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+ details >>Family mediation in England and Wales ends with a document. That document is not a court order, and on its own it does not bind anyone to anything. This is the single most common misunderstanding about how separating couples sort out money, and it catches people out at the point where they believe they have finished.
This article sets out what family mediation actually produces, what has to happen afterwards to make a financial agreement legally binding, who does each step, what each step costs, and what a judge is doing when the papers reach the court. It also looks at how the market is structured, because the way most providers organise these services is not the only way it can be done.
Family mediation is a process in which a neutral, trained mediator helps two people reach their own decisions about money, property, pensions or arrangements for children. The mediator does not decide anything and does not represent either person.
In a financial case, mediation normally produces two written documents at the end, plus the court form that opens the process at the start.
Before any figures can be discussed, both people provide full financial disclosure: income, property, savings, debts, pensions and any other assets. The mediator summarises that disclosure into a signed document usually called an Open Financial Statement, or an Open Financial Summary.
The word "open" carries the meaning. The Family Mediation Council Code of Practice for Family Mediators, version 1.5, August 2025, states at clause 6.5.2 that participants "must agree that all factual information material to financial issue must be provided on an open basis, so that it can be referred to in legal proceedings."
The Judiciary's guide Mediation in England and Wales: A Guide for Judges, Magistrates, Legal Advisers and Court Staff, updated September 2024, describes the same document and confirms that this material "is available to the court".
So the Open Financial Statement is a disclosure document that the court is allowed to see.
The second document records what the two people have agreed. It is usually called a Memorandum of Understanding. The Judiciary's 2024 guide calls it a Confidential Summary of Proposals, "sometimes called a Memorandum of Understanding", and says it "can be used to form the basis of a consent order or a binding agreement".
This document is written on a without prejudice basis. The Family Mediation Council Code of Practice, clause 6.5.1, requires participants to agree in writing before mediation begins that "discussions and negotiations in Mediation are not to be referred to in any legal proceedings, and that the Mediator cannot be required to give evidence or produce any notes or records made in the course of the Mediation".
So the Memorandum of Understanding is a privileged document that, as a rule, cannot be put before the court. It is the record of the deal. It is not the deal.
A family mediator is required to stay neutral and is not permitted to advise either person. Clause 6.2 of the Family Mediation Council Code of Practice states that the mediator "may inform Participants of possible courses of action, their legal or other implications, and assist them to explore these, but must make it clear that he or she is not giving advice."
Clause 9.14 goes further and places a positive duty on the mediator: the mediator "must advise the Participants that it is in their own interests to seek independent legal advice before reaching any final agreement, and warn them of the risks and disadvantages if they do not do so."
The Family Mediation Council puts the same point in plain language on its own website: registered mediators "can provide general legal information" but "cannot provide legal advice by telling you what that general law means for you personally, in your particular circumstances."
An agreement reached in family mediation is not legally binding in itself.
GOV.UK states the position directly: "If you want to make your agreement legally binding, you should hire a solicitor. They'll draft a consent order. You can then apply to court to ask a judge or magistrate to review and confirm the order."
The Family Mediation Council's own guidance is framed the same way. Its page on legal advice describes the relevant step as "turning the written agreement into a legally binding document, such as a consent order".
There are two routes by which a mediated financial agreement can acquire legal force:
For a divorcing couple who want finality, the consent order is the document that matters.
These two documents are frequently confused. They are different in almost every respect.
| Feature | Memorandum of Understanding | Financial consent order |
|---|---|---|
| Who writes it | The mediator | A solicitor, or the parties themselves |
| Legal status | Without prejudice and privileged | A court order once sealed |
| Can the court see it | No, as a general rule | Yes, it is the order |
| Legally binding | No | Yes |
| Enforceable | No | Yes, through the court |
| Can it dismiss future claims | No | Yes, where a clean break is included |
| Purpose | To record what was agreed | To make what was agreed binding |
The solicitor's job after mediation is narrower than many people expect. The negotiation has already happened. The solicitor converts an agreement written in ordinary language into an order written in terms the court will accept and can enforce.
That work includes translating the agreed terms into the recognised categories of financial order, adding the machinery that makes each term work in practice, such as dates, triggers and default provisions, preparing the court forms, and dealing with the court's correspondence.
No. This is worth stating plainly, because it is often implied otherwise.
Drafting a consent order is not a reserved legal activity. Schedule 2 of the Legal Services Act 2007 lists the six reserved activities: rights of audience, the conduct of litigation, reserved instrument activities, probate activities, notarial activities, and the administration of oaths. Drafting the terms of a financial order is not among them.
The Family Mediation Council said so itself in its 2016 consultation on the subject: "the drafting of consent orders is not an activity reserved only to lawyers, and mediators who are not lawyers may train to draft such orders."
Two practical points sit alongside that.
