WELCOME to Divorce Café, the podcast where we demystify, detangle and hopefully detox the legal processes that follow a separation, with the experts in the Legal world. I’m Shelley Funnell and I’m Taina Henderson.  

Today we are talking about the (partially subsidised) mediation service called Family Dispute Resolution or FDR.   It was set up in 2013 to help parties otherwise headed for the Courts to try and resolve an issue or a problem themselves.

FDR is important because it is firstly a step you have to take before you go to Court and second because it is the last off ramp before litigation. 

Our guest today has been in FDR since the initial pilot, and has been involved in mediation and facilitation for 25 years. 

Gaye Greenwood, welcome to Divorce Café!

How did you get into mediation? 

Well there are two events I can recall, one as a child and one as an adult. 

So as a child I recall my parents talking about how they are going to fire my Fijian nanny.  As a five year old in Fiji, this is the woman who had bathed me when I had English Measles under a mosquito net and I was really gutted that they could just let her go. So I went out into her bure and they said she was sulking so I went out to her bure one morning and she was sleeping underneath the bed, the wire-wove bed, you are probably too young to remember wire-wove beds but she was sleeping underneath it and I said Sofira why are you under the bed? And she said I don’t like Mr Tommy’s silly bed, I like the floor. 

So I said to my mum and dad - you said she’s unhappy, ask her about the bed.  

And what they had done is with the very best of intentions given her something that was good in our culture that just didn’t work for her.  

And just by suggesting they talk to her and give her a voice about what she liked I realised I helped solve the problem, I got to hold onto something, I got to keep Sofira until I was 8, she was the person I got to play hide and seek with and collected me from school. 

So I have always been interested in assumptions that are made and the mistakes people make because they assume that they know what other people want or think 

And then of course at 41 after 22 years of marriage I found myself in a relationship property situation and we were moving apart and that prompted me around the time of Z v Z and it prompted me to think of what it was like being from a long term marriage where you have forgone some paid work for the unpaid work of the household.  And the clean break – the notion that the clean break economic split delivered 50/50 was substandard equality and it just wasn’t going to be substandard equality and at that stage the law didn’t compensate in any way. 

So we were having lawyer’s letters and every time a lawyer’s letter landed the words that were presumptions or assumptions and perceptions of one party landed like facts to the other.  And it just made our conflict escalate.  We were actually quite amicable friends and really good parents - and now we are a bit like brother and sister - so you know. 

We got together for our final settlement meeting with the lawyers and I said could the lawyers leave the room because it was a huge loss of face for my former husband and it was hard for him because he had chosen a lawyer that he used for his commercial world and it was you know in one of the big top firms and we solved it together.  And the Lawyers wrote it up.

And I realised that their interest beneath the surface are a bit like a shark that come at you, you can see the money like a fin, you can see the money and you can see the time and you can see the children’s schedule is coming for you because its time and money and its subjective but underneath of it there’s pride, trust, status, you know pain, grief, guilt all of the emotional things that are socially constructed by the words you use.  So lawyer’s Letters I felt were a little bit problematic because they became fact just like Affidavits are views and they become fact for the person that reads them and they create escalation so I thought there must be a better way. 

So that probably leads quite nicely: why do FDR?

For a start it is an opportunity to privately talk to the person that you are not in agreement with.

I hate that it’s called Family Dispute because people come with problems to solve they don’t always come with a dispute.

They can come after they have filed in Court they can be sent back by the Court, but the ideal thing is to sit down and make sense of a problem collaboratively, and learn to negotiate in a collaborative way rather than bargain in a competitive way - when you measure… it’s not a win-lose we need to be obviously the wonderful thing about FDR is puts the children right at the centre of it.

And then you have go to model your on-going relationship because you don’t stop having a relationship when you separate. 

So I don’t always say this because people say you are not a mediator if you do it that way but I have got a philosophy that it is an opportunity to learn to  negotiate, so I taught MBA negotiation for over 20 years and people will come in with huge portfolios, worth millions and would be very cocky about doing their MBA and say it’s just about winning the argument and by the time they left I was getting ready to say oh my goodness I have preserved this relationship with this I have just got an incredible salary increase because I have been able to point out my worth in a way that is not measurable so I think you say property and time and measurable but what’s really important is you are in a relationship for life and don’t get me started on the clean break split it doesn’t even exist.

