Welcome to our free online Family Mediator’s Directory designed to assist you locate your nearest family mediator, ready, willing and able to provide family mediation services - wherever you live or work, including Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, other Australian capital cities, major cities, metropolitan areas, country towns and regions.
Our family mediators invite members of the public, the legal profession, large corporations, small businesses, government departments, court officials, individuals, and disputants, to search this site to locate a Family Mediator with the most suitable credentials to assist resolve your dispute or conflict.
Not only family mediators are listed on this website who welcome your instructions, but also Family Dispute Resolution Practitioners (FDRP). These specially qualified and government registered family mediators provide family mediation within the confines dictated by the Family Law Act and its current Practice Directions and are licensed to issue Certificates under section 60I of the Act to disputing family members, a prerequisite in respect of any application intended to be made to the Family Court for parenting orders upon separation.
"Hi Michael,
Long time no talk, I have had 3 phone enquiries from the website in a very short time so things look good. Have any others had worthwhile results? Also, i am currently only on south east. What do i need to go onto south as well?"
Family law in Australia encourages parties whose union has ended to engage in mediation and conciliation – and in most instances, it is mandatory to do so.
Furthermore, The Family Court of Australia (or WA) from the outset encourages parties to mediate any dispute arising out of ending their marriage, placing litigation as the last option and only if conciliation has failed.
The Family Law Act refers to mediation as “family dispute resolution” and is defined in Section 10F as:
“a process (other than judicial process):
(a) in which a family dispute resolution practitioner helps people affected, or likely to be affected, by separation or divorce to resolve some or all of their disputes with each other; and
(b) in which the practitioner is independent of all the parties involved in the process.”
There are numerous considerations that mediators should make when dealing with parties to a divorce, such as: duty of care, bias, or any other ethical dilemmas that may arise to ensure that the parties to mediation are given every opportunity to reach a satisfactory result.
Family dispute resolution is a process conducted by an independent family dispute resolution practitioner to assist people affected, or likely to be affected by separation or divorce to resolve some or all of their disputes with each other without going to court. A legal definition can be found in the Family Law Act 1975. However, the term ‘family dispute resolution’ is still a term that covers many different sorts of ADR processes. Mediation and conciliation can both be types of family dispute resolution.
Family dispute resolution is important under the Family Law Act because where an individual wants to apply to the court for a parenting order they will first need to attend family dispute resolution and obtain a certificate from an accredited family dispute resolution practitioner confirming an attempt at family dispute resolution was made. This requirement applies to all applications, including those seeking changes to an existing parenting order.
Before parties enter into the mediation process, private family mediators known as Family Dispute Resolution Practitioners such as many of those listed on this website, or other family mediation services, usually undertake a pre-mediation process assessment in regards to matters that fall within the Family Law Act.
This assessment is carried out to make sure that the parties are intent on engaging positively with the mediation process. Furthermore, mediators need to ensure that both parties will be safe from harm and will make a further assessment on whether or not mediation is suitable for the parties involved in these circumstances.
Mediators, to the best of their abilities, owe their clients a duty of care from any potential harm that may arise during mediation, as well as owing a wider duty of care to any children that may be negatively affected by the mediation process.
When making a pre-mediation assessment, family mediators will take into account some of the following circumstances when judging the suitability of the parties to engage with the family dispute resolution process:
Ultimately, the pre-mediation process is carried out to ensure that the parties will enter into mediation in good faith, with a willingness to positively engage with one another. Additionally, the pre-mediation process will also give a mediator the opportunity to make an assessment on the power dynamic within the relationship, whilst also ensuring that a certain level of trust is established between the parties, as well as the mediator.
If the mediation process has commenced, but various issues have surfaced which resulted in the process abandoned, a mediator can issue a ‘genuine effort certificate’, or a ‘not appropriate certificate’ under the following circumstances:
The overriding objective of family dispute resolution is to minimise any court action because it can be an expensive and emotional process.
The benefits of mediation are recognised by government, solicitors and in particular the separating or divorcing couples and parents who use mediation services. The principal benefits of mediation are that it is:
