If you have made the decision to go to court to apply for leave, to then apply for a Child Arrangement Order, you will have to attempt mediation first.
The definition of mediation is : intervention in a dispute in order to resolve it; arbitration.
It seems perfectly sensible that if you have a dispute that you come together and talk about the problems, and I suspect if we had all been able to mediate our situations we would not be facing the destruction of unjustified estrangement, in the first place.
I asked some grandparents about their own experiences of mediation.
When my son and daughter-in-law separated, my son had to stay abroad as he is serving with the Royal Airforce. My daughter-in-law came home last October with my 2 year old grandson, at first I was seeing my grandson every 2 weeks or so but always on her terms. When my son applied to court for access to his son, my daughter-in-law stopped all contact between me and my grandson .
I got in-touch with a mediator to try to sort it out .
I must say it went very well, we both attended the mediation and she agreed to me having contact with my grandson with overnight stays, as long as I didn’t Facetime my son who is still abroad whilst my grandson was with me, (she wants to wait till the court hearing) whilst this was hard for me to not do that, I agreed .
Right or wrong I felt that if I wanted to see my grandson I had to agree to her request .
I now see my grandson and have him to stay over every few weeks . I feel that if I hadn’t gone to mediation it wouldn’t have been resolved and I wouldn’t have had contact with him It only took 1 mediation session for it to be resolved.
So I am glad I did it
Our grandchildren were used as pawns, and it went on for the first five years of our eldest grandchild’s life and three years of the youngest, after pleading with my adult child, he agreed to mediation sessions His wife was invited to attend but she would not attend.
So we did a lot of research to find someone who specialised in family mediation and of course it had to be in his home town because of his work commitments and children, which was a 2 hour drive from our home.
Firstly it was suggested that our son had 3 or 4 sessions on his own with the counsellor/mediator and we also had 3 or 4 separate sessions. This was as the mediator explained to understand from both parties what had happened in the past from each of our perspectives, and what we would all like to achieve from the mediation sessions.
After these sessions we were brought together – it was encouraged that we focussed on the future and what we did or how we moved forward from that point onwards. Of course incidents came up from the past which she advised “not to go there” but our sons perspective/memory on certain issues were so way off the mark and his memories manipulated they had to be re visited – which the counsellor/mediator agreed to but she played a pivotal role in making sure it was kept civil and restrained and encouraged us to express the emotions such incidents had evoked at the time and at that point.
He was extremely shocked to hear some of things that had been truly said/done and not the versions that his wife at that time had manipulated – it was a “light bulb” moment for him and was such a genuine visible and shocking reaction for him as the realisation dawned it also shocked/moved us as it seemed to be breakthrough moment and glimpses of the person he was began to show through not the manipulated version of himself that he had become (for example phrases such as “you need to be taught a lesson” so they withheld visitation with the children was so shocking to our cores that he could behave this way and say such things that had never been uttered in our family or would even have entered our thought process to use children as emotional tools.
We then had maybe 5 or 6 further sessions all together that then were spaced out from weekly to every two then every three an then a follow up a couple of month’s after the last session to make sure we were still following the boundaries/rules we had all decided upon to move forward.
Our son in these sessions “a safe place” then seemed to become more confident and also learnt to listen and evaluate from his point of view rather than reacting straight away in the manner in which his then wife would expect him to, which I also learned to try and not react in an emotional way also but to take a breath before answering/reacting.
My husband also opened up and spoke quite a bit about his emotions as the mediator insisted that we all must be willing participants and have our turn to speak.
It was very emotional and extremely hard work and frustrating at times but the mediator kept everything on an even keel and focussed on moving forward.
During the meetings we made arrangements for meeting the grandchildren slowly but surely, which did go ahead and we discussed during the next session how those meetings had gone. Meetings were very hard in the beginning as it was very evident to us they had been “prepped” by mum about what sort of people we were and what they could and could not say so sometimes we addressed this in the following sessions if we felt we could tactfully but largely we just made the most of what we could.
However, probably about six months later we were on a visit with the children when he told my husband that he was splitting up with his wife– it was a complete and utter shock to such an extent it wiped me out physically and took a while to come to terms with it as never in a million years did we expect he would ever have the courage to leave her and we also had a our reservations – in our mind the mediation sessions were to bring us all together in a civil and respectful relationship as we knew the absolute hell that would be unleashed if he left her – he had his own counselling sessions that we funded after the split (cannot describe the torrent of abuse she unleashed when he told her and still continues 6 years later.) and he was diagnosed as being a victim of domestic emotional abuse (which we had know since he met her but he had to identify himself) so I truly think the mediation session gave him the confidence and courage to stand up for himself.
