To negotiate, mediate or litigate? Examining the durability of divorce outcomes in the Singapore family courts

Abstract

AbstractFor many years, the courts have been grappling with the paradox of marriages—the most intimate of relationships—being dissolved in the courts that represent a public and adversarial setting. Despite the growth of divorce interventions, the perennial struggle remains in many courts on how to reduce the intense acrimony of divorce litigation. The question remains on the scope of “mainstream” interventions to be offered by the courts to divorce litigants. The current study therefore explores the use of court‐connected negotiation, mediation, and litigation in the Singapore Family Justice Courts. It uses a statistical method of survival analysis to produce insights on re‐litigation trends over time and to predict the future risk of re‐litigation. Mediated divorces were found to have consistently higher durability than litigated cases and negotiated settlements. Negotiated divorce outcomes had the worst durability when the survival analysis was done in relation to re‐litigation caused by extraneous factors. These findings strongly suggest that mediation should be a highly recommended mode of dispute resolution for divorcing parties, especially when there are children to the marriage, and that there are benefits of having a neutral third party to help the parties reach a sustainable settlement.