The soaring divorce rate, plus the acrimony between adults and the distress caused to children resulting from a court battle over custody, alimony or property is the main reason behind a three-year pilot study into mediation. Next comes cost.
Last year the Legal Aid Department funded 4,463 matrimonial cases out of nearly 14,000 divorces. Courts are clogged with cases, and the psychological strain of waiting months until a broken marriage is ended legally increases the stress on all concerned.
Family conciliation services run by non-governmental agencies have been working successfully in Hong Kong for some time, but on a restricted basis because of the shortage of trained personnel. Mediators help divorcing couples to talk to each other so that they can decide upon mutually acceptable arrangements.
Bringing this system into family law has obvious advantages. But proposals by the Judiciary stop short of what many psychologists and social workers consider to be by far the most important point.
Children do not have a say in the proposed procedure, and that is a serious flaw. As the innocent victims of marital breakdown, they are often treated like pieces of property to be divided up between warring parents. But at least if couples can be persuaded to reach an agreement which gives priority to the children's wishes, the emotional damage to all concerned will be reduced greatly.
Compared with the financial cost of divorce, which can range from $15,000 for simple and uncontested proceedings, and up to $300,000 in complicated cases, mediation will slash costs to the Legal Aid Department as well as the divorcing couple. Offered free for the duration of the study, even with government funding of $6 million, the scheme should mean a considerable saving for taxpayers as well as mitigating an inevitably harrowing, and sadly, increasingly common experience.