Oh no, we almost talk about the clean break in every episode, the mythical clean break. 

Well the thing is I say to people you will grandparent together you might be at weddings and 21st and engagements and you need not have that knot in your tummy that you’re going to be in the same place, it’s really important. So we do the analogy of the Bus Stop where you get back to being able to talk like you would at the Bus Stop to a friend at those functions.  You are no longer the intimate partner but you can be friendly and sometimes you end up doing Christmas day together when you are 68.

And potentially share some of the celebration or the pride you know like a look at each other or whatever to say this is our child that is getting married we are responsible for that. 

It’s so important around identity if you can’t, my daughter often says “if you can’t love where you came from you can’t love yourself” you have to be able to create you have to be able to market your children’s other parent as a good person.

Because that is half of their identity right?

So I always talk about they are half mum and they are half dad and if they look at dad and he is denigrating mum they perceive that there might something not quite right with mum.  And if mum is degrading dad then they get to 13 and 14 and they go well she’s flawed and he’s flawed so there is no hope for me and they are all covered in pimples and they are growing things all over their body and they are geeky 

so I always say to people you may be the guardian of education, health, wellbeing, housing all the rest of it but actually the most important thing is you are the guardian of your children’s self-efficacy and self-esteem.  Self-efficacy being: “I know I can solve a problem, I can solve problems, I can work things out”. And that is really good for mental health and self-esteem being I am proud to be who I am. So there is this, I love this Loyal Carners’ lyrics in a rap, so raps often give you information about people who have been alienated in the world and he makes the statement “you can’t hate the roots of the tree and not hate the tree” so how can I hate my mother or father without hating myself?

And he talks “I can’t think until I know who I am”.  So I am really interested in neuro-science and brains don’t work when you are in conflict you can’t think straight so if this trickles out to children thinking there is something wrong with their parents and they are in conflict, this can go on for years this conflict they are not going to do well at school and you know they are not going to be able to learn, they will be swamped and stressed

And that becomes the thing that they recognise as love, this is what love looks like 

And it doesn’t model any kind of conflict resolution as well if both of you are not moving and you cannot solve a problem how on earth are your kids going to be able to solve a problem 

You are…and their emotional maturity is constructed by watching you manage yours.  What I was going to say about anxiety was by time I left teaching at University 18 year olds were not able to present, there was so many anxieties and so many mood disorders. So we have got to understand when we are doing this change in children’s life there’s also you know  there’s been Covid, there’s war, there’s ethical approaches to business there’s climate change, people are worried in the world they think their autonomy has been, their parents feel they have lost their autonomy, they were locked in. There is a lot of reactive devaluation and anger in society so you add this to it which could be a by-product of all of that, if you can just manage the nest, you are giving them some protection because the rest other than the nest is in a mess so this is really important. 

I do remember on a personal level coming home from mediation and my children saying to me “What happened? What happened?” and I said we solved it its sorted you are staying, we are staying together it’s totally fine we are not going to be arguing. I think they were more thrilled that I was, they were so excited that we had managed to come to a solution over the course of a day and I thought they were oblivious to it but they weren’t and they sensed my relief as well I think. 

In my…I always give people an example of some of the clauses they might be able to have in their parenting plan or guardianship agreement, the first thing is the parenting protocol so we talk about: they knew but we didn’t think they knew.

They can see it in your body, they can see the stress, they can hear the tone, they can hear your like or dislike their other parent, they can hear you on the phone to your friends, they hear you on the phone to your mum, they hear side conversations.  

And do you know the really worst thing about that - and this is why FDR is good - is that if you talk to your tribe,  your community of friends and make sense of your dispute with your partner, the other parent of your children, you are taking the risk that those friends - and I find this the most emotionally sad thing - at their dinner table in front of your children’s friends at school might talk about your dispute  and then the children go to school and an 8 year old can say “Mum thinks your fathers a loser.” 

Wow, I never thought of that 

So well tell our stories to make sense if them but FDR gives you the opportunity to tell your story in a confidential way.

How can you attach to someone that all your friends’ parents’ think is a loser? It’s just so important how you make sense of the problems are where you make sense of them.

So the next Section is the basics, where we bring everybody up to same level so they can take part in the conversation – and I am talking about Shelley, just joking, can you please tell us what is Family Dispute Resolution? What’s the legal framework? 

Well the legal framework is an opportunity for a menu of services to be provided before you go through the Court process.

