Solicitor advices against mediation

Hi everyone,

My ex's solicitor has suggested mediation. However, yesterday I received the divorce petition and visited my solicitor to deal with it.

My solicitor firmly advised that Mediation would not be the best way ahead. In this case there is already agreement on children and the only issue for discussion is finance.

He explained to me that the mediator (known to him) would not be able to offer legal advice and that he had not dealt with one case where mediation had come up with a satisfactory result.

In most cases, apparently, work had to be done by solicitors to sort out the mediated agreement and in some cases the whole process had to start again from scratch.

The general concensus on here seems to be that mediation should be the quicker and cheaper than the other methods, so what should I do.

Mine was a long marraige (27 years) and the major asset is my RAF pension but there is also a house bought in 2007 which currently has little or no equity due to the dip in the housing market. I have moved into rented accommodation and, including the mortgage, am paying about £1800 a month in support of my wife plus about £1000 a month in my own accommodation costs. I just cannot sustain this level of outgoings.

My solicitor adviced me to apply for a hearing straight away in order to get things sorted as soon as possible.

My heart says to go for mediation but my head says to listen to the solicitor.

Thanks for reading this and I would be gratetful for any thoughts.

What next.

I would heed your solicitors advice as you cannot sustain the current level of your outgoings and apply for a hearing as pension sharing etc can require expert advice as in my case. Good luck. Gaye x

I'm afraid my experience mirrors what your solicitor said. My ex and I went for 4-5 mediation sessions (wwhich we had to pay hundreds of pounds for) but when my ex took the agreement we came up with to his solicitor he completely changed his mind (decided he could do better in court)and we had to start negotiating again through the solicitors, eventually ending up in court and thousands of pounds poorer... only to end up with pretty much the same deal we'd come to during mediation...

Mediation worked for us. It took 4-5 months from start to end and the resulting agreement was then drafted into a Consent Order by solicitors.

Our mediator didn't give legal advice directly, but he was a retired solicitor.

We could have done it quicker but we had a couple of occassions where we couldn't make sessions so it took time to reschedule.

For me I think a key part is having a mediator who can tell you both to be sensible, to make you consider the exs point of view and who you both feel some respect for so that the sessions can work.

All the best

S

I did mediation last summer. My sol sent us and I really didn't think it was appropriate in my case as there is a history of domestic abuse. STBX had a big hissy fit 10 minutes into the first session and walked out so that was the end of that! FDR is in 2 weeks but I personally think court is the best place for my case because it is complicated with a foreign property and a personal injury claim and now mortgage arrears too.

I think mediation is great for most normal people though...

I don't think there is any one-size-fits-all answer to this. In the first place, mediation does not work if one or both is likely to be adopting unreasonable negotiating stances. I come across people who went for mediation and it broke down and they had to go to Court after all.

On the other hand, you get cases where the parties went down the Court route and spent a small fortune in legal cvosts.

I have often wondered whether, if both the spouses are well organised, it is possible for both of them to get their form E's filed at an early stage, cut out the First Hearing and go direct to FDR. Many cases do in fact settle at this stage and it's one way to get an independent legal mimd on the subject at a fairly early stage.

What a wonderful world it would be if everyone did that. But
unfortunately, on this form we come across people who do their own thing , conceal assets, and the only beneficiaries are lawyers.

Mike

They key here is both sides are reasonable, my ex concealed income, made a pathetic attempt of an e form missing out all financial disclosure bar a few bank statements. He ignored all his own solicitor's advice and the result just the same as he had been 'reasonable' at the outset after we both had spent tens of thousands of pounds. If one side has unreasonable expectations then court is the best route. Even at the FDR he had not completed the e form and the judge ordered an expert report be submitted to court by an accountant. Then a month later production notices showed he had fabricated evidence to his own accountant as well!! No matter what the costs some people will just not be reasonable, he left with nothing in the end and remains to this day bitter and blaming everyone else apart from himself. No two divorces are the same as no two people are the same. Good luck.