What is family mediation?
Family mediation offers separating parents a constructive, child centred way to navigate one of the most emotionally charged challenges they face: agreeing on the arrangements for their children. Mediation gives parents time and space to work through decisions about what is best for their children. By focusing on cooperation, communication, and the children’s needs, mediation helps parents to come up with tailored, practical, and sustainable arrangements, aimed at minimising conflict and providing stability.
So, what can mediation help parents to agree for their children?
Mediation can help parents agree on which parent the child lives with for the majority of the time, or whether they will have equal time with each parent.
This can include creating detailed schedules for:
- Weekdays and weekends during term-time
- School holidays, including half terms
- Birthdays, festive periods such as Christmas and Easter, and other special occasions such as Mother’s Day and Father’s Day
- Handover arrangements and travel practicalities
If in person time together is not always possible or appropriate, mediation can help parents to agree on:
- Phone calls
- Video calls
- Messaging or other indirect contact
Where a child is splitting their time between parents, mediation can also help with discussing what sort of phone or video call contact the child will have with each parent whilst they are staying with the other.
Mediation can assist with decisions about how much child maintenance one parent will pay to the other (although either parent can always seek an assessment from the Child Maintenance Service, which will override anything they have previously agreed). Parents can also discuss whether it would be appropriate for whichever of them is paying child maintenance to also make additional contributions from time to time, for example to help cover specific costs like school trips, school uniform, equipment and accessories, or medical or dental costs.
Mediation can address how parents will make important decisions regarding:
- Education, including the choice of which school the child will attend
- Healthcare (medical assessment and treatment, including for any mental health issues)
- Religion or cultural upbringing
- The child’s hobbies, additional classes and extracurricular activities, and how these will be practically managed and paid for
- If a parent is in a new relationship, when and how their new partner will be introduced into to the child’s life
Parents can also use mediation to discuss and agree how they are going to tell the child about their separation, and how they are going to talk to the child about it going forward and manage the emotional impact of it on the child.
A key aim of mediation is helping parents to establish or to maintain constructive patterns of communication. This can include agreeing:
- Boundaries for communication, for example what forms will contact between parents take and when
- How to share important news or information about the child with the other parent
- How to handle disagreements in the future (often including a mutual commitment to return to mediation as a way of trying to resolve them)
If they wish to, parents can use mediation to develop a parenting plan, a detailed, structured agreement covering as many of the matters listed above as they wish, which they can both sign. Parenting plans are not legally binding, but they can help to give structure, clarity and a written agreement that both parents can refer back to, and they can also be useful evidence of parents’ shared intentions in the event of a dispute arising later on.
As children get older and circumstances change, mediation can be used to review and update existing agreements in a cooperative way.
Family mediation webinar
Join our lunchtime webinar, Divorce without Court: How Family Mediation Protects Families, Finances and Children, to learn how mediation can reduce conflict, improve communication and help achieve practical, long‑lasting outcomes.
Date: 26 February 2026
Time: 12:00 - 13:00
Via Zoom
How our family mediation experts can help
If you are a parent going through a separation or divorce and would like to know more about how family mediation might be able to help, our family mediators would be happy to talk to you, sensitively and in confidence.
Divorce without court: How family mediation protects families, finances and children
If you would like to learn more about why mediation is often a calmer, faster and more cost-effective alternative to court, join our upcoming lunchtime webinar, Divorce Without Court: How Family Mediation Protects Families, Finances and Children on 26th February.
In this webinar we will explore how mediation supports better communication, reduces conflict, and helps create long-lasting workable solutions.
This session will guide you through the benefits and practicalities of using mediation, so if you are looking to learn more about how you can move forward from your separation in a more dignified, collaborative way, reserve your place today!
Limited‑time fixed‑price family mediation package
To mark National Family Mediation Week, we are offering a fixed‑price mediation package for a limited time only. From 26 January to Friday 27 February, all new mediation clients can access our complete mediation service for a fixed fee of £1,995 (inclusive of VAT).
The package includes individual MIAMs for each party, three joint mediation sessions of up to 90 minutes each, and the preparation of a Parenting Plan and/or Memorandum of Understanding recording the proposals and agreements reached.
For more information please get in touch with a member of our family law team.
The content of this page is a summary of the law in force at the date of publication and is not exhaustive, nor does it contain definitive advice. Specialist legal advice should be sought in relation to any queries that may arise.
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