Join us for an insightful exploration of whether mediation can be appropriate for cases where domestic abuse is present as we welcome our guest, family lawyer and accredited mediator Elaine Richardson, who has a wealth of experience as a trauma-informed lawyer. Gain a deeper understanding of how psychological, economic, sexual, and physical abuses manifest, and learn effective strategies to support victim survivors through these challenging circumstances.
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Elaine Richardson
I am a family law solicitor, collaborative lawyer and accredited child inclusive Hybrid mediator. I supervise other mediators as their Professional Practice Consultant (PPC) and I supervise family lawyers as their Family Law Supervisor. I am a trainer and presenter specialising in domestic abuse, safeguarding, trauma and high conflict. I run my own business called Richardson Family Law.
I am a member of the national non-court dispute resolution committee for Resolution. I’ve been a member of Resolution for over 25 years. Resolution is a community of family justice professionals who work with families and individuals to resolve issues in a constructive way. We have a membership of about 6,500. I was recognised nationally as the winner of the prestigious John Cornwell Award in 2019 by Resolution.
I have been trained by the High Conflict Institute of America to conduct mediations involving high conflict and I have also been trained by the HCI as a mediation coach to prepare and support people going into the mediation process. I work for the charity shared parenting Scotland in this role.
I am a trauma informed and skilled lawyer trained by The Scottish Law Society.
https://richardsonfamilylaw.co.uk/
Tamsin Caine
Tamsin is a Chartered Financial Planner with over 20 years experience. She works with couples and individuals who are at the end of a relationship and want agree how to divide their assets FAIRLY without a fight.
You can contact Tamsin at tamsin@smartdivorce.co.uk or arrange a free initial meeting using https://bit.ly/SmDiv15min. She is also part of the team running Facebook group Separation, Divorce and Dissolution UK
Tamsin Caine MSc., FPFS
Chartered Financial Planner
Smart Divorce Ltd
P.S. I am the co-author of “My Divorce Handbook – It’s What You Do Next That Counts”, written by divorce specialists and lawyers writing about their area of expertise to help walk you through the divorce process. You can buy it by scanning the QR code…
Transcript
(The transcript has been created by an AI, apologies for any mistakes)
Tamsin Caine:
Welcome to series 10 of the Smart Divorce Podcast. During this series, we're going to be speaking about the difficult subject of domestic abuse. Unfortunately, during my work, I come across people who are victim survivors of domestic abuse on a far too regular basis. So we're going to be talking to those who have survived themselves, to professionals working in this area, to solicitors, to hopefully help you to find the right support if you're in that situation. This is an issue that's not going away. So if you're going through this or you know anybody who is, I really hope this series helped you. Thanks for listening.
Tamsin Caine:
Hello and welcome to today's episode of the Smart Divorce Podcast. We are releasing this during Family Mediation Week in January 2025. If you're listening to it later than that, it doesn't matter, but I wanted to talk, as part of this series on domestic abuse, to the fabulous Elaine Richardson all about how mediation can be used in domestic abuse situations. So welcome, Elaine. Thank you for joining me again
Elaine Richardson:
And thanks fo much for having me again
Tamsin Caine:
Shall we start off? Would you !undefined to introduce yourself and perhaps a little bit about why I knew you would be the perfect person to talk about this subject?
Elaine Richardson:
Okay, so by background I'm an experienced family lawyer. In my past life I have done lots of litigation, so represented individual clients and taken them through their divorce journey or their separation journey. As part of that, I'm collaboratively trained. That means I can sit down with another lawyer and a separating couple and talk about reaching agreement. I'm an accredited mediator, so that means I've done a portfolio type exam to get my qualification and I've been a mediator for some time now. I'm also child inclusive, which means that I can speak to children individually if that's required. I now am a trainer, so I train other lawyers and mediators and I also supervise other lawyers and mediators in their practice so that they have a reflective practice, that they have a reflective practice, and one of the areas that I specialise in is domestic abuse and safeguarding and also high conflict personalities, and I've done some of my training with the High Conflict Institute of America. I present the domestic abuse and safeguarding course for um, a member organization called Resolution, which used to be called the Solicitors Family Law Association. Um and um
Tamsin Caine:
.. and I, I guess, most recently, which I think is also incredibly relevant to this topic you've gained a particularly exciting qualification. Well, it's exciting for me.
