There have been a few news items recently about divorcing couples and how they will now be encouraged to seek mediation to sort out their disputes before they go to court.
The Justice Minister Mr Djanogly said to the BBC that;
mediation was "a quicker, cheaper and more amicable alternative" to the over-worked family courts.
The measures for England and Wales, focused on child custody and financial disputes, come into force on 6 April.
Domestic violence and child protection cases will still go to court.
Mr Djanogly said: "Nearly every time I ask someone if their stressful divorce battle through the courts was worth it, their answer is 'no'.
"Mediation already helps thousands of legally aided people across England and Wales every year, but I am concerned those funding their own court actions are missing out on the benefits it can bring.
"Now everyone will have the opportunity to see if it could be a better solution than going straight to court."
I think this is great news, a really good sensible programme and I hope that it will reduce the pain and suffering associated with divorce for many people.
I do wonder however if a more proactive approach to marriage in general would be more appropriate. Surely we should be investing some funds helping to prevent couples from having to go through the financial and emotional pain of divorce in the first place?
As a nation we don't seem to provide any resources for couples who are about to get married to advise them on how to have a good relationship and a happy and functional married life. It is as though we assume that this should come naturally, that it is something we should just be able to do. However the number of divorces is on the rise, so that can't be true.
When I got engaged I did some quick research into pre-marriage couples courses and couldn't find any that were not privately run. The Catholic Church seems to be the only religious organisation that offers pre marriage counselling on a large scale basis. Of course individual religious groups may also offer these services. Even Relate, the famous UK marriage counselling service, seems to only offer counselling services for couples already facing difficulties not for those just hoping to explore ways to have a more functional and secure relationship in future. As far as I know these services are not free and couples would have to pay to have any type of counselling.
Unable to find a course that suited me I turned to books instead and I found some excellent ones,some of which I will review on this blog at a later date. I found some of the advice in these books to be very helpful and I'm planning to put into practice their advice and also review them on a regular basis. Until I'd read them, I thought my relationship was fairly functional and I wasn't particularly worried about divorce. After all both myself and my partner come from parents who have been in long and happy marriages. I didn't really have any fears that marriage was something I wouldn't be able to do. However the books showed me otherwise, there were areas of concern and I was behaving in ways that could be destructive.
Who knows what might have happened had I not taken the time to read these books and to sit and think about my relationship and how it works. I believe that our Government should invest in providing relationship courses for married and cohabiting couples that offer advice and support along the lines of these books. Marriage or cohabitation is a huge investment for an individual and for society as a whole, I think it's time we put the effort in to taking better care of it.