First, the profession has been cautious. The Family Mediators Association guidance states that its mediators "should not produce freestanding draft consent orders at the end of the mediation process". Since 2019, joint guidance from the Family Mediation Council, the Law Society and Resolution has permitted solicitor-mediators to draft an initial order in narrow circumstances, but the default professional position remains that the mediator records the agreement and someone else drafts the order.
Second, drafting is one thing and conducting proceedings is another. Schedule 2, paragraph 4 of the Legal Services Act 2007 defines the conduct of litigation as "the issuing of proceedings before any court in England and Wales, the commencement, prosecution and defence of such proceedings, and the performance of any ancillary functions in relation to such proceedings". That is reserved. A person can file their own application as a litigant in person. A business generally cannot file it on their behalf unless it is authorised to do so.
This is the structural reason why nearly every commercial package that includes both drafting and filing names a regulated solicitor or firm to carry out those steps.
Three documents go to the court, and sometimes a fourth.
Form A is the notice of intention to proceed with an application for a financial order. GOV.UK describes it as the form used to start a request for a financial order in divorce or civil partnership dissolution proceedings.
Where a couple have already agreed terms, Form A is filed to open the financial proceedings so that the court has jurisdiction to make an order and, importantly, to dismiss the claims that are being given up. Practitioners commonly mark it "for dismissal purposes only". That phrase is a drafting convention rather than wording found in the Family Procedure Rules.
Form D81 is the Statement of Information for a Consent Order in relation to a financial remedy. GOV.UK describes its purpose in one sentence: "Use this form to complete a 'statement of information' to help the court decide whether the financial and property arrangements you've made are fair."
The form was reissued on 6 April 2022 and now requires a comparison showing the effect of the proposed order on each person's capital and income, before and after. The GOV.UK page was last updated on 16 July 2026.
Rule 9.26 of the Family Procedure Rules 2010 sets out how it is completed, and it allows either of two arrangements:
Either way, each person certifies that they have read what the other has declared. There is no version of this process in which one person's finances stay hidden from the other.
Rule 9.26(1)(a) requires the applicant to file two copies of the draft order in the terms sought, "one of which must be endorsed with a statement signed by the respondent to the application signifying agreement".
Where a pension is being shared, a separate annex is required for each pension, addressed to the scheme and setting out the percentage to be transferred.
A judge does not simply approve whatever two adults have agreed.
Section 33A of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 sets the test. On an application for a consent order for financial relief, "the court may, unless it has reason to think that there are other circumstances into which it ought to inquire, make an order in the terms agreed on the basis only of the prescribed information furnished with the application."
The words "unless it has reason to think that there are other circumstances into which it ought to inquire" are what turn this into a scrutiny exercise rather than a formality. The judge is checking that the agreement is within the range of what a court could properly order, on the information provided.
The scrutiny only works if the information is complete. In Livesey (formerly Jenkins) v Jenkins [1985] AC 424, the House of Lords held that each party owes a duty to the court to make full and frank disclosure of all material facts, so that the court can exercise its discretion properly. A consent order obtained without that disclosure can be set aside.
This is why Form D81 exists, and why hiding an asset to get an order approved more quickly is a false economy that can undo the order years later.
Usually not. Rule 9.26(4) of the Family Procedure Rules provides that "unless the court directs otherwise, the applicant and the respondent need not attend the hearing of an application for a consent order." Consent orders are normally dealt with on the papers.
A judge who is not satisfied does not usually throw the application out. The more common outcome is a query: a request for further information, a clarification, or an amendment to a term that does not work as drafted. The application is then resubmitted.
This follows from the statutory wording itself. Section 33A contemplates the court inquiring into other circumstances, and rule 9.26(5) allows the court to give directions about the information it wants and how it should be provided. Where the concerns cannot be resolved, the couple are left to apply for the court to determine the matter, which is slower and more expensive than getting the order right at the outset.
Independent legal advice is not a legal precondition to a consent order. Neither section 33A of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 nor rule 9.26 of the Family Procedure Rules requires a party to have taken advice before an order is made, and a litigant in person can submit a consent order application.
The duty runs the other way. It sits on the mediator, under clause 9.14 of the Family Mediation Council Code of Practice, to advise participants that it is in their interests to take independent legal advice before reaching a final agreement.
Separate advice tends to be most valuable where one person has significantly more information or financial sophistication than the other, where pensions form a large part of the assets, where a business is involved, where one person is giving up a claim that has real value, or where either person simply does not feel confident that the proposal is reasonable for them.
There are three separate costs in this process and they are routinely blurred together.
The £62 consent fee against the £321 contested fee is the clearest single illustration of what agreement is worth in this process, before any professional fees are counted.
Here is where the market becomes interesting.