So it’s Section 12 of the Family Dispute Resolution Act 2013 and it calls on the Care of Children’ Act, it provides mediation. FDR provides you with 12 hours of services and the menu includes:

1.              preparation for mediation if you need some sort of counselling coaching in negotiation;

2.              it can refer you to at no cost to your hours to parenting through separation course.  And I love it when people do that they come with lots of information about how to behave towards their children;

3.              and then you can have child inclusion, inclusive specialists talk with the  children if you both agree and consent to that; and 

4.              then you can have mediation with a mediator.

But you get 12 hours your dispute is assessed for whether it is suitable for mediation by a case manager or a mediator.  That might be a very short period of time and then you can go with the appointed mediator through those 12 hours over the period of the year.  You have to use it up within the year.

And it will cost you… if you earn less than, if you have 5 children and earn less than $77,000 you’ll get it for free it will be funded, if you have one child and earn less…

Probably not worth having the extra children just to get it 

No, that’s right, but you know the threshold is problematic because a lot of people haven’t got the otherwise $448.00 each to pay which is the partially funded …so the MOJ funds it, you pay a partial amount, if you earn too little you get the whole 12 hours funded. 21.16

So what you have to do under the Dispute Resolution Act is you have to make sure there is no domestic violence that precludes people from participating we will talk about later because sometimes you can be sent back from the Court with a Protection Order to mediation because they think that you, the Lawyer for child might suggest that you come back, but the suitability is: will both parties participate? So that applicant is often really keen but the respondent is often not. You have people say I’d rather get braces for my kid than pay $400.00 to talk to my ex 

Those are some pretty cheap braces 

…but when they realise that once the Section 12 form can be issued and taken to the Court for other matters they go “oh, ok that could be pretty cheap” because that’s not even a half of a lawyer’s letter. 

What’s the Section 12?

So a Section 12 under the Family Dispute Resolution Act is your ticket to go to Court because you haven’t been able to get engagement or someone one won’t participate 

Or can’t go because of family violence. 

Yes or can’t go because of Family violence. 

Or you can’t go because of Family Violence or it is that it is a Section 12 and the matters are all resolved, so there is this one form to say that you have been to FDR and the matters are all resolved.

What sort of disputes, oh no we’ve talked about that one…

Can you expand it out so I know it’s under the Care of Children’s Act principally, can you expand it out so that you can discuss  other related issues like occupation of the family home, spousal maintenance maybe because that can be something that is happening at the same time? 

That’s right and I just wish we could, with spousal maintenance, you know when it comes to relationship property and spousal maintenance because they a can be you know they can be used in the same legislation, it is really important that we know that there is legal advice being taken.  But occupation of the family home is an interesting one because often this is quite early and you know I think the nesting idea is really great when it’s early because parents get experience.  They are expecting the children to go through later and if finances are tight it can be easy to couch surf at grandmas and one parent goes into the family home and the children stay in their community of identity and the other parent goes off somewhere else and stays and they work it out that way.  It’s quite good for children and I’ve had lots of lots of people who have done that for a period of time. 

When you can achieve it, it’s good, it can be pretty hard right? 

Well I think the parents get a sense that it’s really hard to move from home to home which is what children have to go through, but it really works well if there are no new partners involved, it doesn’t work well so well when your new partner’s involved 

You need somewhere else to live. 

I’ve had people come to FDR do that and put in their parenting agreement and the occupation of the home, and where they are going to stay all of that sign it off, and they have got a review date and then come back a year later pay another $448.00.  And they come back and say: right now well now we are going to do our relationship property and I have to say is well you can’t do it under FDR but you can do it at the FDR Centre and you can have me for a mediation and relationship property but I would like you to bring your lawyers.

So my vision for the future in that space is that the people that can only afford this that may not have a lot of property - and let’s face it some people only have debt and some people have property that doesn’t include a home - my dream is that people could do relationship property as well as children because you know we say children of property aren’t property and we say children and money shouldn’t mix but people leverage it 

Absolutely

It’s frightening how much they leverage it, they try to hide, so sometimes it’s kind of better to say well you know have you done a relationship property and how much is money affecting these decisions because they go I’ll do it but I’m not signing, oh yeah maybe but I’m not signing until I have got half the house and then delay, delay, delay 

Welcome to our, well to my world – and then there are awesome people who are doing their best in a hard situation.

