In Law Dispute Case Study
Family mediation, Rajesh and Meena were happily married in October 2008; Meena left her parents and moved in with Rajesh and his family, consisting of his parents, two bothers and younger sister.
Prior to getting married Meena had agreed to do this, everything was fine at first, however issues soon arose leading to many distressing arguments, at times Rajesh would agree with Meena and try to stand up for her, other times he was passive or take the side of his family.
This eventually led to the pair separating as they were arguing more and more, Meena went back to live with her parents. Rajesh wanted to reconcile however Meena refused to go back and live with his family.
Mediation was arranged and Rajesh advised that Meena knew what she was getting herself into and culturally the bride always lives with the groom and his family, Meena agreed she had initially agreed to this, however whatever she did it was not good enough and she could not live there any longer.
Rajesh agreed he needed to be more objective and knew his family could be difficult, however they could not afford to buy their own place, neither did he want to ask his parents for the money as that was not the done thing.
Rajesh clearly wanted to make his marriage work and did not know which way to turn to resolve this situation. Meena advised that her parents would give her money towards a deposit towards a house; Rajesh was uncomfortable with this, knowing his family would not do the same, equally Indian pride and protocol dictates that the male should provide, Rajesh did not want a handout.
Meena advised her parents did not want the money returned, however they could return it once they were in a position to if that made him feel better, reluctantly Rajesh agreed. The mediator contacted the couple a few months after to see how things were going; Rajesh advised that when he put the proposal to his family, they were so ashamed that Meena’s parents would be giving the deposit money that they agreed to give half towards the deposit to the couple which they did not want returned either.
- The mediation took 1 day compared to the 13 months this family dispute had already gone on.
- The mediation cost each party only a fraction each, compared to the thousands they would have had to spend, had they continued with more formal procedures.
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