Separated parents who love their children but can't agree

Parents who love their children will always put their chidren first. Won't they?

What if they are separated and don't like each other very much? That shouldn't make a difference should it?

What if they both think they are putting their children first, but disagree on what represents best parenting in a particular situation?

Today's Courier Mail at p.20 (link below) points to a case in which a separated parent couple disagreed on what school their little fellow could attend,with the outcome that each tried to enrol him at a different school and the schools quite properly both refused to accept the enrolments because, presumably, the parents had "equal shared parental responsibility" for their child so needed to agree on this issue.  Ultimately, the Family Court had to decide where their son would attend Prep.

The problem for this little boy was that he missed that exciting first day of school that many of us remember well into adulthood and he started school ten days late without friends he had made at daycare.  Even more importantly, his parents demonstrated that they were incapable of resolving a dispute over a most important and basic parenting issue.

Unless separated parents are able to develop strategies to assist them in co-parenting their children, the children's futures risk being fraught with difficulties and they may suffer negative psychological impacts.

Help is at hand in the form of post separation parent training programs and child focused mediation to assist parents caught in the blaming culture of separation conflict to accept their separated status and responsibilities as parents and to move on in a cooperative manner - even if for no other reason than to give their children the best possible chance of growing up as healthy adults who achieve their full potential.

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Brisbane Mediations

Mediation Facilitates Ongoing Relationships

Mediation facilitates ongoing relationships

Mediation is less likely to harm on-going relationships than litigation – commercial arrangements between suppliers and customers; parenting relationships between separated parents with mutual parenting responsibilities to fulfil; or working relationships between co-workers / workers and managers who have clashed in the workplace.

In mediation, disputing parties enlist the assistance of a neutral person (the mediator) to help identify issues in dispute and explore options and alternatives to reach an agreement that will accommodate their respective needs.

With litigation, however, courts review opposing versions of disputes and provide a decision based on the evidence in each side’s affidavits or stories about the dispute and what they say in court. The decision almost always endorses one view of a case and rejects the other, costs often being awarded to the successful party, thereby punishing the other.

Litigation by its very nature highlights and accentuates differences, with barristers’ cross-examinations exposing weaknesses in the other side’s version of events. Mediation on the other hand, looks for common ground and strives for agreement.

Litigation encourages a winner take all approach. Mediation looks for a win/win outcome.

Considerable damage is inevitably done to ongoing personal relationships (for example, between parents or between beneficiaries under a will) when each person, in seeking to have their version accepted, tries to destroy the other’s case. Similarly, in the commercial field, time in court is highly unlikely to engender an ongoing relationship – particularly when at the end of the day one party is the victor and the other the vanquished, left to pick up the pieces.

When a result is imposed by a court, one party may leave the courtroom happy and the other disgruntled and bitter. The trial process has most likely eroded the previous relationship even more and increased the chance that these people will struggle indefinitely to relate into the future – personally or commercially, as the case may be.

At Mediation, however, seemingly warring parties often shake hands or communicate in a genial manner at the end of the day, a copy of the signed agreement in hand as they leave. A result has been reached by consensus rather than by being imposed by a stranger.

Dignity has been maintained and the vestiges of a relationship remain intact with a chance of enrichment in the future. In the commercial arena there is every chance that the parties will continue their mutually beneficial relationship, particularly where they have found a solution which ultimately accommodates the needs of both.

Mediation involves savings, not only in material costs, but also in costs to relationships.

Saving the Mediation.

Sometimes persisting and taking the extra step can save a mediation.

Mediated a property settlement arising from a marriage yesterday and things were progressing reasonably okay.

Late in the day however, when the parties were tiring, an issue arose in relation to the possible existence of a military pension derived from the husband's service over 20 years ago.The husband maintained there was no pension,as his years of service were insufficient, however the wife was concerned, after having located an old  bank deposit record which appeared to relate to the husband's service.

The wife wanted confirmation from Veterans Affairs that there was no entitlement, her solicitor insisting that the agreement reached be conditional on this.Both parties wanted finality however and the husband's solicitor was concerned that if the parties left with only a conditional agreement, the settlement might break down.

The only thing left to do to save the situation,was to contact Veteran's Affairs, however it was after 5pm and expectations were not high that the necessary information to satisfy the parties could be accessed.

Fortunately after the customary waiting period, we got through to a very obliging Departmental officer who on being advised of the importance of the information for the parties, unhesitatingly searched the relevant records and provided the necessary confirmation that there was no record of any military pension having issued or been applied for.

In these circumstances the parties were able to proceed to settlement with confidence and left the building with a signed agreement in a form suitable for lodgement with the court.

 Leaving without a final agreement may have placed the entire settlement in jeopardy, a situation neither party wanted, considering the modest pool and the potential costs of litigation.