When you are going through the normal court process, you can appeal some of the orders in the trial court by a higher court if you think that the judge made an error. The higher court then can try affirming the order, overturning the order, or sending the order back to the trial court to instruct the court to revisit the order. Usually, matters concerning family law are pretty time-consuming and litigation is an expensive business.
The court wait time on family law matters can turn out to be tediously long (more than 2 years) right from the time the case was filed. If you do want to fix matters quickly and efficiently, you should always resort to different methods, other than litigation to resolve matters.
The Difference Between Family Law Arbitration and Mediation
Mediation has third-party professionals acting as a facilitator for the parties to help either the parties come to a favorable conclusion. Arbitration includes a method to resolve disputes, where an arbitrator makes the final call on the judgment.
The key advantage of resorting to family law arbitration is that the whole case can be finalized within a short duration of time. Arbitration also means you’ll end up paying a lot less till the time the matter reaches the final stages.
The Key Difference Between Family Law Arbitration and Mediation
When it comes to family law mediation and arbitration, you’ll get a non-partial person who can help the respective parties potentially end a dispute.
When it comes to mediation, a person who is a mediator can help the opposite parties to settle a settlement for property or take care of children’s issues. It helps keep the parties communicating in a way that removes all kinds of negativity. The mediator on the other hand can help clarify the issues that continue to create problems between the respective teams and suggest certain solutions.
An arbitrator (family law) is the one who resolves the issue of property disputes finally. The arbitrator goes over the nitty-gritty of each and every piece of evidence and submission from the two disputing parties and finally awards an arbitral award as a form of dispute resolution. Sometimes mediation cannot provide a satisfactory result like resolution. It is in cases like this that the arbitrator can resolve matters for both parties, helping them come to a decision much sooner than otherwise possible.
Procedure for Arbitration
If you want to kickstart the arbitration on board, either of the parties must agree to the process of arbitration. Arbitrators and the respective parties get together for a hearing (Directions) where the parties need to get their documents ready and file them to get themselves ready for the hearing. The parties can have a say on how the proceedings will be conducted how discreet would it be and whether it can be an oral or written submission.
This way the parties need not appear before the arbitrator or have to summon witnesses to give their evidence. After the conclusion of the procedure, the parties receive an arbitral award. The award then gets registered with the court.
Questions on The Arbitral Award
In some cases both parties may be recipients of an award, however, in some cases, they may not choose to register the award, in situations like these, the award may not materialize. If a party goes through court registration, however, the other party may not be very happy with the award, they may choose not to register it. In such a scenario they need to enlist the reason why they failed to register the agreement. Reasons can range from parties having a disagreement to arbitration or they had some reservations about the qualifications of the arbitrator.
If a party wants to change or reverse the award, they may have to cite the reason why and whether there has been a loophole in the law. Some of the errors may be the award may be obtained with the help of fraud or unenforceable, or some kind of bias has come to play in the procedures, for some reason the award has been impracticable.
Conclusion
Ensuring procedural fairness without bias is the key to the success of arbitration. Arbitrators undergo a training process wherein they must maintain the sanctity of the proceedings. They must also not discuss the particular case separately and clandestinely with solicitors. The procedure of arbitration more often than not ensures a quick resolution so that parties can move forward with their lives without any hurdles. Consult your lawyer if you want to go ahead with arbitration to resolve any issues regarding family law.