If you have quietly typed your situation into a chatbot at eleven o’clock at night, you are in far more company than you might think.
New research published on 17 September by the legal reform charity Justice found that one in six people involved in a legal dispute has now used an AI chatbot for help with it. Among 18 to 24 year olds that figure rises to 26 per cent. Family matters sat alongside housing, employment and debt as one of the most common subjects people brought to them.
What struck us most about the findings was not the number. It was what people were actually asking for. They were not, in the main, looking for formal legal advice. They were asking AI to explain a phrase they had seen on a court form, to help them word a message to their ex without it escalating, to rehearse a conversation they were dreading, or simply to make sense of a situation at an hour when there was nobody else to ask. Justice described chatbots as helping people understand unfamiliar language, navigate emotionally difficult situations, and communicate more effectively.
That is a very human impulse, and we would rather meet it with honesty than a warning. So here is our view, as mediators who see the consequences of good and bad early decisions every week.
Where a chatbot genuinely helps
There are things AI does well, and it is worth naming them.
- Translating the jargon. Family law is full of terms that mean very little until somebody unpicks them. Conditional order, financial remedy, MIAM, clean break, pension sharing order. Having something patient that will explain the same term three times without making you feel foolish has real value.
- Taking the heat out of a message. One of the most common things we see derail a separation is a text sent in the wrong five minutes. If asking a chatbot to help you rewrite something calmer stops that message going out as it was first typed, it has done you a genuine service.
- Rehearsing the difficult bit. Practising how you might raise childcare costs, or how you will respond if a conversation goes somewhere you find painful, is a reasonable thing to do. It is not so different from thinking it through with a friend.
- Making you feel less alone at 2am. We will not be sniffy about this one. Separation is lonely, and the hours when it feels worst are rarely the hours when anyone is available.
Where it quietly falls short
The difficulty is that a chatbot is confident in exactly the places where it should not be.
- It does not know your finances. It has not seen your pension statements, your mortgage offer, or the equity in the house. General information about how assets are usually divided is not the same as knowing what is fair in your circumstances, and the gap between those two things is where people lose money. Pensions are the clearest example: they are frequently the second largest asset in a marriage and they are still routinely overlooked.
- It only knows your side. Everything it tells you is built on what you have told it. It cannot check whether the figure your ex has given you is accurate, and it has no way of noticing what has been left out.
- Nothing it produces is binding. This is the one that matters most. You can reach a beautifully reasoned position with a chatbot at midnight and it carries no weight at all. An agreement only becomes durable when both of you have arrived at it together, with full financial disclosure on the table, and it has been written up properly.
- It agrees with you. Gently, and by design. It is not going to tell you that the thing you are certain about is the thing most likely to cause you trouble. A good mediator will, kindly, and that is much of the value.
What the research is really telling us
There is a harder point underneath the headline figure, and Justice made it clearly. People are turning to chatbots because affordable help is not reaching them early enough. The charity also warned that access to these tools is uneven, with women, older adults and people out of work less likely to be using them, which means the gap does not close evenly either.
That matches what we see. By the time many people come to us, they have been carrying a decision alone for months, often working from something half understood. Almost none of it was avoidable. It simply needed an early, affordable conversation with somebody who could see the whole picture.
Where mediation fits alongside it
We are not asking anyone to close the tab. Use AI for what it is good at, then bring what you have worked out to a process that can actually do something with it.
Family mediation gives you the parts a chatbot structurally cannot: both of you in the same process, full and honest financial disclosure, a neutral third person who is not on either side, and an outcome that can be turned into something binding. It is also considerably less expensive than the alternative. Mediation costs around £2,200 on average, against roughly £14,561 for a solicitor led divorce, and you can see exactly what we charge on our prices page.
If cost is the thing holding you back, the Family Mediation Voucher Scheme may cover up to £500 of it where your case involves arrangements for children. More than 15,000 families have used it since it began, and it is one of the best kept secrets in family law.
A sensible way to use both
If you are going to use AI while you separate, our suggestions are simple. Treat it as a way of understanding things, never as a source of advice about your own case. Be careful what personal and financial detail you put into it. Check anything specific against a real source, whether that is a mediator, a solicitor or the official guidance. And when it tells you what you were hoping to hear, be a little more sceptical, not less.
Talk it through with someone who can see the whole picture
If you have been piecing things together on your own, we would be glad to help you make sense of it properly. Get in touch with EB & Co Mediation to arrange an initial appointment in Saffron Walden or online, and take the first step towards an arrangement that will actually hold.
0 Comments