The Gazette 1982

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g a z e t t e april 1982
"AMatter of Matrimony"
Law Society Symposium, 29 May 1982
BY COMMON consent of those attending (solicitors
and social workers, in the main) the Law Society's
Symposium entitled "A Matter of Matrimony" held at
Blackhall Place on 29 May 1982 was regarded as an out-
standing success. The speakers were:
Alan Shatter, Solicitor
Dr Peter Fahy, Psychiatrist
District Justice Sean Delap
Mrs Kay Begg, Conciliator from the Bristol Courts
Family Conciliation Service.
Each of the speakers (who spoke in the above order)
succeeded in interacting with and complementing each
other perfectly, building up to the presentation by our cross-
Channel speaker, Mrs Begg. Mrs Begg is a Conciliator with
the Bristol Courts Family Conciliation Service, a widely
acclaimed pioneering experiment set up some four years
ago by a group of lawyers, social workers and others, who
were particularly concerned about the increase in the
divorce rate and the corresponding increase in the number
of children involved in proceedings. Mrs Begg, in her
address, pointed out that it was established as an experi-
mental scheme and as the first attempt in the United King-
dom to provide a conciliation scheme on the lines of those
attached to Family Courts in Australia and parts of Canada
and the U.S.A. Essentially, as Mrs Begg described it, the
Service provided an opportunity in a neutral, informal and
non-judgmental setting for separating couples to explore
the possibilities of reaching agreements over matters which
would otherwise, in all probability, be contested in Court.
She explained that the aim of the Service was to resolve
actual or incipient disputes, especially where children are
involved, to promote parental co-operation and to help the
couple concerned to disengage from a broken marriage with
less bitterness and hostility. Mrs Begg emphasised that
conciliation should not be confused with reconciliation, i.e.
re-uniting an estranged couple. She said, however, that the
Bristol Service did not exclude the possibility of a reconcili-
ation taking place and, if the likelihood of such developed
during discussions, the couple were encouraged to seek
further counselling help elsewhere.
Mrs Begg explained that most of the work of the Service
was with couples whose marriages had broken down irre-
trievably, and at the outset of the Scheme, most referrals
were by the solicitors acting for the parties, although at this
time, because of the considerable publicity it has attracted,
a large number of people approached the Service direct and
without the intervention of a solicitor. Mrs Begg said that
generally the procedure would be for a 'Conciliator' (as
she was), who would be a qualified Social Worker with
training in Marriage Guidance Counselling, to meet with,
first, one party and then the other and then meet them
together, preferably involving no more than perhaps three
one-hour sessions. She described how, with the trained help
of the Conciliator, a couple was helped to work out accept-
able arrangements with the minimum anger, disagreement
and distress, on such matters as custody of and access to the
children, occupation of the family home and, in conjunc-
tion with the solicitor for each party, provisions for main-
tenance and the division ofproperty. Mrs Begg stressed that
confidentiality was considered to be very important, as
people might otherwise be inhibited by fears of prejudicial
information being disclosed to a Court. She pointed out that
the Bristol Service was not linked to any Court and that the
Courts had no power to order conciliation and that the
Service did not investigate and report to a Court or to any
other agency. She said that the Service would not involve
itself in conciliation unless both parties agreed.
Mrs Begg described the success rate of the Service over
its first four years as being extremely encouraging, in that in
some 81% of cases where conciliation had taken place,
agreement on the issues in dispute had been achieved. She
said that the normal procedure at the conclusion of a
successful conciliation was for the Conciliator concerned
to write a carefully balanced non-controversial letter, sum-
marising the terms of agreement, to the solicitors for both
parties; the solicitors would then formalise that agreement,
either in the form of an inter-parties written agreement or,
more usually, in the form of a Consent Order in the context
of divorce proceedings.
Mrs Begg explained that the Bristol Service had become
a registered charity, funded for an experimental three-year
period (1979 to 1982) principally by the Nuffield Founda-
tion, aided by some payments fromthe Legal Aid Fund. She
said that there was no charge to the parties participating in
the Service, although clients could make voluntary, con-
tributions. She pointed out that at present there was an
inter-departmental committee preparing a Report for pre-
senting to the U.K. Parliament in October 1982, when a
decision was to be made as to how this experimental Service
was to continue and how it was to be funded on a permanent
basis. •
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