We then had six wonderful years of getting to know the grandchildren, dispelling anything their mother had told them about us (“Mummy says you are a horrible, nasty and evil person Grandma” says 6 year old grandchild.
Our response was,
“Well what do you think – have been horrible or said/done nasty things to you or been evil” after a short pause and a think – “ No Grandma we love coming here and being with you,”
However, covid struck and after a scenario of jumping from the frying pan into the fire so to speak – a relationship that started as the separation was unfolding – we now haven’t been in touch except through solicitors since
June 2021 culminating in the zoom court hearing in January to request permission to seek visitation rights which was denied we have not heard anything from our son and neither has the rest of the family.
Seems being in lockdown with a person of the same ilk as his first wife has undone all the good that came from the mediation sessions we had and that is why we feel that he resisted going to mediation this time around as is recommended to do so rather than go through the courts as his now current partner refused to allow him.
So in conclusion I would most definitely go through mediation again so, so much better than the horrendous ordeal of the family courts where one party can say absolutely anything they want true or otherwise to get the outcome they what without a right to reply or be challenged and being in such an intimidating environment there is no chance to think/digest or challenge what has been said.
We were estranged from our granddaughter in 2011 by our eldest daughter and her then partner (now husband), our granddaughter was 12. After some months we were put in touch with a family lawyer by our youngest daughter who works for Cafcass. We wanted to know what our options were legally as grandparents. The lawyer explained we could go to court but it would be very costly with no guarantee that we would be successful in getting access to our granddaughter. The lawyer suggested we tried mediation first. We made the decision not to go down the court route as we didn’t want our granddaughter upset any more than she already was. She after all she had no choice in what was going on and had to go along with what her mother said.
We made an appointment with the local Mediation Centre and after talking it all through they agreed to write to our daughter inviting her to go and take part in mediation with us. Our daughter replied with a strongly worded letter of refusal. As grandparents have no legal rights we decided to step back and wait to see what happened. A few months later and to our surprise my husband received a letter from our daughter’s lawyer asking us to make an appointment with the lawyer with a view to possible mediation. This was done and a date was set. This took place at the lawyers office with us in one room and daughter and partner in another. We were told that under no circumstances were we allowed to see them, the lawyer went from room to room. We were given a long list of pre conditions that had to be agreed to before we were permitted to have a meeting with our granddaughter and only in her own home with both her mother and her mother’s partner present in the room. We agreed to the conditions and both parties left the building at separate times.
Subsequently our daughter contacted us with a date and time for a meeting with our granddaughter. Upon arrival we were instructed by our daughter the visit would last for 2 hours and we could only talk to our granddaughter about her life, what she had been doing etc and not to talk to her about extended family. Our granddaughter didn’t ask about any other members of the family so we concluded that she also had been told what she could and could not talk about. The meeting went very well. On leaving our daughter said she would contact us for another meeting only if our granddaughter asked for one. In early 2012 my husband received a message from our daughter to say our granddaughter had asked for another meeting. Our daughter agreed but stated to our granddaughter that it could only be between her and my husband. This took place, again it was a good meeting. After this all contact stopped. We contacted the lawyer to see what was happening and were told that because we had sent our granddaughter an Easter card, which was not on the list of permitted events for cards at Christmas and birthdays, it was deemed that we had broken the agreement. No further mediation took place. In 2016, three weeks after our granddaughter’s 18th birthday she contacted us and we have been in regular contact with visits etc since. She has since told us that although she could ask her mother to set up meetings for the three of us to meet up, she realised quite quickly that her life was by far easier if she didn’t!
The lawyer was very professional during the visits we had with her but the whole process was very cold, with no empathy or understanding of what we were going through. It is a living bereavement, we were distraught and a little bit of warmth would have gone a long way.
Clearly these are only three examples, but it appears the conclusion is that mediation is definitely worth a try, what do you have to lose?
We don’t endorse any products but here is a link to a free 10 minute consultation for mediation.
https://disputesmediation.com/grandparent-mediation/
