is any agreement reached during mediation legally binding?
A mediation agreement depends to a large extent on the good will of the parties to comply with it, but there are legal ways of making it binding. Mediation agreements are not binding and rely on the parties concerned to honour them. You can, however, take the mediation agreement proposals to your solicitor for a binding Court Order if that is appropriate in your case. Only when implemented into a binding agreement which may be in the form of a consent order do the proposals following mediation become binding. Whilst the agreement you reach in mediation is not binding unless you take steps to convert it to a binding document, it is unusual for couples to spend time and energy on negotiations, only to reject the outcome later on. One of the advantages of mediation is that the parties themselves have ownership of any decisions reached. If a mediator is concerned that one of the parties to the mediation is not negotiating in good faith, then he or she would raise this concern.
