INCREASING NUMBERS of couples who decide to separate are turning to a new method of mediation in an effort to keep their costs down and avoid acrimonious and expensive court cases.
Family co-mediation involves a male and female mediator working together with a couple to agree the terms of a separation or divorce.
“It’s about trying to make the process of separation as pain-free as possible” and is an awful lot cheaper than contested court proceedings, according to Eoin Cullina of Family Mediation Ireland, an organisation which specialises in family co-mediation.
“Demand for our services has increased steadily over the past 12 months,” said Cullina, who conducts mediations together with business partner Sabine Walsh.
Increasingly they are seeing couples who have decided to separate, but are forced to remain living together for financial reasons.
“It’s getting more and more common. As a couple they have to redevelop the boundaries . . . they are essentially apart, but living under the same roof,” said Mr Cullina.
According to clinical psychologist Marie Murray, one of the advantages of co-mediation is that separation tends to be such a “gender war” that to have gender balance when addressing it can be helpful.
“If you are going as a couple to a male or female mediator . . . whoever is not the gender of the mediator – if a situation is complex and difficult – they may attribute that to the fact that the mediator is a different gender,” said Ms Murray.
“That’s one of the advantages of co-mediation. It can dilute difficult situations . . . It’s about making the mediation as reasonable and affirmative as possible.”
Figures from the courts service indicate a steady increase in divorces between 1997 and 2007, with 93 divorces granted in 1997 and 3,684 divorces granted in 2007.
Since 2007 there has been a slight decrease in numbers with 3,613 divorces granted in 2008 and 3,341 granted in 2009.
In addition, there has been an average of 1,116 judicial separations granted per annum over the last five years.
Professional mediation services charge different amounts, and the longer people attend mediation the greater the final bill. Mr Cullina said the average case of eight mediation sessions would cost about €1,800 per person, while in contested Circuit Court proceedings it was not unusual for each party to receive a bill of €10,000-€15,000, depending on how much work was involved.
Aside from saving money, one of the main reasons separating couples attend mediation is because they have children and realise there is a better prospect of maintaining a relationship with the other parent through mediation.
Sheila Healy of the Family Mediation Service said: “You walk away without the sense of being a winner or a loser. People are facilitated to make important decisions themselves rather than having them imposed by the court. If they make the agreements they are more likely to stand the test of time.”
The State-funded service, which operates under the auspices of the Family Support Agency, uses single rather than co-mediators. It is free, but there is a four to five month wait in many of its 16 offices countrywide.
Another crucial aspect of mediation, according to counsellor with Marriage and Relationship Counselling Services (MRCS) Lisa O’Hara, is that the people separating maintain some control in their lives.
She said the recession was putting a strain on couples and MRCS was also seeing a lot of people who are separating but who had to remain living together for financial reasons.
“I’m seeing it every day . . . ‘it’s like a prison sentence with no hope of release,’. . . that’s how one of my clients described it.”
“Mediation can be useful as it can deal with the practical side of living together as a separated couple.”
Mediation for separating couples can take anything from between four and nine weeks depending on the service. It does not involve relationship counselling and if the couple indicates they want to salvage their relationship they are referred to other services.
Once completed, both parties are furnished with a memorandum of understanding: a document which sets out in writing the understanding they have reached with each other with regard to a wide range of issues including money, custody, access and holidays.
The memorandum of understanding can then be used as the template for a legally binding agreement, either a deed of separation drawn up by a solicitor or a court order as part of a judicial separation or a divorce once the court is satisfied with the terms.