Process

If one party or both parties have legal representatives then your lawyers will be familiar with the process of registering for a mediation and they will jointly make the arrangements with us.  Usually this involves the lawyers contacting our office for available dates that suit all parties and the mediator.  

Once the mediation has been booked, arrangements will be made for you to attend an intake session, either by telephone or zoom.  You will see more about our intake process below.

We recognise that sometimes parties cannot afford lawyers or choose not to engage lawyers to assist them.  In those circumstances we can still assist parties and in fact we specialise in this type of “lawyer free” mediation.

Generally when you are thinking about mediation there will be two possible scenarios.  

In the first scenario you will have discussed attending mediation with your former partner and agree that you will both attend mediation together.  Here one of you will call our office to make the arrangements, or you might prefer to send a joint email and one of our team can get in touch.

In the second scenario it may be that it is just not that straight forward.  Quite often one party is ready to proceed and the other is either not ready or not aware that mediation is an option. Here, after you have contacted us, we can contact the other party and invite them to attend at mediation. If the other party agrees then we will arrange for the mediation to occur.

Once the mediation has been confirmed, whether you have lawyers acting for you or not, we will send out our mediation agreement.  This document explains our role and sets out the agreement between you, the other party and us to make a genuine attempt to resolve the matter.  The agreement provides information about the role of the mediator as well.  We send this document to you before the intake session so that you can ask any questions about that document during intake.

Prior to the mediation we will arrange an individual intake session with you.  This session occurs by telephone or zoom and is a meeting to discuss with you the mediation process, gain an understanding of those matters which are important to you to resolve and answer any questions you may have.  

One of the benefits of having an intake session before the actual mediation is to allow the mediator to get a good understanding before the mediation of the issues which are important to you.  It also means that when we come to the mediation day we can jump in and get started straight away.

You will be asked to make payment for your mediation 21 days prior to the date of the mediation. The fees for either a half day (4 hours) or full day (8 hours) mediation will have been quoted to you and an invoice will have been issued or cancelled. If you are sharing the fees with the other party we will issue two invoices for you to pay half each. If one party is paying the mediation fee one invoice will be issued. 

Though the invoice has been issued and paid, the money paid by you is held in our trust account until after the mediation is concluded.

In the event that the mediation is cancelled:

• Within 14 clear days of the allocated time and date of the mediation, a cancellation fee of $700 (inclusive of GST) shall be invoiced and deducted from the monies held in trust with the balance being refunded.
• Within 7 clear days of the allocated time and date of the mediation, a cancellation fee of 50% of the mediation fee (inclusive of GST) shall be invoiced and deducted from the monies held in trust with the balance being refunded.
• Within one business day of the allocated time and date of the mediation, a cancellation fee of the full mediation fee (inclusive of GST) will be charged and deducted from the monies held in trust.
• The cancellation fee will be invoiced within 7 days of notification of cancellation of the mediation event.  If no monies are held in trust the cancellation fee is due to be paid within 7 days. The fees will be apportioned to be payable by both parties in equal shares, unless other arrangements are agreed between the parties.

In the event the mediation is to be rescheduled, the following applies:

• Up until one business day prior to the allocated time and date of the mediation no cancellation fee will be payable provided the rescheduled date is confirmed by all parties in writing within 7 days, after which time cancellation invoices will be issued in line with the above.
• Within one business day of the of the allocated time and date of the mediation, a cancellation fee of 50% of the mediation fee (inclusive of GST) will be payable provided the rescheduled date is confirmed by all parties in writing within 7 days, after which time the full mediation fee (inclusive of GST) will be payable.

On the mediation day you will be welcomed into our office by our friendly team.  During our intake session we will have established whether the mediation will be more productive if both parties are in separate rooms or the same rooms.  Our mediator will greet you and be ready to start your day.

If you have lawyers, your lawyers will be responsible for documenting your agreement.  Where you chose our “lawyer free” option we will assist you in preparing a heads of agreement and provide you with a referral to a local lawyer who can assist you in formally documenting your agreement as a consent order or financial agreement.