Meet Susan Oswald of SKO Family Law Specialists, Edinburgh

Meet Susan Oswald of SKO Family Law Specialists, Edinburgh. In this wonderfully gentle interview, Susan talks about the types of situations, and the types of people, mediation can help. She tells us that if you are recently separated, have been separated for some time, even if you've been embroiled in court with your ex partner or spouse, mediation can help you grasp control of your future.
Susan considers how it might feel if you visit a family court lawyer, who asks questions he or she thinks relevant to your type of case in order to progress your interests, and she talks about how different mediation can be. For example, your mediator will recognise that your feelings can still be raw & that it's difficult to look past those feelings and far into the future to think carefully about how to shape your new life and that of your kids. In mediation, you might find that you are really listened, empowered to control the agenda at your own pace and discuss what's genuinely important to you and your kids, what is fair to you rather than what might SEEM fair because that's how a court would look at it objectively. She recognises that mediation is difficult, particularly when it comes to considering the balance of responsibility for couples and parents after separation, but that what you can end up with is a future that you have drawn up yourselves rather than imposed on you, and which therefore makes it easier to follow through with.
The message which comes through loud and clear from Susan is that court is something that happens TO you, that it can feel sometimes like an out of body experience where strangers are deciding the fate of you and your children, whereas mediation puts the control back firmly in your own hands. Why not give it a go and see what happens?...