The Court did not accept the Appellant’s further submission that the terms of the Mediated Agreement were confidential. The Mediated Agreement did not contain any agreement between the parties to that effect and there was nothing in the statutory scheme to justify inferring it. The fact that the contents of the Mediated Agreement may be included in the FDR outcomes form prepared by the FDR provider and subsequently given to the Family Court under s 13 of the FDRA provides clear indication that the document is not confidential to the parties. The Court reached that conclusion even though there may have been a misunderstanding of the legal position about confidentiality on the part of the Appellant. The Court found section 40 of the Care of Children Act 2004 (COCA) to be a further indication that mediated outcomes are not privileged. In essence, section 40 is to the effect that parenting and guardianship agreements cannot be enforced under COCA, but some or all the terms of those agreements may be embodied in court orders.
Singapore Convention At the 51st session of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) on 26 June 2018, the final drafts for a Convention on the Enforcement of Mediation Settlements and corresponding Model Law were approved. A resolution to name the Convention the ‘Singapore Mediation Convention’ (the Convention) was also approved. The Convention has now been published. It will be signed in Singapore on 1 August 2019 and will come into effect six months after at least three states have ratified it. The aim of the Convention is to implement an international regime for the enforcement of mediated settlement agreements - similar to the 1958 New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards (the New York Convention). The purpose of the Convention is to simplify the enforcement processes for mediated settlement agreements relating to international commercial disputes and to encourage the use of mediation as an international dispute resolution process for cross border disputes, with all its well-known cost efficiencies and relational benefits. The Convention carves out consumer, personal, household, family, inheritance and employment disputes from its jurisdiction, and those that have been recorded and are enforceable as an arbitral award and thus governed by the New York Convention. There are various procedural requirements for the underlying settlement agreement to qualify for enforcement under the Convention. There are also grounds for refusing to grant relief listed in the Convention. These include the incapacity of the parties, invalidity of the settlement agreement, serious breach of mediator standards, mediator bias, and public policy.