Outcomes of FDRs

Abstract

As outlined in Chapter 1, neoliberal policy developments concerning family dispute resolution have emphasised the importance of parties resolving their dispute out of court, ideally by mediation, but have demonstrated little concern with the content or quality of resolutions, beyond asserting that agreements reached between the parties themselves are likely to be more durable than those imposed by a court. It seems to be assumed that whatever parties can agree on will by definition be a ‘good’ outcome. This chapter sets out our findings on the resolution rates from each process, and proceeds to discuss the quality of resolutions in terms of parties’ satisfaction with the outcomes they achieved and their reasons for settlement. It also considers longer-term outcomes of FDR, going beyond the resolution of the immediate dispute. Finally, it discusses what happened in cases that were not resolved by FDR. In the following chapter, we discuss a further aspect of the content and quality of outcomes, that is, the extent to which agreements reached in FDR can be described as ‘just’, not only from the perspective of the parties and practitioners but also more objectively in terms of the conception of justice outlined in the Introduction.