Oh most people know they act on the interest of their children but they are not quite sure what it means, some of them say it’s in the interest of my children they have to go see the other parent so there is some education to be done. 

What can a participant expect? What is the process of FDR? 

Ok, they often make an application online and then a case manager will be in touch with them explaining the process and then either a case manager or a mediator will ring and say or will write an email and ask if they can have a conversation with them.

And I just say I am just checking for suitability it is important that i know that this process is safe, i want to know give me some context of why you have applied.  Is it likely that the other party is going to you know…and I explain the process to them.  

So that’s the beginning that an assessment, and the Ministry of Justice funds that separately to the  process so you have still got your 12 hours after that, that’s not the beginning of your 12 hours.  And then I fill out all the documentation to say this is suitable or not suitable or why it’s not suitable and then they are asked by the case manager for their funding. 

I am not allowed to talk to them although some of them try to engage me immediately. I am not allowed to talk to them until the funding is in place and then I get: “this is ready to go” and my case management tool goes green and we are off.  And at that point I will have a preliminary separate meeting.  Now some people don’t do this, I do this because I want to know how they make sense of the issues and how they are thinking about the issues. 

I will have a preliminary meeting with both, separately before I bring them together, some people can’t be in the same room and I have to shuttle.  Some people, I have had a case where I did the shuttle and one of the parties claimed that the other person didn’t participate in mediation but you have to be very careful that you explain “participating in the process” it doesn’t actually necessarily mean that people feel safe to be in the same room. I will do  everything I possibly can to get people in the same room.  So we will sometimes do it it might just be a few things:

·       “what school are they going to next year? We can’t make up our minds.” 

·       “what are going to be the extra-curricular activities we can’t make up our minds?” 

·       “I want to change to the parenting care and contact schedule”.

And we might negotiate those and it’s done and dusted and we will make a review date and they might come back within the year.  But I do try to get them to realise you don’t have the pressure in one day, you have got 12 hours.  So other people will come and start together they might write an interim agreement with a review in 3 months, we will review and we might - because children’s needs change - and not all children want to go as a package, especially as they become teenagers they will elect to have different regimes and you know they want a voice.  And I think the need for children’s voice is big.  

Anyway its horses for courses, it’s their process, and they have got 12 hours over the year, some people use it some people don’t. Some mediators don’t work like that, they just do one 3 hour gig and that’s that.30.42 

How and when would you include children in the process?

Children are always in the process 

But they are not there on the day? 

No, so in the pilot, it took 8 years between the pilot between 2005 and 2013 to get the legislation through and to get it going and we even on the pilot designed the Agreements to Mediate and the Mediated Agreements and all the processes so we were pretty gutted lots of us who waited and waited and waited but in the pilot I had a couple of really amazing lawyers for children who brought the children to the mediation, especially teenagers that asked, when children asked to come, this is FDR process  I have had some very forthright children want to come.

Do you find that makes a difference in the mediation? 

It’s very transformative, there are a couple of mediators and I that work sort of team up quite a lot and we often give a little 101 about the impact of conflict on children and as most children say I just want my parents to stop fighting and its very informative when children feel like they are having to leave their tribe to go from one parent to the other. Sometimes they have organised their care and contact schedule so that they do all of their week with one parent, I am trying to be very careful about language here because it is not heteronormative and you know it’s not gendered it could be dad, it could be mum it could be two mummies, it could be two daddies it could be whatever you know and one is in Pukekohe and one is in Warkworth. 

And I don’t even think that matters really where they are , I know it does on a practical level but going from one house and one set of rules to another house and another set of rules is hugely upsetting and confronting for kids. 

Well one of the biggest core issues is often different parenting styles and different sets of rules. 

Which is probably common. 

Very common, there are some people who really believe in reward and punishment, which is very good for operant conditioning of a dog but not so good for people and other people have a problem solving approach. 

But that’s not the thing for the kids that might be one thing but for children who are with other children whose parents are spending a lot of time doing the strategic negotiation of play dates and stay over and  parties for a child to go from one community of identity and every weekend have to go to the other person they aren’t … they get to school on Monday and there has been social stuff on the weekend, that breaks my heart and that’s one of the problem with Auckland that the cheap, that affordable housing, they say it takes a village to raise a child and there is nobody home in the villages, it depends where the village is .This is quite hard for children because  between 7 and 13 finding your tribe it’s your socialisation outside of the home that is important and when a parent says well that’s my time, is it your time or is it the children’s time with you so they fight over this is my time, this is my time, well let’s get in the shoes of the children.

