Pet Mediation
Find workable solutions for your dog, cat or other pet through pet mediation.
What is Pet Mediation?
Pet mediation will help you and your partner or pet co-owner decide what to do with your pet if you can no longer care for it together. We will help you focus on what’s best for your pet when making decisions that will affect it. Different animals need different solutions, and so do their owners. There is no one-size-fits-all.
We will guide you through making decisions about where the pet should live, who should care for it, how the care should be paid for and anything else you need to sort out. The aim is to help you move forward.
What are the Benefits of Pet Mediation?
In mediation you are both guided and given information by one professionally trained person. This tends to avoid things turning into a battle. Because we don’t side with either person, and we are not emotionally involved, we are well placed to help you focus on making the best decisions to allow you to move forward. Control stays with you, the pet owners.
You know your pet better than anyone else and are likely to make the best decisions for them. We will help ensure that you consider the practicalities of any decisions you make to make sure that any future plan will be workable, not just now, but over time too.
What sort of things can be sorted out in pet mediation?
- Where the pet should live.
- If there should be a shared care arrangement.
- Whether the pet should spend time with both their humans.
- How the pet’s care should be financed.
- Provision for the pet’s end of life care.
Frequently asked questions
Some of the questions people ask us most often about pet mediation.
What is pet mediation?
Pet mediation helps people who own a pet together decide what happens to it when they can no longer care for it together, usually when a relationship ends. Pets matter a great deal to the people who love them, and decisions about them can be as hard as any other.
We help you focus on what is best for your pet, and on arrangements that will work over time: where your pet lives, whether you both continue to care for it, how that care is paid for, and planning for the end of its life.
Pet mediation can take place on its own, or as part of family mediation about other matters.
Who decides the outcome?
You do. Mediators don’t make decisions for you or tell you what to agree. Our job is to help you each and both understand your options, including what the law says, so that the decisions you reach are informed ones.
We will tell you if we believe a proposal is one a judge is likely to reject, because there is no point putting forward something the court won’t approve. But we don’t tell you whether a judge might prefer one of your proposals to the other.
If you need help making a decision, you can speak to a financial planner or a lawyer, who can help you put together your own proposal, or understand what is being proposed.
Nothing is agreed until you are both ready. If you reach agreement on some things but not others, that progress isn’t lost. It can narrow what is left to resolve.
Can mediation take place online?
Yes. We have mediated online since 2012, and Stephen Anderson was the first family mediator in the UK to offer online mediation routinely. Online meetings take place by Zoom, with everyone on screen together.
Online mediation can suit people who live in different parts of the country or abroad, who find it hard to travel, or who need to fit meetings around caring for children or their working hours. We decide with you whether meetings take place in person at our meeting rooms in Ipswich, or online.
For mediation, you need a laptop, desktop computer or tablet with a camera, propped up rather than handheld. A phone is fine for a Mediation Information and Assessment Meeting (MIAM). Our guide to mediating online explains how to prepare.