ABSTRACT
In the current economically straitened circumstances in which the courts, including the entire machinery of Family justice, are under great strain, further cuts in resources, including public funding in Family cases, are inevitable. In this context it has already been announced that from April 2011 there would be no public funding available for Family cases other than in domestic violence, and that mediation would be a precondition to commencing even private law property, fi nance and child dispute cases, since adversarial litigation is not considered the best forum in which to resolve family disputes. The mediation pre-condition to future proceedings appears in paragraph 3A of the new Family Procedure Rules (FPR) 2010 (in force from 6 April 2010), which contains a mediation protocol which requires a Mediation Information and Assessment Meeting (MIAM) to take place before proceedings can be issued, other than in a few exceptional cases. This has been criticised by Resolution (formerly the SFLA) and others on the grounds that there are not enough qualifi ed mediators. It is further objected that the requirement to meet a mediator before issuing proceedings is fl awed, and, as there will therefore be this resource problem, a new delay will be added to resolving family disputes – the queue to see a mediator. Happily there are a number of exemptions, such as where the case is urgent, which will be particularly important in child disputes, where the requirement for the applicant’s case to be assessed for mediation fi rst does not apply.