So we talk about being a competition, there is a lot of video conferencing now: I can’t see mum or dad therefore I have got a 6pm appointment with the iPad, and then mum or dad getting really hurt feeling because 6 o’clock comes and they are on Roblox  

Or Fortnite.

Or some Fortnite, or gymnastics, or they are playing with their mates at the park 

Or they are tired and laying in their bed 

And mum or dad say oh I am so…, and then they assume that mum or dad are blocking the relationship and then we have got conflict and then the child feels responsible, this is such dangerous territory so we do a lot of work on that, and the big question is how might we ensure you have a really strong attachment or relationship with your children without giving them responsibility for your emotions, so this is set up we have to be really grown up here. 

Yes so, moving on to: What can a person do to get the most out of the FDR process?

Okay, they can prepare by knowing what’s most important to them and why they are there and they can think about what’s important to their children rather than what’s important to them for their children. 

I think when people break up and they are splitting from someone and children are involved there is a huge amount of fear about who is going to be the favourite parent and like you said before where there is different parenting styles, I think that really comes to the fore that the fun parent becomes the really fun parent and the other kind of rule parent becomes even more so like that, so there is that really worry about being the favourite parent and holding onto that idea that I have to behave in a certain way for my kids to love me enough 

And some resentment perhaps of the other parent

The problem with that, the thing that needs reframing there is we are here to give our children the love and the nest they need, not for them to give it to us

It’s not about us right?

And the favourite parent thing is you know the traditional one is the sugar daddy thing, the poor fathers that only used to get them to take them to McDonalds and to the park or the circus and give them sugar and money and whatever 

Being a sugar daddy is technically someone a little bit different…but 

Okay, we better wipe that 

But I get what you mean yes 

That stereotype is horrible and people talk about one parent having big exciting experiences and the other parent not, but actually as they grow up if it’s been a competition the children they have internalised that they have found coping strategies to deal with parents’ emotions, they have probably hidden their own emotions, they have probably become people pleasers and as young adults they will have difficulty with intermittant relationships so that has got to be a red flag. 

This is one of the things you can do at FDR some common values so common kind of ground rules for the way that you want your children to grow up, you know kind, smart, well educated, calm, free of anxiety. If you have had that competition when they become adults you will find on Christmas day they will go to the emotionally low maintenance parent, not the parent that has been trying to win them over they will go where they can relax, 

Right, 

Yeah, so is part of that about get your own stuff sorted with a counsellor talk to someone about managing your own 

Emotions.

So is there anything else - sorry interrupting that - is there anything else on what can a person do to get the most out of FDR or are you done on that one? 

Well, yes i think you should know why you are coming and you should be able to be really honest and authentic and you should be prepared to be confidential and should be prepared to listen because I think this a really good opportunity to listen to something that you haven’t heard before from the other person that helped you have these children and it’s a good opportunity to hear more about the children and what they are doing and what they are thinking and you might discover something that you didn’t know so I think that it is a learning process and it is also an opportunity to learn to negotiate in a problem solving way and not bargaining and compete so I think we are transforming people from bargaining and compete to problem solving and that is the best thing you can model to your children 

What can a lawyer to do help the process?

 I think most lawyers are really fundamentally encouraging FDR, try to reduce the number of letters that go between the parties before they come to FDR because letters frame reality and you know I think I said it before what might be a perception, assumption or an opinion when its written in a Lawyers letter becomes a fact that might get tabled in Court, so let’s just have this good faith confidential common sense making conversation before we frame it with the fear of god what could happen.

 And incur the cost of every single lawyer’s letter as well.

 Yes, they become very bitter to FDR when they have had to spend $1500 to reply to something that has really upset them and made them so fearful and angry and they are kind of the granulated range of  emotions that getting a letter, an email, some of these people are communicating in very aggressive ways by text by email and then there is a Lawyers letter and things just escalate so I have to do a whole lot of de-escalation to get them relaxing and that is often happening about property, which is why I would like property to be happening concurrently.  