Elaine Richardson:
It's exciting for me too
Tamsin Caine:
And I think it's useful, massively useful, for people who are victims and survivors of domestic abuse to understand a little bit about that qualification. Could domestic abuse to understand a little bit about that qualification. Could you tell us just a little bit about ?
Elaine Richardson:
. Um, so I'm a qualified now trauma-informed uh lawyer. I did that qualification with the Law Society of Scotland. Um, it's a hugely popular course worldwide. So I was. I did the course with delegates from as far afield as Australia and Canada. I think probably there's a shortage of this type of course, but I think the reason it's important for victim survivors of domestic abuse is that they will be in a traumatized state most likely. Very often they will have post-traumatic stress disorder, even if they don't necessarily realize it, and, of course, the terrible thing is they might not even realize that they're in an abusive relationship. So being trauma aware and trauma informed is just so important because it has an impact on the way that I meet with people and hopefully it enables them to have the confidential conversations with me that they need to have.
Tamsin Caine:
Such a vital and useful qualification. It's such a shame there's there's so few people qualified in it and that obviously there's a massive calling for, uh, more of these courses to to be run. So we're gonna, we're going to start off and talk about um, about mediation and about some of the ways in which you see victim survivors. I want to appear in front of you. It feels like there's some sort of magic going on. No, the way they present. The way they present absolutely, because I guess a lot of the people I work with, and I'm sure a lot of the people you work with, aren't necessarily aware of the abuse that they've been experiencing or to the level that they've been experiencing. So could you just tell us a little bit about how they present to you and how you, I guess, pull on the the string to sort of help it to unravel and be more aware of it.
Elaine Richardson:
It can be really tricky. Most people that I meet are not going to start the conversation by saying I know that I'm the victim, survivor of domestic abuse, and so some people have more awareness than others. And of course, the difficulty with domestic abuse is it can be quite subtle and difficult to spot. So if I just start by saying that all domestic abuse is based on a framework of coercive and controlling behavior, sometimes known as CCB. But this coercive and controlling behavior is the basis for all domestic abuse. Now it then might show itself in different ways. So it might show itself as physical abuse, which is what we've been well aware of for many years now. The coercive and controlling behavior might show itself in economic abuse, which we're getting more information, knowledge about, and it's such an important area and there's a fantastic report actually that Resolution have done fairly recently about economic abuse. I can see you nodding. It really is fantastic. I send it out as a resource very often for my clients. So the coercive and controlling behaviour can also show itself as sexual abuse, psychological abuse, but if you just go back to it, it's always based on coercive and controlling behavior. I think that's a good guideline and if I was to give you a description of coercive and controlling behavior as a sort of one sentence, I'd say that it's behavior that's designed to entrap somebody in a relationship. Okay, so it's about trapping somebody in a relationship and, of course, if it's very subtle and manipulative behaviour, the victim-survivor may not realise that they are being trapped. So that's where some of the subtle aspects can be more difficult to spot, and I think that's why, historically, we talked about domestic violence, because that was the thing that was easy to spot. You know, you could spot the black eye and the broken arm and whatever. But I think that as time has gone by, we've become much more aware of the basis for all domestic abuse being coercive and controlling behaviour, the basis for all domestic abuse being coercive and controlling behavior. So it might help then if I just say a little bit about the cycle of abuse, because I think that that can be really a helpful thing to describe.
Elaine Richardson:
So what very often happens is there's an incident, an episode of abuse. It doesn't have to be high risk, it doesn't have to be physical, it can be in many different forms and then it usually escalates as the relationship progresses. There's a honeymoon period that follows the incident, so the perpetrator may make promises to change, give gifts, love, bombing, denial, blaming, spending time together, bargaining, and of course that then creates hope for the victim survivor that maybe things will change and the perpetrator will stop their abusive behavior. Then what tends to happen is tension rises following the honeymoon. There's a shift in the behavior of the perpetrator. They stop following through with promises of change and there's a mood shift and the victim doesn't know where they stand and their survival responses will peak. They may change their behavior to try and appease the perpetrator, their behaviour to try and appease the perpetrator.
