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For those navigating through challenging times, tune in and help prepare yourself for any legal conversations to come as we share our invaluable insights.
Ever wondered about the distinct roles of family solicitors and mediators during a divorce? Charles, an expert family solicitor from Warners Solicitors, shares his insights and breaks down the distinctions between family solicitors and mediators, their functions, and their purpose. He clears up common misconceptions about mediation and affirms that it’s not just for couples whose relationships have hit the rocks.
Hello and welcome to this episode of the Divorce Diaries. I am joined today by Charles from Warners Solicitors. He’s a family lawyer and we’re going to be talking about who is the best person to reach out to when you are going through the process of divorce. Hi Charles.
Hi Farhana, how are you?
Good, good, okay, so let’s start off, Charles. I have a number of different groups on social media and there is a really interesting conversation going on about who are the best professionals to reach out to when you are going through the process of the divorce and there are some casual conversations going on and I’ll just bring it up on my phone here.
Is this is people looking for recommendations?
Yeah, people looking for recommendations, some in just some different communities of men and women who are going through the initial process of the divorce, and someone says here that they’re looking for a good mediator so not a family lawyer, a mediator and they want some help with arrangements and schedules for their children. But they’re struggling to find a good mediator because their experience in the past has been that it felt very one-sided the mediator has been on one side of the couple’s situation. And then also, when I’m scrolling down the comments interestingly, people are saying well that they’ve found mediation to be a waste of time because it just doesn’t get you what you want at the end of the day, and also that family lawyers are really expensive and will cost you a fortune and just be a waste of money as well. I’m feeling a little bit confused, can you help me out here? What is the difference between a family lawyer and a mediator? Let’s start off there.
Well, there’s a really big difference for Farhana, because a lawyer is generally going to be considering one person’s best interests. They are hired out and paid for by one person, so they’re going to be doing what they’re told to do, whereas a mediator, generally speaking, is appointed to act as a go-between between those two people. They’re not there to look after one person or to prioritise one person. They’re actually there to try and help both people. I thought those comments were really interesting and actually for us as lawyers and devolved professionals, it’s quite an interesting perspective to understand what other people were really thinking. Now, I’m a big fan of mediation. I’m not a mediator. The thing about a mediator is there are different types of mediators and often what we do is we refer to whatever hat you’re wearing. There are family solicitors who are also mediators, so they’re like dual qualifier kind. But equally there are non-lawyers who are mediators.
The thing about mediation isn’t just for couples whose relationship has broken down. There are other forms of mediation. There’s mediation where you have civil disputes. There can be mediation of things like building disputes etc. But in the area, we’re looking at family mediators you tend to have two different types of mediator. You have the solicitor or barrister, mediator. So that’s someone who is traditionally qualified as a solicitor or traditionally qualified as a barrister, and they, if you like, have two different types of clients. They have their normal client, whom they’re representing and advising, looking after their best interests, and then they have their mediation clients, where they’re acting in that mediation go between role, other types of mediators there’s no sort of traditional name, but I tend to call them what I call pure mediators, which is people who are not legally qualified but who have chosen to become a mediator. They don’t always have the same level of legal knowledge because they’ve not a qualified lawyer, but they’re equally adept at helping people. And that’s really what mediation is all about is helping people.
Okay, so let me get this right. You go to mediator as a couple well, not as a couple, but two people coming together where their relationship has broken down, communication has broken down and they need somebody neutral to mediate. The discussion to the arrangements Is that right.
That’s right and really what they’re trying to do is give that couple and agenda and a clear steer of the sorts of things they need to think about and talk about and hopefully, if you like, keep them on the right track, because sometimes what happens is when a couple try and deal with things themselves directly, they don’t understand the law or don’t understand what their options are and they can end or heading off in the wrong direction, whereas the idea is the mediator keeps them in other, safe route, if you like.
So why somebody? So you go to a family lawyer if you wanted somebody to just represent yourself and you want to have a conversation one-on-one about your needs, your best interests and what you want for yourself as the outcome of a divorce. That’s right, and the lawyer is appointed instructed to look after your interests and they’re looking at it from a very legal point of view. What is possible?
They’re looking at it from your perspective what you want. So, in a lot of situations there’s absolutely room for an individual to have a mediator and their own lawyer. The mediator is hopefully helping them find this sensible route or solution, but then their lawyer can be in the background giving positive encouragement and saying, look, you’re on the right track, explaining what the spectrum is where their case is likely to come to a conclusion, what’s a good outcome, what’s a bad outcome and hopefully assisting the mediation process Right.
I see, yeah, that makes it really clear, and I’m so glad that we’re having this conversation now. You know, I’m a couple of years down from having my divorce and have rebuilt my life again. I’m in a space where I am driving, so I have the level of well being and the bandwidth to be able to process this information now, and it’s very clear to me and I hope for our listeners as well, whichever stage you are going through in the process of divorce, that this is giving you some more clarity as well. However, when I was going through my divorce and it sounds like from the comments that I’m reading here in these groups, these forums is that there is so much confusion around who are the best people to turn to initially when you’re going through the process of divorce, because it can be very complex legally, emotionally, it’s incredibly traumatic and complicated for many people and, yeah, this breakdown of communication is so such a big thing, obviously, as you’re going through the process of divorce and what people are finding. When I’m reading these forums and what I found as well is that we went to family mediation ourselves and so have some of these people, and what they’re saying is that they felt that even in mediation, that the mediators were leaning to one side.