And the other thing is please try not to delay communications, there is a theory that ‘if conflict just trickles on and you just slow them down they will erupt and solve it’, I don’t agree with that I think the world is so stressful, it is so stressful and everything is immediate, communication is immediate people don’t understand why they don’t get answers, when it’s just the flick of an email it’s just the flick of a text, communication is speedy now why are lawyers so slow to get back, do they have a big case load on, it’s interpreted as delay and delay is like a rubber band of stress – timeliness. 

If an agreement is reached what then?  

If it is reached well then people can go and implement it can’t they and then if they haven’t used up their 12 hours they can come back and tweak it, if it’s not reached then I give them a Section 12 certificate and they toddle off to Court and we can suggest a Settlement Conference and Legal representation so that is not actually a fully lodging in the Court whether a lot of notice is taken by Lawyers in Court.

 What are its limitations? What are FDRs limitations? What’s one change would you make if we could put you in charge? What could it be like?

Ok, so I would include property negotiations as another arm to it I think it 

Or an arm and a leg, depending what lawyer you use!!

 Or an arm and a leg, the thing is that it becomes, people do leverage it, they are not meant to but they do.

 I think it should be a bit like collaborative law where you sit around a table and you start over a period of time resolving these issues, these are social structures these relationships, I mean housing, wellbeing of children, this is making a big difference in our Society, its huge, absolutely huge and its protecting our tamariki.

It would be interesting to know if anyone has ever done one of those costs benefit analyses, every one dollar spent on this how much would it save 

 I think just learning some of the basics of problem solving, Duties ? problem solving method through which is what the mediators all train to use really, interest based negation, if people learn to use that and model it at home then woohoo.

It’s a skillset, a skillset that you haven’t got from anywhere else 

No, and it also makes you feel quite bullet proof , I can solve this for myself so self-determination and learning through mediation is a huge value of huge value.

 Has the MOJ Ministry if Justice done a review of how FDR is working?

 I know there is a request for information at the moment, the stats and I think that they are evaluating all the time and I know that they are reviewing child inclusion stuff in a big way and just to extend that, we haven’t got any publically available documents on that yet but I know that they are looking at a more systemic, holistic approach for children’s interest 54.27 because you know people will say it’s not in my children’s interest at all, lets tell me the best interest what is, it’s not clear to people but you know its emotional, economic, social, physiological, physical wellbeing it’s a whole system, its complex, it’s not binary there is not a simple concept to explore so that is one concept which  is not really understood just by reading the Legislation and certainly neurologically we know children are suffering and their learning is suffering from conflict if there is one thing we really know parents and conflict has a detrimental effect on the development of children in all sorts of ways and it is way beyond which house they live in or which parent they might prefer to be with.

What do you say to complaints that mother’s get the better deal/benefit from a gender bias against dad’s as fathers in FDR?

Scratch that one…no it’s ok because I know that’s a perception.

It’s very, I know that it’s perceived that mum's attachment is more important in the earlier years and I have a problem with fathers who want, who come in and say I want 50/50 and the child is still on the breast at 6 months old, and I say well we will need to sit down and have a think about this really.

There is some perceptions that there is some gender bias but really it’s a bias about the child’s development, age and stage.  So if you can get people to think about it not from that’s my time with them and I should have it, and too and you can reframe it to it’s the children’s right to be nurtured and to have attachments to both of you and how might we do this? It’s not ripping them away from the breast and saying “if I don’t get them 50/50” it’s about age and stage, and what’s right for children. 

There are some assumptions that looking after the development stage of children is there for a gender bias, but you know.

Like any mediation, FDR is a “process” – but how do you compensate for the limitations or lack of time?  Do you have any shortcuts to get “buy in” to develop the trust, getting past the hurt and anger so that you can move the parties out of their own way so that they can make some progress?

So there is research by Lewicki and Saunders around trust and it talks about calculus based trust so I give a little 101 lecture about trust.  You haven’t got trust now, obviously, you are grieving, there’s guilt, there’s whatever and sometimes there is the blame thing going on, I talk about how if you build a parenting agreement and you do abide by it over time ,I think it is 33 instances of doing what you will do you can rebuild trust, it’s called calculus based trust because its counted.

Okay, he - she did that, they delivered on time and I always say whoever the children are leaving should have delivered children so that you are not tearing children away, they were delivered on time, they had their clothes, if you make agreements and you abide by them then you will build trust in your parenting relationship and actually your intimate relationship is not relevant to the children really if trust has been breached that way. 