Elaine Richardson:
This is often described to me and other domestic abuse experts as walking on eggshells. You'll hear people talk about that. They don't know where they stand. They're walking on eggshells and this is the cycle and it continues for as long as the relationship lasts, and usually what happens is the period between each stage shortens with the risk level increasing. So eventually some victim survivors report that there was no honeymoon period and of course, the other important thing to say is that risk is at its peak at the point of the cycle being broken and the relationship ending
Tamsin Caine:
We've talked a lot about post-separation abuse and and that is that is, um, at the point where a lot of people find it's even more um full-on than it than it was during the relationship, even though you know we regularly hear people say, oh well, if that's what you're experiencing, why don't you just leave? We know that the why don't you just leave is not as simple and straightforward as that, because the entrapment that you've talked about, and also that the leaving is, is where the, the abuse becomes even even stronger, isn't it? Yes, it can be. Bearing all that in mind, when you meet with a client, a potential client or client, how, how we, how do you go about asking them the right questions to try and understand whether there's been an abuse in within this relationship? Obviously, not all relationships that come to an end have abuse, but we do need to kind of start fishing a little bit to see if that is the situation.
Elaine Richardson:
So at the outset, I say that the most important thing to me is to keep people safe in whatever way they work with me, and that, sadly, I know that abuse occurs in relationships and some people just simply have worries for their own safety. So I say that we will be speaking about this during the meeting. So I say that we will be speaking about this during the meeting. So it's the first thing I say, apart from hello and welcome. It's the first thing I say. And I also say to people that I'm really aware that some of the conversations that we have in these meetings can be upsetting and that people can get very upset because what we speak about may be upsetting and that, although I'm fine to carry on, I want them to be okay. So I ask them if they will let me know if they need a break, and that's very much an element of trauma informed practice of flagging that up right at the beginning and giving people choices, absolutely.
Tamsin Caine:
And would this be in a meeting with each party individually, or wouldn't be in a meeting at this point?
Elaine Richardson:
This is when I very first meet with people, so I meet with them for an individual pre-mediation meeting.
Elaine Richardson:
So it's important that I get it right from the outset and set the scene.
Elaine Richardson:
But that continues because if we then decide that we are going to have a mediation meeting with all three people present, they might be sitting in separate breakout rooms, but I'm still assessing and enabling them to speak to me confidentially.
Elaine Richardson:
I'm still assessing risk. So I suppose that's another important, really important point to make is this fluidity of risk that I know you and I have spoken about, and this can never be a tick box exercise at the beginning of a relationship with a client. It has to run like a thread seamlessly throughout the work that you relationship with a client. It has to run like a thread seamlessly throughout the work that you do with the client. Because, as I said before, the manipulative behavior of a perpetrator may be really difficult to spot and in fact you may not spot it very outwardly until perhaps you've explored some options for settlement and it doesn't align with what the perpetrator thinks should happen, and then you might see a different side to them, because of course perpetrators of abuse wear masks and so they might only be showing you at that point the mask that they usually put on when they're meeting other people.
Tamsin Caine:
Absolutely. You know that mask can definitely slip, can't it? I think the other thing that's worth saying is that when people come to see us, even if they've been in an abusive relationship, that's become normal to them. What they've lived and breathed might have crept up very subtly, might have come upon them and, because it's their world, their normality, they may not recognise it as abusive relationships. So, even if we're saying we're going to talk, you know we're going to talk about it. There may be things that are upsetting. They may not be upsetting until there becomes a point where suddenly they go oh, that that's me. I've just realized that, that this has been happening to me and that actually my reality, my normality, is not what I thought was everybody else's normality, and that can creep up on people. So, as you talked about the fluidity of risk, it's it's so important because they're not necessarily coming to see you recognising their status.
Elaine Richardson:
Absolutely, and that happens to me frequently, and I give the analogy of boiling a frog. So if you put a frog into hot water, it helps you to remember it. If you were boiling a frog and you put a frog into hot water, it would leap out straight away, wouldn't it? Whereas if you put a frog into a pan of cold water and you slowly turned up the heat, then it's far less likely that the frog will realize that it's being boiled. I've met with some absolutely amazing people who are holding down incredible jobs, very responsible jobs, and when they understand that they're actually victim survivors, which they hadn't appreciated, it's a terrible. It floors them completely. As you can imagine, it's very, very tricky for people to manage.
