Solicitors & mediators should work in tandem, says Caroline Bowden.
- Mediators should draft consent orders, or to an equivalent level of detail, at the end of financial mediations.
- Mediators need robust standards throughout to enable coherent, balanced and certain settlement proposals to be turned into a legally binding outcome.
- The Government’s review of LASPO has the opportunity to embed this as a culture change, to reverse some of the current problems.
The Family Mediation Council (FMC) decided at the beginning of 2017 to put out three questions for consultation:
- Would the role of a mediator as an impartial third party in mediation be jeopardised by that mediator drafting a consent order, once a mediated agreement has been reached?
- Is it possible to draft a consent order without giving advice on its terms?
- Is it appropriate to draft a consent order without giving parties advice on its terms?
At the end of the year, they reported on the rather obvious conclusion that the consultation ‘did not produce a definite answer’. So in 2018 the FMC is
