In recent speeches legal aid minister Jonathan Djanogly has emphasised the government’s commitment to increasing the use of mediation, particularly in disputes over arrangements for children, property and finances that arise when family relationships break down.

As well as the obvious desire to achieve savings that will flow from reducing the burden on the legal aid budget and the courts, Djanogly asserts that he is keen to reduce the emotional burden that can be destructive, particularly to any children involved.

In a speech to the National Family Mediation annual conference, he said that alternative dispute resolution methods, such as mediation or collaborative law, can help people ‘avoid long drawn out legal battles that can be painful as well as expensive’.

‘Mediation places the responsibility of deciding an outcome to a dispute on the parties concerned and not a third party such as a judge,’ he said. Djanogly said this gives them a sense of control over their lives, while minimising the financial and emotional cost of reaching resolution.

I don’t believe that most splitting couples end up in the courts out of choice, but because they can’t, for one reason or another, reach agreement between themselves; they require the intervention of that third party such as a judge, whom Djanogly seems to dismiss as taking responsibility and control out of the parties’ hands.

Mediation will undoubtedly help some people, but it is not a panacea, and parties will still require access to the courts.

If reducing the antagonism and emotion involved in the process is Djanogly’s aim, then rather than removing the court as an option (as the cuts to legal aid will do for most) wouldn’t it be more effective and, in the long term, more beneficial, to reform the way the courts deal with family and matrimonial disputes – to make their processes less confrontational and adversarial?

And is it not also time to reform the divorce laws, which introduce antagonism and conflict into the process at the outset, by the fact that one party has to blame the other for the breakdown of the marriage in order to get a divorce (unless they are prepared to wait two years)?

After all, unless you need the big meringue dress, dozens of bridesmaids and a service at Westminster Abbey, it’s easy enough to get married, so why does it have to be so hard to get divorced?

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