Tamsin Caine:
Yeah, absolutely. I guess that's an important point to make as well, because you've just mentioned that you know they're holding down incredibly high-powered jobs, et cetera. Domestic abuse is not, doesn't appear just to a certain gender, a certain colour, a certain race, a certain ethnicity, a certain religion. It is across the board, whatever the wealth and statue of the people involved, et cetera. You know it's really non-discriminatory in terms of people it can impact on, and I think that that's important that we keep an eye on that as well, because I think there's a certain idea that it's only a certain class or a certain gender or whatever, and yet it can appear across the board, can't it?
Elaine Richardson:
Well, it's important that we're aware of our own biases, because we all have them, and part of the training on the domestic abuse course is to raise that awareness and to say that people might have particular ideas of what a victim survivor looks like and what a perpetrator looks like, but you need to banish that and think very flexibly that it could potentially be anyone that you're meeting.
Tamsin Caine:
And we move on to talk a little bit about more about the mediation processes shortly. But just just one further question. If, for whatever reason, the parties involved have decided to opt for the court process, they need to come and have a MIAM with a mediator At that point. Could you just tell us a bit how that works? Is that an individual meeting? Is it a joint meeting? And what would happen during that meeting?
Elaine Richardson:
Okay, so it's often called a mediation, information and assessment meeting, because that's what the court calls it, and anyone who makes, who wants to make an application to the court, either about the children or about finances, they need to attend a MIAM, a pre-mediation meeting, just to find out about what the alternatives are to going to court, and so attendance is obligatory for anyone who wants to make the application. They have to attend, and so my job in the miam is to assess for suitability. Um, the person I'm meeting also makes their own assessment. Because it's voluntary, they may choose not to do it, and then I explain all the options, and it's not just about mediation. I'm talking about arbitration and early neutral evaluation and collaborative law, as well as mediation and as well as explaining the court process. So the accredited mediator should be able to talk with confidence about all of those options so that people can make informed choices. It's always individual and it's always confidential.
Tamsin Caine:
Okay, brilliant. And is it only the person who wants to apply to the court that attends the MIAM meeting, or does they form a pa rtner that they also require to attend in MIAM?
Elaine Richardson:
There's not the same requirement as the person who might be choosing to be the applicant in court proceedings, but the um second participant, the potential respondent in the court proceedings. There is an expectation upon them to attend, and that's become enshrined in the family practice rules as of April this year, because the rules changed and so if you went to court as the respondent and you hadn't attended a MIAM or done some other form of non-court dispute resolution, the court requires you now to fill in a form to say why not fair enough.
Tamsin Caine:
That seems fairly reasonable, it seems like a fairly good plan to attend it and I am. I know, you know, many years ago there was sort of a resistance to having having to go to this meeting, having to and I think I've heard many people say, well, I had to go to mediation before I was allowed to go to this meeting, having to earn it. I think I've heard many people say, well, I had to go to mediation before I was allowed to go to court, whereas actually it should be viewed as a good thing because the accredited mediator is going to describe all of the options available to you and court is not necessarily a particularly good place to be with huge, long delays, financial burden, massive emotional burden. So looking at all the options and having clarity about what they are and what they entail, that can only be a good thing in my book?
Elaine Richardson:
Well, I think so, but of course I'm biased. But what I suppose I would explain is that what they're attending is not mediation. What they're attending is a pre-mediation meeting or, if you like, really a pre-non-court dispute resolution meeting. Itself would only take place if all three people that the two, the separating couple and the mediator decided that was it was appropriate to do so. But I don't see that there's any downside really in attending MIAM. It doesn't commit you to anything and you find out a lot of information.
Tamsin Caine:
Yeah, okay, can only be a good thing. As far as I'm concerned. Let's move on to the different types of mediation, because this has got I think, as an outsider from the mediation world far more complicated because there are so many more options. So going to mediation is not as straightforward as we perhaps all once thought it was. There are lots and lots of options, and that can be a really great thing because it opens the mediation doors for people who perhaps in the past would have been considered not suitable. But it also means that if you're not involved in the family justice sector, your brain's probably going to explode at the volume of information that's going to be provided to you. So I want to talk about options that would be potentially suitable, or could be potentially suitable, for victim survivors and their perpetrators to go through rather than going through the court process to get their financial settlement sorted out. So could you talk a little bit about that please?
