Financial Help For Separating Families

Financial Help For Separating Families

It seems to be a well-kept secret that for some time now the Government has been supporting families who are separating by providing each couple who have children with a Voucher worth £500 towards the costs incurred in sorting out their situation.

What’s the catch? Well, first it cannot be used towards legal costs. It is limited to the fees incurred by a family mediator in helping you reach a settlement proposal. The mediator has to be accredited (approved) by The Family Mediation Council and you have to have at least one joint session. Other than that, the application and payment is handled by your mediator and the amount is deducted from your first joint invoice (inclusive of VAT). You must have children under 18 years old, but the mediation does not have to be about the arrangements for them and can cover resolving the financial issues. In some circumstances where it is appropriate, and always with the agreement of both parents, the mediator sees the children of separating parents, where they are over ten years old. This is called ‘Child Inclusive Mediation’ although the children are seen separately from their parents in a private and confidential session. This is to give them a voice in the mediation but not necessarily a choice, as the decision-making and responsibility lies with the parents and the feedback is limited to what the children agree can be shared with their parents. The Voucher can be used towards the preparation for these sessions which often lead to a Parenting Plan.

It is not means tested and you do not have to be married or divorcing. It is designed to support parents who may be able to resolve their family law disputes outside of court.

Why would the Government want to do this? Well, the key lies in the ‘outside of court’ phrase. Currently, there is a significant backlog in the family courts, and it is estimated that it takes on average eleven months to decide where children will live, and with whom they will have contact, in private law cases; i.e. cases not involving social services. It is often said that justice delayed is justice denied and this is certainly the case in ongoing situations where children do not see another parent sufficiently, at all. Combining both private and public law cases involving children, a total of 103,676 children were trapped in the family court backlogs in 2023.

Why are there delays? One key factor is that there is now virtually no legal aid. An unintended consequence of this is that rather than pay privately for a lawyer, or avoid court, parents are dealing with court proceedings themselves. As they are not familiar with the legal system, they need more time and support, and this means that fewer cases can be heard.

In addition, there are not enough judges being trained and recruited to deal with the workload.

Finally, clients have not taken up alternative dispute resolution methods, such as mediation because they have not been aware of how to access it or what exactly it can achieve. Everyone has seen a good courtroom drama on the television, but no one has really seen a depiction of a mediation scenario!

In reality family mediation has a good track record of helping parents reach proposals which go onto become binding settlements involving financial or parenting issues or both. Part of the aim of the Voucher Scheme is to obtain information about how consistently mediation achieves this, and the feedback so far is that over 70% of cases are wholly or partly successful. An Accredited Mediator is a very experienced mediator who has undertaken a rigorous training course and assessment to become accredited by The Family Mediation Council. Further training is required to see children as part of the mediation process.

Christine Plews at Blanchards Law in Henley is a highly experienced Accredited Family Mediator who is ranked highly in the legal Directories and has a national reputation. Do contact her at cp@blanchardslaw.co.uk for further information about fees and availability.