So can you tell us what is a sense-making conversation you mentioned in one of your articles? 

We make assumptions all the time about the way we think about the world and that’s often where the heart of the matter is and its right down deep it’s not obvious, it’s a shark, it’s not the money or the time it’s something, there is some sort of assumption under the surface that’s really put this off and of we can nail that people go oh my god I didn’t know you thought that, that’s not what happened. So our actions are a result of what we think is plausible the way we have made sense of it, so if we can unpack the assumptions that are driving the shark to bite that are under the surface then we have got to the interest. 

We should probably move on to our quick-fire questions – so these are you get 10 seconds each for 10 seconds, sometimes they take longer than 10 seconds

Well the first one is so quick as you have already answered it 

 1.     What does it cost to go to FDR?

$448.50

 2.     What is the wait time for FDR?

Well it should be no more than, you get 10 working days to assess, so I get it I’ve got to assess it within 10 working days, there have been times when parties haven’t been able to be contacted, I have got one at the moment that is 15 and I am very nervous about that as the MOJ requires you to be timely. 

So there’s not like a 6 month… 

No, if you come in, you get assessed and you pay the next week you should be 2 weeks.  As long as you complete the whole thing within 12 months.  I was meaning the time to get into FDR.

3.     Do you have a trick for stopping people from just yelling at each other?

 Well, it’s online actually and lots and lots of people have got these…This was designed Guidelines for Sharing that was designed by me in 2003 to transport some people from a competitive negotiation to a collaborative one, 

Cool, we will link that to our podcast 

You are not allowed to shout in my mediation 

 4.     Can you go back to FDR a second or third time?

Yes, you can either go back with your 12 hours within your 12 hours or after a year you can come back, I do have people that have come back 3 times over 3 years. 

5.     Do you have a trick for stopping children yelling at each other?

The very, very best of things is to talk quietly and never shout at them.

 I’m going to try that with you. 

 6.     How many sessions do you get?

Well however many, well 12 if you do them one hourly 

7.     How long does the process take?  

It depends on the parties and their needs, so they get 12 hours of me or the other people on the menu, you have got to design it to fit the circumstances 

 8.     What is the best bit of advice you would give someone going into FDR?

 Listen 

 That’s for life as well 

 9.     Do you have to do FDR to go to Court?

Yes 

10.  Who can use the service e.g. can grandparents?

Yes, lots of grandparents coming, it’s very, very interesting, I won’t go on too long but there are a lot of different ways to parent and grandparent’s style are not acceptable for a lot of people and it’s leading to quite a few disputes and people withholding children from grandparents which guts the grandparent and there is a lot of education to be done in that area 

11.  What would you say to people who are scared of going to FDR.  What do you do to look after those people?

Oh prepare, prepare, prepare and listen, listen, listen and do it in different rooms if there is a real fear.

And it sounds like the fact that you meet people separately beforehand that must be a huge valuable. 

Oh always, I never put them in a room without meeting them separately beforehand, I always prepare people for mediation because for some reason they pair it with Family court, probably because the MOJ pays, but I just say we are just going to have  a conversation, we are going to have a collaborative sense based conversation, we are going to try make sense of what is important.  If you are coming to fight with your Eastlight files …it’s not an evidence based process, so people come with evidence and I go 

Throw It away 

So, now we have come to the section called  the Best Question Ever for you Gaye Greenwood the best question ever: You are a non-lawyer surrounded by lawyers, so tell us, what are three things you have learned about lawyers that might surprise us?

Oh.
Now’s your chance, what could we learn about ourselves

I am biased, I have Lawyer kids, great problem solvers, they are the most creative people in the world, I mean getting into Law school is really, really you have to be quite competitive to get there and so good at argumentation and drama and all the rest of it and unfortunately Law schools teach you to win or lose an argument and they spend a lot of time on Litigation when that’s only 10% of your work, so I think there is a lot of room for more liberal arts papers, more neuroscience, more psychology, more other papers that give your insight and alternative dispute resolution but my experience of Lawyers is that they are some of the best thinkers 

Well, this has been divorce café, thank you for listening, we hope you found something useful in that, thank you so much Gaye Greenwood from Greenwood Mediation and also FDR centre for your expertise. 

Thank you for having me 

There will be lots of stuff linked to the podcast, you can watch us on Youtube if you haven’t already and check out our other episodes and join us next time!