Elaine Richardson:
Yes, so I was trained in traditional or classic family mediation as we all are mediators and then I did some further advanced training in 2018. And so I now describe myself as a hybrid mediator. So hybrid mediation is an advanced form of family mediation. That's all it means. So, first of all, if I can just tell you the difference between the two, I think that would be helpful. Yeah, that would be great, thank you. So in classic or traditional family mediation, the mediator can't hold any confidence. This has to be completely transparent. So, even though in traditional mediation, the participants can sit in separate rooms so you might think, oh well, that's a good thing. If there's been domestic abuse, they're sitting in separate rooms they can also have their lawyers present in classic or traditional mediation. But the main difference is that the mediator has to be transparent. So if something is shared in one room with the mediator, the mediator has to then share that in the other room. Now, that's really tricky for a victim, survivor of abuse and a perpetrator and, unwittingly, the mediator may be actually contributing to the ongoing abuse. So that's really difficult. Ongoing abuse. So that's really difficult.
Elaine Richardson:
Um, I actually I wrote an article recently for um, the resolution review, which is our magazine and I was saying that in traditional mediation the victim survivor of the abuse abusive x is completely exposed because they'll be trying to deal with all the controlling, coercive, abusive behaviours experienced during the relationship, whilst also trying to problem solve, negotiate and find options for mutual gain. So that's the difficulty with doing traditional mediation, whereas in hybrid mediation both participants sign my agreement to mediate to say that I can hold confidences to assist with their negotiation. So the way it might work is this there are two breakout rooms. Each person is sitting in a separate breakout room. This means that they don't hear or see the other person during the entire course of the meeting. So there's not that trigger that could happen for victim survivors of abuse making the other person this offer. Abc, but don't say anything just yet, because I would like an opportunity to explore the possible consequences of this with you and to see if there are any other options that you know about that I haven't considered and they might also be sharing with me that they still feel scared, that it's difficult for them. So that can happen in private, and then I might go into the other person's room and they might say to me I'm thinking of making the other person an offer X, y, z, but don't say anything just yet because of the same reasons. So then you'll see the advantage I have because I'm then holding in my mind the possible proposals that each could make to the other and then I can assist them in terms of timing of making that, of discussing other options with them.
Elaine Richardson:
So that's generally how hybrid mediation works and I think that that's really beneficial for the victim survivor of abuse in particular, because when somebody's experienced trauma, one way to reduce that trauma is to offer choices. And of course, if you're saying to the victim survivor, well, your only option now is to go to court, that's actually a reducing choice. And we also know that there are many drawbacks to going to court with the perpetrator of abuse and in fact the domestic abuse commissioner has published a report last year about the downsides of going to court when you've been in an abusive relationship. So I'm just looking at what else I said about the advantage. So here are some of the advantages for the victim survivor it reduces manipulation, it reduces the opportunity for it and moving the goalposts. The victim survivor has the immediate support and advice from their lawyer if they've got their lawyer in the mediation room in a separate space and, of course, there's a reassurance, if the perpetrator has their lawyer, if they've got their lawyer in the mediation room in a separate space. And, of course, there's a reassurance, if the perpetrator has their lawyer with them, that they're being kept accountable by their own lawyer. So that's really helpful.
Elaine Richardson:
The victim survivor can choose to be accompanied by a domestic abuse specialist, so an IDFA independent domestic violence advisor or an ISFA Independent Sexual Violence Advisor. That's possible. You obviously decide not to be in the same room as the perpetrator, so that gives you a much safer, calmer space, and it's often it often takes place online, so all of my work, for example, is online. It avoids the trauma and the cost of going to court. You regain that autonomy that's so important, I think, to help. It's your own timeframe and you're proactive rather than reactive. So those are just some of the reasons why I think it works in some situations. But, as I say, all the time the mediator is assessing the fluidity of risk, which can change, and so at any point anyone could say right, this is no longer appropriate or it's no longer safe, and then we can talk about other options okay, what are some, or any, because I can't see any of the downsides of using hybrid mediation.
