Family & Parenting Mediation
Living arrangements, schooling, health decisions and the handover detail that causes most of the conflict later. Includes the section 60I certificate you need before you can file.
Explore family mediation →Family Dispute Resolution · Sydney
Settle it in a room, not a courtroom.
Mediation for separating couples in Sydney — parenting, property and financial matters, resolved without litigation wherever that can be done.
Most separating couples reach agreement at mediation. The ones who end up in court usually got there because nobody put the real options in front of them early enough.
- 60I
- Certificates issued as a registered FDR practitioner
- 2 wks
- Typical time from first call to the session itself
- 1 day
- Most matters resolved in a single sitting
- Fixed
- Fee agreed in writing before anything is booked
What we mediate
Two kinds of dispute, and most couples bring both.
Parenting and property run on different legislation and different timetables. We mediate each of them, and we can take both in a single sitting.
Property & Financial Mediation
The home, superannuation, business interests and debts — and the disclosure that has to come before any of it. Structured so the agreement can go straight to consent orders.
Explore property mediation →Why mediation
Six reasons this ends better than a hearing.
None of them is that mediation is nicer. It is faster, cheaper and private, and you keep the decision instead of handing it to a judge.
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Cost
A fraction of litigation
A contested parenting or property matter runs into tens of thousands of dollars before it reaches trial. A mediation is a fixed fee, agreed in advance, with no interlocutory steps to pay for.
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Time
Weeks, not years
A mediation can usually be convened within weeks. A defended matter in the Federal Circuit and Family Court can sit for a year or more before it is heard, and longer before judgment.
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Confidentiality
Private by statute
What is said in family dispute resolution is confidential under s10H of the Family Law Act and, with narrow exceptions, inadmissible in later proceedings under s10J. A courtroom is public.
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Control
Your agreement, not a ruling
A judge applies the law to findings of fact. You can agree things no court would order, because you know your family, your work and your finances, and the court is meeting them for the first time.
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Children
Lower conflict, measurably
Harm to children tracks the conflict between their parents far more closely than the number of nights spent with each. Mediation is designed to lower that conflict.
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Durability
Agreements that hold
People implement what they helped build. An outcome imposed on an unwilling party is the one most likely to be back before the court on a contravention application.
How it is run
Four formats. Safety decides which one.
Being in the same room is not a requirement of mediation, and for some couples it is the thing that would make it fail. The format is chosen at intake, after each party has been spoken to separately.
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Joint session
One room
Both parties and the practitioner at one table. The most efficient format where it is appropriate — people hear each other directly and misunderstandings get corrected on the spot rather than two weeks later.
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Shuttle
Two rooms
The parties never meet. The practitioner moves between separate rooms carrying offers, questions and explanations. Slower, and the right choice wherever there has been violence, intimidation or a power imbalance that would make a joint room unsafe.
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Online
Anywhere
By video, together or in separate virtual rooms. Useful where one party has left the state or the country, where travel is impractical, or simply where being in the same building is more than someone can manage.
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Legally assisted
Lawyers present
Each party brings their own solicitor, and accountants or valuers attend where the figures need them. Usually a full day. The format of choice for a substantial asset pool, because agreement can be documented the same afternoon.
How it works
Four stages, and you can stop after the first.
Nobody is asked to sit in a room with a former partner before the practitioner has met each of them separately and confirmed that mediation is appropriate at all.
- 01
Intake and suitability
We take your account of the dispute, explain what mediation can and cannot do, and assess whether it is appropriate. Family violence, urgency and risk to a child are all reasons it may not be.
- 02
Separate pre-meetings
Each party meets the practitioner alone — to prepare, to identify the documents that will matter on the day, and to separate what they actually need from what they have been demanding.
- 03
The joint session
Half day or full day, in one room or shuttled between two. Issues identified, options generated, and only then a negotiation. Lawyers, accountants and valuers attend where they help.
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Documenting the agreement
A parenting plan, heads of agreement, or instructions for consent orders or a binding financial agreement. An agreement nobody wrote down is not an outcome, it is a conversation.
Before you book
Three things worth reading first.
All free, none of them require you to engage us, and the parties who have read them are visibly easier to help. Preparation is most of what separates a mediation that settles from one that does not.
Preparing for mediation
Eleven things that change the outcome — how to work out what you actually need, what to do if no agreement is reached, how to make an offer that gets heard, and the I-statements that stop a negotiation becoming an argument.
Read the preparation guide →Children and separation
What separation does to children at different ages, how much less they are told than parents believe, why conflict matters more than the schedule, and the three patterns of co-parenting families settle into.
Read the parenting guide →Separation and divorce
What separation means legally, when you can actually divorce, and why property and parenting get settled first. The sequence confuses almost everyone, and the confusion is expensive.
Read the separation guide →The practitioner
Duarte Bazaliza
Principal Solicitor · Notary Public · Registered FDR Practitioner
Twenty-two years in practice across property, commercial and family matters, and a Public Notary in Australia. Registered as a family dispute resolution practitioner, so certificates are issued directly rather than referred out. Dual-qualified — admitted in Portugal as well as New South Wales — and able to conduct a mediation in Portuguese where that helps.
Read his full background →Other firms engage him when they want a matter settled rather than run. You deal with him directly, not with an associate.
Tell us what's in dispute. We'll tell you whether mediation will fix it.
A first conversation costs nothing and takes about twenty minutes. If mediation is the wrong instrument for your matter, we will say so rather than book you in.