Why would that be, and why would somebody walk away feeling like that I think it’s difficult, obviously because we don’t know the specific facts of their situation, but I imagine it’s. You know, the certain difficulty is that we’ve got basic facts in every case, we’ve got basic parameters. There is only so much money, there is only so many assets. The husband and wife already have certain roles in that maybe one of them works full-time, maybe one of them works part-time or vice versa, etc. So inevitably, sometimes you’re going to find that when you come to mediation you’re not going to necessarily particularly like where the direction of travel is, and that’s partially because of that sort of background to your case. So if you give an example that you have a husband and wife where the husband’s always worked full-time and the wife’s always worked part-time, and then the marriage breaks down and a lot of cases, and I mean there’s no way, I’m kindly suddenly the husband says, oh well, I, you know, I want to spend more time with the children, and from the wife’s perspective she feels like, well, that’s a bit unfair, because actually he didn’t want to do that when we were together. Why does he want to do it now? So, there’s a sort of adjustment for everybody’s expectations really, and that’s the point about mediation. Is that expectations? So ideally, clients have a mediator.
I’m a big, big believer in mediation. It’s so any agreement that you reach with your, your ex, together, it’s always much more likely to work than one that has been imposed on you by a judge. If you find a solution together, you’re actually more likely to actually make it work absolutely and to implement it. But you still need that help that that lawyer. So, a lot of clients come to us, and they’ve already started the mediation process. That’s fantastic. We then help them in the background, or we sort of make sure they’re going in the right direction. Other clients come to see us first and one of the things we can do is help them identify the right mediator for them. That takes us back to the point you just made about. I didn’t feel like the mediator was on my side. Now, we’re in a fortunate position where there are lots of mediators out there. Like everything, there are some that are better than others, but I don’t think honestly, I’ve never in my career got the impression that there was a mediator who was specifically, you know, more favoured to one person or the other.
Well, yeah, I mean, I didn’t personally experience that myself, but this is what people are experiencing, you know. They are saying that they their experience of mediation, of just read out one of these comments is that I sat in with a mediator with my ex and he allowed my ex to just shout at me for two hours and then handed me a bill at the end of those two hours and I felt unheard and bullied.
Wow, we don’t know what the individual case is, and the background is there, but that should never happen in the relation. That’s not suitable behaviour for mediation, absolutely but what I’m wondering is that even before you go into family mediation, we’ll go and see a lawyer. Here’s my one news first, deciding that divorce is the only option, now you know, and that this relationship has completely broken down beyond any kind of repair, is. I think sometimes people are really unprepared to have these much more serious conversations about what their future is going to look like from a well-being perspective. So, they’re going in.
Like you said, you know where the mother has been. The woman has been a full-time mom, let’s just say, very traditionally, the husband has been working full-time and now suddenly he wants to have 50% of the responsibilities of the child and the emotional side comes up. So, it could be the frustration, the anger, the resentment from both sides and they can blur and mar those conversations. There are really important conversations that you then go in to have in family mediation and with a family lawyer as well, and I think that’s where sometimes people’s experiences can be not, I don’t want to use the word tainted, but people come up with experiences feeling like it’s the lawyers or the professionals they’re working with where really emotionally they are. Actually. They don’t have the clarity that they need in order to get the outcomes they want for themselves and for their families.
I think that’s right, and I think we’ve talked about in the past, haven’t we? That the difficulty is that often, when a marriage or a relationship breaks down, one person is actually much further down the train tracks of the emotional decision that this marriage is open to the other. And then, when you have that big gap in how the parties feel, how they feel about break-down marriage, inevitably emotion comes into it?
Yeah, absolutely, and I think that’s sort of the underlying issues that I see in some of these comments, these experiences that people are having, and that’s it’s not their fault, it’s not because they know that they’ve been ignorant or anything like that.
It’s just as a society, we’re sometimes unaware and unconscious of the serious emotional trauma that we’re experiencing in divorce. It’s one of the biggest things you’ll ever go through in your life, if you did. I just think we don’t realise, as individuals and as a society, the immense strain it has and how it can influence everything, all your decisions if you don’t take care of your well-being in a responsible and safe way.
What we’ve got to remember, and it’s so easy to forget, is that for so many people, going through a divorce is a whole series of experiences they’ve never had before. They’ve ever had to go and sit in a room with a mediator and talk through these really emotional subjects about their children. They’ve certainly never had to come and talk to a solicitor, because most of them have only ever seen a solicitor briefly by God selling a house, and they’ve certainly never been to court and had to sit in the room with the judge. So, there’s our inevitably. It’s a really difficult and demanding experience. The one thing I just wanted to go back to about those comments is that, obviously, whilst mediation is suitable for so many people, it’s not suitable for everyone.
Okay, brilliant. I would love to have a bit more on conversation with you about this point in. Maybe another conversation soon.
Absolutely.
Great. Thank you so much today for giving us a lot more clarity about the difference between family mediators and family lawyers and the things that can also get in the way of making those conversations with professionals effective and giving you the best outcome.
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