Elaine Richardson:
So the first thing is, if the mediator hasn't spotted that it's a domestic abuse situation, you know you really wouldn't want to be perpetrating that abuse. You know you really wouldn't want to be perpetrating that abuse, and so it's very important, I think, for accreditors hybrid mediators to make sure that they have done up to date domestic abuse courses and that they're well aware. But you will find that experienced mediators will have come across these situations quite frequently. They will have had experience of it and they will know what to do and they will very much have a gut feeling and awareness of what's going on. But that is one of the difficulties if you haven't spotted the potential for abuse sometimes.
Elaine Richardson:
I think the other thing that can adversely affect mediation and this is not just hybrid, this includes classic mediation as well is delay. Of course, we know that delay causes mediation to break down. Now, the thing about delay is that perpetrators of abuse don't wear their intentions on their sleeve. So if they are deliberately using the mediation process to add some delay into things, then the mediator needs to be really aware of that and pick up on that. And so operating within timeframes and boundaries is important, and I think you know from the mediator. It's the mediator's process. They need to take ownership of it. They need to put boundaries in place.
Tamsin Caine:
That's really important to keep people safe yeah, absolutely, it's like you say, the quite often the perpetrators are are charming, believable. They're controlling and coercive towards the person they're in, they have been in a relationship with, and so being that way with somebody else is almost normal behavior for them. So they won't say, oh, I need to cancel because I'm going to create a delay in this mediation process. They're going to have perfectly viable and feasible and and maybe even heartwarming reasons for delaying, cancelling, moving, postponing, etc. And that that, as you say, can can lead to to difficulties. Having said that, the court process is, the delays currently are tremendous as well. So and they're not controlled by either of the parties involved.
Elaine Richardson:
So, yeah, I mean, delay is just really one of those tricky ones that you have to manage, I think, very proactively. And of course, it's a real problem if the person, if one of the people who potentially is the victim, survivor of domestic abuse, but they don't realize it and it's not absolutely apparent to the mediator either, and then they might be saying things to excuse the perpetrator oh, he can't fill it in because he can't get hold of his accounts, and I understand that, and um, so, all in all, it's just. It's just, you know, being able to assess, as you go along, what's happening and then being able to to say to both participants you know that there's been some delay, you know it's a, it's not the best place to be, to be in limbo. It would be good to be able to make some progress. Um, we mustn't allow this to drift and and try to bring everybody back onto um, a timetable effectively
Tamsin Caine:
Um, when you get to a point in the hybrid mediation where I'm being positive again now, when we get to a point in the hybrid mediation where you have both parties agreeing to a financial settlement, one of the issues that that I've seen is the perpetrator agreeing to a settlement and then withdrawing that agreement three days later, a week later, two weeks later, etc. Further delays is the in hybrid mediation if both parties have their lawyers there with them, is there the opportunity to draft the financial settlement and get that agreed and done and dusted at the hybrid mediation session?
Elaine Richardson:
Yeah, that's one of the great advantages of it. So normally the mediator, at the end of a successful mediation, would draw up a memorandum of understanding. The memorandum of understanding still doesn't tie anybody in to anything, so it's, in lawyers' terms, without prejudice. So it's not a done deal in layman's terms. It's just that the two people have made acceptable proposals to one another, and the reason it's set up like that is that both people then can go and get their own individual legal advice if they haven't done so before Though I always encourage them to get it as early as possible and then the lawyers would go on to draft a consent order.
Elaine Richardson:
But, as you say, there's quite a lot of things that can happen in between a memorandum of understanding and a consent order, between a memorandum of understanding and a consent order, and that's how a perpetrator of economic abuse might operate. You know it's a recognised thing that happens. So the advantage of hybrid mediation when you've got lawyers in the room at that last meeting, when the proposals have been made and they're all acceptable, is that instead of me drawing up the memorandum of understanding, the lawyers can start working on the consent order straight away, and even if they can't draft the consent order itself, that particular document. In the meeting they can come up with what's known as heads of agreement, which again are binding this case law on that, and so that can be a huge advantage for the victim survivor of domestic abuse to make sure the thing that's been agreed in mediation actually happens.
Tamsin Caine:
Yeah, that's really good, isn't it? That just takes away the next step, which can make the Lego bricks all come tumbling down.
Elaine Richardson:
Yes, and, of course, what we, what we know about working with um in cases where there's been domestic abuse, is that progress can be very slow.
