Gillian Mather considers the viability of using mediation to solve family disputes
Last autumn, I took a Resolution family mediation course without much idea what to do with it afterwards. In fact as I mainly these days earn my meagre living from conveyancing, I’ve had little time to follow up on the course but by the by, a similar code of conduct to Resolution’s could productively be adopted by conveyancers to discourage the knee-jerk unhelpful adversarial attitude of some seller’s solicitors, deflecting reasonable enquires regardless of huge sale prices and behaving as though acting for someone on death row.
Thin on the ground
But back to the mediation. The course was very enjoyable and quite a laugh into the bargain. But it transpires that mediation work is rather thin on the ground. One visiting local solicitor I quizzed about his firm’s mediator in case of a chance of some co-mediation said: “Yes I think she’s done one so far.” The public’s apparent reluctance to engage in mediation seems strange when the parties otherwise often face spending thousands on legal fees. That is until one
