Is just turning up to parenting mediation considered a genuine effort?

Separated parents often require professional assistance to create a safe and respectful environment to negotiate parenting arrangements. 

You may have made attempts to discuss parenting arrangements by calling your coparent on the phone or trying to discuss increased time at changeover. These are not the right forums to attempt negotiation as quite often can lead to conflict, as your coparent may feel pressured, harassed or intimated by perceived demands. 

Sometimes, there can be resistance from your coparent who may not want to discuss parenting arrangements as they are already living their best-case scenario. They may see negotiations to provide you more time with the children as a loss of time for them. 

So, your next step is to initiate parenting mediation which can be done via a not for profit or government services such as Interrelate or Family Relationships Australia or you may decide to engage a private Family Dispute Resolution Practitioner.

An intake session would be held with you as the initiator of mediation with a follow up invitation to your coparent. They may agree to attend an intake session, or they may decline whereby you would be issued with a s60i certificate (b) reflecting that your coparent refused to attend.

Prior to mediation it is always a good idea to be prepared so you could either have a pre-mediation coaching session with a family dispute resolution mediator, gain legal advice or do the online self-paced ‘Empowered for Parenting Mediation’ course which provides you with an understanding of fears underlying resistance, myths, family law amendments, what to consider to include in your parenting plan, and enables you to create options to propose in mediation.

So, what happens if your coparent comes along to mediation and refuses to negotiate?

You might find your coparent is just going through the motions thinking that attending mediation is considered a genuine effort and that they don’t need to agree to anything. They may not agree to what you propose, but they should be proposing options to counter your proposals.

If you find that your coparent is being positional and will not budge from their original proposal, then that is not a negotiation in good will to attempt to reach an agreement. If you are continuing to have to counteroffer to the coparent with various options but they still won’t provide a counteroffer, then request a private session with the mediator and call it out that the coparent is not making a genuine effort to reach an agreement. If you are not happy with the process or professionalism of the mediator to ensure a negotiation takes place you can request their complaints process.

The Family Dispute Resolution Practitioner mediator is the one that decides what category to use in the S60i certificate so it is at their discretion what s60i certificate you will receive to initiate a court application.  Some consider attending mediation is a genuine effort to come to listen to what the coparent is requesting and not reach an agreement. If both parties are negotiating and proposing options, then a genuine effort is being made, even if an agreement is not reached.

The mediator owns the process, but you as coparents own the outcome.  The children have the rights to spend time with each parent where it is safe to do so. 

Sometimes, coparents proposals may be poles apart and therefore it is important to explore pre-separation parenting to determine capacity and competency of a parent to be caregivers of the children. This may entail gaining an understanding of what care each parent provided with a view to acknowledging what the children have been used to and therefore a phased parenting schedule to gradually increase time for the children to spend with the other parent might be more appropriate. This usually occurs when children are very young and have been used to having a primary carer and not yet developed the skills to feed themselves, go to the toilet independently, speak up about what their needs are or articulate if they are in pain or discomfort.

You as parents know what is best for your children, that is where mediation empowers you both to agree the parenting arrangements rather than strangers who do not know your children or family situation making those decisions on your behalf.

It should always be about the ‘best interests of the child” rather than the best interests of the parents. Your love for your child should outweigh the anger and hurt you feel from the separation. Your children should be allowed to love and be loved by both parents in homes that are calm, stable and secure.

Once you reach agreement for your parenting plan, you can then have a lawyer create consent orders so that you have enforceable parenting orders in place.

If your coparenting relationship is fraught with conflict, poor communication or  lack of adherence to consent orders, then Parenting Coordination can help you via a monthly joint meeting for 12mths to help you resolve day to day disputes, adhere to orders to avoid contraventions and ending up in court, improve communication, reduce conflict and be good role models to your children.

Author Cheryl Duffy

Divorce Coach, Family Dispute Resolution Practitioner, AMDRAS Advanced Mediator and Parenting Coordinator

www.thedivorcecentre.com.au