Husbands and wives going through divorce often have two main things they want to sort out in mediation: the parenting arrangements for their children and a financial settlement. These discussions can be emotionally charged because separating is a difficult emotional process. While divorce mediation doesn’t offer a magic wand to make difficulties disappear, it does offer a supportive, easy to follow and flexible approach to reaching agreement.

Once the decision to divorce has been made, clients often want to get things sorted out without delay so that they can move on with their lives. Divorce mediation can be a quick and inexpensive way to help achieve this. It’s not uncommon for people to have an idea at the outset of how they want to divide their assets, often with a genuine intention of doing right by their spouse and their children, but it’s important not to put the cart before the horse. There needs to be a workable and lasting agreement, and this can only happen when the participants know the content of the marriage pot. (“Financial settlement in divorce – what you need to know”).

When the pot is known it might be tempting to start negotiating. Before doing that, it’s important to look at the needs of the family as a whole: Where is everyone going to live? What sort of accommodation will they need? Will the children have enough space in each parent’s house? Will incomes cover outgoings? Can earning capacity be increased, now … in five years or ten years..? Can they build up a pension fund? Are they and their children in good health? Does one person need more financial support than the other? 

Other things may be relevant: the length of the marriage, the ages of the spouses, the ages of any children and so on. Armed with all this information and details of needs (and “wants” if there’s enough in the pot) comes the time to discuss options and to reach an agreement.

Participants can feel confident about discussing different options openly in family mediation. They can afford to be generous without fear of repercussions. They can think outside the box and examine ideas that at first glance may seem outlandish, but with tweaking may become workable.

Once agreement on financial matters has been reached in divorce mediation it can, if both participants agree, be made legally binding or turned into a consent order in court. The whole process will usually have taken considerably less time than any other way of dealing with financial matters in divorce.

Elisabet Anderson, FMC family mediator.

After completing my law degree, I trained as a solicitor and worked as a family and civil litigation lawyer in London. I then took a career break to raise my children. From 2004, I worked in primary school education teaching a variety of subjects, most recently French. At the beginning of 2014, I returned to family dispute resolution as a mediator. I am a member of the Family Mediators Association (FMA).