometimes the mediator will offer options as a way of solving a problem to help parties reach an agreement acceptable to both, but the mediator will never tell either party what to do.