Mediation, and dispute resolution more generally, has hovered on the edges of legal processes for over 25 years. In NFM we started family mediation in 1982 when a group of professionals, including the judiciary, got together driven by a need to find a different way of resolving family disputes, having watched the devastating impact conflict and litigation can and does have on families in the process of divorce or separation.
The civil courts were not exempted from similar experiences and litigants were also left battered and bruised by their experiences, not to mention the cost of it all, both to the service users in legal fees, and the public purse in judicial and court time.
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