Features of international family mediation include:
- Distinctive and difficult issues for consideration before any lawyer recommends ADR or before the mediator starts
- Dramatic scope for much more work
- Not undertaken, probably not even started, until each party has taken specialist legal advice, especially with dangers of the race to court within EU
- Invariably takes place against backdrop of one party already issuing proceedings to establish jurisdiction; conventional wisdom had been that ADR was then very difficult and sometimes impossible.
- Requires that assets are secured and the whereabouts of the child known before progress can usefully commence
- Suitable for a variation of joint mediation model, with mediator from each relevant jurisdiction
- Takes account of outcomes in each possible jurisdiction
- May have to embrace application of different national laws
- Requires lateral approach with different expectations and ways of working
- Primary area for use of digital technology
- Cross-border family mediation skills are still in their infancy and need to learn from other models outside of family or
- Appropriate for the formation of international marital and family agreements
- Mediation is a voluntary process yet in some countries is compulsory