Tamsin Caine:
Absolutely yeah yeah, for for all the reasons that we've talked about, yeah, and we ask you a tricky question now oh no um, some of the victim survivors that I and me would choose to work with and probably more so than the victims Fiverr would choose to work with, because they tend to work with lawyers and other professionals who are more gentle and collaborative in their approach. From my experience, how do you go about managing hybrid mediation, where you've got the perpetrator being supported by a particularly aggressive or litigious solicitor on their in their corner?
Elaine Richardson:
okay, so firstly, um, the accredited mediator, the hybrid mediator, is there and hopefully is is able to listen in on their discussions, because, of course, what you emphasize is that it's confidential. It continues to be confidential, so you could be in the same room as the perpetrator of abuse, together with a lawyer who, who might be described as a rottweiler never a good description, I think, but anyway and then you can, you can understand the dynamic, the advice that's being given, and as the mediator you might, you would balance that out and say, of course there is another option, there is another way to look at this, and so you're there to help that balance, I suppose. But if you, if you go back a step and we were talking about these changes that came into force in April this year one of the interesting things for all lawyers is that we now have pre-action protocols for both child arrangements cases and for financial cases. So what that means is that there's best practice guidelines about what you have to do before you make the application to court. Now, what's very interesting about these guidelines?
Elaine Richardson:
Again, widely available. I've been sending them to clients. So, again, if a client has a lawyer who is particularly aggressive, who might not know about the pre-action protocol. Mediators are now giving the pre-action protocol directly to the clients and, of course, the clients will then hold their own lawyer accountable and say why haven't you told me about this? Why didn't you do this? Say, why haven't you told me about this, why didn't you do this? Because ultimately, if, um, there's no adherence to the pre-action protocol, ultimately a judge could make a costs order against a client for not considering non-court dispute resolution. So I think that's a pretty good safeguard that's now come into play.
Tamsin Caine:
Yeah that could prove to be costly, which perpetrators, in my experience, don't generally tend to want or be very keen on. So, yeah, that does seem like a massive positive. I'm devastated, elaine, but we're coming to the end of our time together. I'm devastated, elaine, but we're coming to the end of our time together. I feel like I've talked to you all afternoon and I know it's kind, but absolutely true, is there?
Elaine Richardson:
I think what I'd like to emphasise is that when somebody is embarking on this separation journey and this is for anybody really I think it's really important that you get your team, you have a support team. I think that's just vital. And so solicitors are not all singing, all dancing. So a solicitor can't be a therapist as well. They might try. A solicitor can't be a therapist as well. They might try, but they really can't be a therapist as well. And, um, so I'd say, getting a team of people so that might be, um, you might have a lawyer, a mediation friendly lawyer, you might have your mediator, you might have your divorce coach and you might have your financial advisor, and so that team building is so important, because I think that that helps anybody to cope with what is a really traumatic and emotional time, and particularly, obviously, if there are kids involved.
Tamsin Caine:
Yeah, absolutely Thoroughly agree with that, and I think I would add to that that people view having a team of people working together as though that would be far more expensive than just working with one person. But trust us when we say getting your lawyer to give you pension advice or to cry on their shoulder is absolutely not the best use of your money and that will be probably the most expensive option that you've got. So, yeah, absolutely Get the right people doing the right jobs for you and it will genuinely save you money, absolutely. Elaine, thank you so much for joining me. I've massively enjoyed talking to you and I know that our listeners will have found that hugely helpful oh good one.
Elaine Richardson:
Thank you so much for inviting me. It's delightful to talk to you as well, and yes, I think we could just carry on all afternoon, couldn't we?
Tamsin Caine:
absolutely. Thank you for listening. If you found today's episode useful, please do give us a review and a five-star rating. It really does help us to get this podcast out to more people who need it. Many thanks, hi, and I hope you enjoyed that episode of the smart Divorce Podcast. If you would like to get in touch, please have a look in the show notes for our details or go onto the website wwwsmartdivorcecouk. Also, if you are listening on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify and you wouldn't mind leaving us a lovely five-star review, that would be fantastic. I know that lots of our listeners are finding this is incredibly helpful in their journey through separation, divorce and dissolving a civil partnership. Also, if you would like some further support, we do have a facebook group now. It's called separation, divorce and dissolution uk. Please do on to Facebook, search up the group and we'd be delighted to have you join us. The one thing I would say is do please answer their membership questions. Okay, have a great day and take care.