Child & Family mediation services

---

Research shows that children are not negatively impacted by parents living separately.  Child experts believe that children can cope with separation providing their parents cope. What can be damaging to children is the conflict between the adults .

Our professional family mediation services help parents to focus on the children and how conflict can feel for them.

With this in mind we can help you to make arrangements for the children following separation. This can be arrangements regarding contact, maintenance, holidays, schooling etc.

A parenting plan is a plan that encourages co-parenting.  It is a plan that looks at the arrangements for the children regarding contact, schooling, holidays, decision making and much more.  It also looks at ways to improve communication and trust, so that any issues that arise in the future can be dealt, with the least emotional impact on the family as a whole.  

The parenting plan looks at similar issues that a child arrangements order in court might look at, but isn't legally binding.  Parents do have the option to make the plan legally binding if they wish  to (*additional charges apply for legally binding order).  Click HERE to visit cafcass.gov.uk and learn more about parenting plans.

The Separated Parenting  programme is a 4 hours course that is attended by both parents but on separate days.  It looks at the impact of conflict on children through group discussions, observations and role play.  The course also focuses on how to improve communication and on the emotional impact of separation.

This can be a really useful course when combined with child mediation services.

The voice of the child is becoming more important in mediation.  We understand that children don't get to make the decisions but they still might like their wishes and feeling to be heard.  

Our  separation mediation service is legally privileged and therefore can not be used in court proceedings.  It is a chance for parents to hear how separation is affecting their children.  

The service is confidential accept for the usual safe guarding guidelines.  This means that we only feed back to parents what the children allow.  Even if feedback isn't permitted this might be the first time your child has spoken to anyone about how they are feeling.

Introducing a new partner appears to be one of the biggest concerns separated parents have.  Amity Mediation can help to offer information on what may need to be considered, and also offer a joint meeting between parents and new partners to help you to put some plans in place on how to do this with the least emotional impact on the family as a whole.

Our financial mediation process follows the same format as the Form E Financial disclosure within the court.  The only difference is it tends to be considerably quicker and cheaper than court.  If an agreement can't be made in mediation clients often find they still save in terms of cost and time purely by documenting everything through mediation.

Full financial disclosure is used to build a picture of everything financially within the marriage.  The disclosure is drafted by evidencing  each participants income, how much marital assets/liabilities there are and what is required by both parties going forward based on needs.  

This information is used to draft the Open Statement of Financial information which is the draft working document used in the financial negotiations .  This is an easy to following visual plan of everything there is financially.

If agreement is reached then the Memorandum of Understanding is drawn up which details what has been agreed and clearly shows how finances will be divided following separation.

The process for married and non married couples is the same, however non married couples are only obligated to disclose jointly owned assets.

Non married couples may wish to discuss other assets for example income when deciding on a child maintenance figure, however this is done voluntarily for the purposes of mediation. 

Providing agreement is reached in mediation, we can go ahead and manage all formalities of the divorce from the financial order to the Decree Absolute to the arrangements for the children.