Family Mediation

Family Mediation (also known as family dispute resolution) is a supportive, flexible and confidential process designed to help families resolve issues efficiently, respectfully, and on their own terms, with the guidance of an impartial mediator. Our approach adapts to your unique situation, providing clarity and structure when you need it most. The process includes four key stages:

Invitation to Participate
You can submit background information and book an individual free 15-minute consultation to explore whether mediation is right for you. We introduce the mediation process and its benefits, helping you understand how it can create a more positive path forward.

Intake Session
Each participant meets privately with the mediator, by phone, Zoom, or in person, to ensure mediation is the best fit and to tailor the upcoming sessions to your needs and goals. This step helps create a safe, secure foundation for productive discussions, and enables you to know how to prepare for the process.

Settlement Conference
This is where progress happens. All parties meet in person or online to work toward practical, mutually agreeable solutions for the identified issues arising from their separation. This can take place jointly in the presence of all parties, or where the mediator moves between the parties on a shuttle basis. The mediator guides the conversation with a balanced mix of joint and private discussions, helping you to move closer to resolution with confidence.

Review
Life changes, and your agreement can, too. Mediation allows you to trial arrangements, revisit decisions, and adjust plans if circumstances evolve and change. This built-in flexibility ensures your agreement remains workable and supportive over time.

Once all parties have committed to engage in mediation, we will arrange for the separate Intake Sessions and the Settlement Conference to take place at a mutually convenient time within a fortnight, or as agreed.

You can discuss any issue arising from your separation at mediation. This can involve any parenting or financial issue arising from the separation, such as  decision-making, time arrangements,  resourcing the children’s needs, communication, establishing separate households, property settlement, ongoing support, and many others.

You are likely to want to be directly involved in the mediation process and able to hear and respond personally at all steps. However, safety and comfort are a main priority, and in some cases, coming together would cause anxiety and discomfort, and may impact on capacity to engage in the process, and therefore the likely outcome. The best option for you would need to be discussed at Intake to support your full ability to participate in the process. Other options include conducting the process on Zoom, or in a format with the mediator “shuttling” between the sides, or having an advocate to provide a voice on your behalf in the process.

No, but it is highly recommended that at some stage, there will be input from a family lawyer. This can be important to ensure that all relevant information is known, to provide advice as to legal rights and entitlements, to assist with brainstorming potential options and ideas, and to ensure that all agreements are captured in a manner appropriate for the circumstances. Legal support can be obtained prior to, during, or after the mediation process.

If an agreement reached at mediation is signed and dated, then this is no longer confidential and can be shown to a court as evidence of the agreement. Several steps are required to convert such an agreement into court orders that are legally binding, should this become necessary. If a matter proceeds to court, the court will start with the most recent Parenting Plan or Agreement.