Of thirteen UK mediation and consent order providers whose published service models and prices could be checked in September 2026, only one sold the whole route, from the assessment meeting through joint mediation to a solicitor-drafted order filed at court, as a single fixed fee.
The dominant pattern was different. Mediation fees covered the sessions only. The mediator produced a Memorandum of Understanding and an Open Financial Statement, explicitly described as not being a court-ready order. The client was then told to instruct a solicitor separately, at a separate cost that was often not quoted. Two of the providers checked went further and warned consumers that solicitors' own fixed-fee divorce packages usually exclude consent order drafting, and that clients should ask specifically.
Where a single organisation did offer both, they were commonly sold as separate, separately priced services under one brand rather than blended into a single figure.
Not because of any prohibition. As set out above, drafting a consent order is not a reserved legal activity. The separation is the product of three things working together: the mediator's duty of neutrality and the bar on giving advice, professional guidance discouraging mediators from producing freestanding draft orders, and the fact that filing an application on someone else's behalf approaches the conduct of litigation, which is reserved.
A provider that wants to offer the whole route therefore has to bring in a regulated solicitor for the legal stages, keep that work separate from the mediation, and price the combination in advance. It is a business model question rather than a legal one, which is why it is possible but uncommon.
Mediate UK, a Family Mediation Council registered provider trading as Family Legal Ltd, publishes a fixed fee covering both stages. Its consent order package is priced at £1,649 plus VAT per person for standard cases and £1,799 plus VAT per person for more complex ones, with the mediation fees already paid, £745 per person, deducted from that total. The legal drafting and the court filing are carried out by DFA Law LLP, a firm regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, SRA number 484839, rather than by the mediator.
The HMCTS court fee of £62, which is £31 each, is paid direct to the court and sits outside the package, as does identity verification at £12 plus VAT per person and any independent legal advice.
Whether an integrated fee or two separate purchases is better value depends on the case. The point for anyone comparing options is simpler: ask what the quoted mediation fee actually ends at, and what the order will cost on top.
| Stage | What it produces | Who does it | Legally binding |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Assessment meeting (MIAM) | An assessment of whether mediation is suitable | A registered mediator, separately with each person | No |
| 2. Financial disclosure | Income, property, pensions, savings and debts, exchanged | Both people, facilitated by the mediator | No |
| 3. Joint mediation sessions | Proposals on how to divide everything | Both people with a neutral mediator | No |
| 4. Open Financial Statement | A signed summary of the disclosure, on an open basis | The mediator | No, but the court may see it |
| 5. Memorandum of Understanding | A written record of what was agreed | The mediator | No, and privileged |
| 6. Independent legal advice | Advice on whether the proposal is reasonable for that person | A solicitor for each person, optional | No |
| 7. Drafting | The draft consent order, and any pension sharing annex | A solicitor, or the parties themselves | Not until sealed |
| 8. Form A and Form D81 | The application and the statement of information | A solicitor, or the parties themselves | No |
| 9. Court approval | The sealed financial consent order | A district judge, normally on the papers | Yes |
Mediate UK publishes a set of anonymised case studies in which, in its own words, "all names and identifying details have been changed to protect client confidentiality. The disputes, the process followed, the number of sessions and the fees paid are all genuine." One of them runs the full nine stages and is useful precisely because nothing unusual happened in it.
A couple referred to as Tony and Elaine had a family home, two pensions between them, a daughter whose time with each of them needed settling, and a wish for a clean break. They attended one assessment meeting each and three joint mediation sessions of ninety minutes. No expert valuation or pension report was needed.
The mediation and the subsequent consent order cost £1,649 plus VAT per person, £3,298 for the couple. On top of that each of them paid a £31 court fee, which is the £62 consent order fee split between them, and £12 plus VAT for identity verification.
From the first appointment to a clean break consent order sealed by the court took fourteen weeks.
Two things are worth drawing out. The agreement itself was reached in the three joint sessions, in a matter of weeks. Everything after that, the documents, the drafting, the forms and the court's approval, was the work of converting that agreement into something enforceable. And the couple never attended court, which is the normal position under rule 9.26(4).
There is no current published service standard for how long a consent order takes to be approved in England and Wales.
HM Courts and Tribunals Service stated in December 2020 that "most online applications submitted by legal professionals are processed and returned to applicants within one week", but that was a statement made during the move to digital filing rather than a standing commitment. The HMCTS Reform Digital Services Evaluation for Financial Remedy, published in 2025, records that consent cases generally took 45 to 65 days before online filing was mandated in August 2020, and quotes a practitioner describing a three to four week turnaround afterwards. Neither figure is presented as a target.
Anyone quoting a timescale for consent order approval is therefore giving an estimate based on their own experience, not a published standard.
The stages before the court are more predictable. Financial mediation commonly runs across two to four joint sessions. Drafting typically takes a few weeks once the mediator's documents are complete. The unpredictable part is the court queue.