Press and media

Mediation Guide is a free, plain English information site about family mediation, divorce and the family courts in England and Wales. It is published by Family Legal Ltd (company no. 16431127), which also operates Mediate UK and Family Law Service. Every guide is reviewed by Chris Yaffes, an FMC accredited family mediator (FMC URN 0961A), and our news coverage is written by Jess Knauf, Director of Client Strategy at Mediate UK.

Media contact

Email office@mediationguide.co.uk for comment, data queries or corrections. We aim to respond to journalists the same working day, and we correct any error in our published material the same day it is confirmed.

Key facts journalists can use

Every figure below is cited to its primary source on the linked page, with an access date. Please check the figure against the primary source before publication, and link either the source or the page you took it from.

• In 49% of private law cases concluded in the family courts between January and March 2026, neither the applicant nor the respondent had legal representation, up three percentage points on the year. Both sides had lawyers in just 13% of cases. Source: MoJ Family Court Statistics Quarterly, via our family mediation statistics page.
• Family court fees from 13 July 2026: £628 for a divorce application, £270 for a C100 children application, £321 for a contested financial order, £62 for a consent order. Source: GOV.UK EX50, via our court fees guide.
• 77% of families using the £500 family mediation voucher reached whole or partial agreement in the Ministry of Justice analysis, and GOV.UK reported in May 2026 that the scheme has supported more than 54,000 parents since 2021. Detail and methodology: voucher scheme data.
• Private law children cases averaged 35 weeks to disposal in January to March 2026, with 52% dealt with within 26 weeks. Source: MoJ Family Court Statistics Quarterly, via our court delays data.
• There is normally no separate MIAM certificate: the mediator signs the MIAM section of the C100 or Form A itself, and the separate FM1 form is still used for certain C1 and C2 applications. Many published explanations get this wrong; ours is checked against the current HMCTS forms: the MIAM certificate explained.

The free tools

Our six interactive tools, including the text tone checker for co-parenting messages, are free, require no registration or email address, and run entirely in the browser. We verified the tone checker’s privacy technically on 17 July 2026: in use, the page makes no network requests, stores nothing, and this site runs no analytics scripts.

How this site is made and checked

Our editorial policy, statistics methodology and AI policy set out how content is produced, sourced and reviewed. Publisher details, including our funding and the labelling of related-service links, are on the about page.

Available for comment

Chris Yaffes, FMC accredited family mediator (FMC URN 0961A), reviewer of every guide on this site: mediation practice, MIAMs, the court alternatives. Jess Knauf, Director of Client Strategy at Mediate UK and writer of our news coverage: mediation trends, the voucher scheme, separating families and communication.

Logo and images

You are welcome to use the Mediation Guide logo alongside coverage of this site. Please keep the colours and proportions as they are, place it on a plain background, and do not use it to suggest we endorse a product or service.

Reuse

You are welcome to quote our guides, data pages and tools with attribution to Mediation Guide and a link. Our charts and figures may be reproduced with the same attribution. We ask that statistics are quoted with their qualifiers, the difference between an official figure and our calculation is always labelled on the page.