Your marriage is a war zone. A bloody divorce looms. Can a mediator help?
VICKY CARTER might be (half) laughing at the ‘Post-It in-the- shoe’ debacle today, but at the time she was furious. And what mother wouldn’t be?
Vicky’s six- year- old daughter Rosie had returned from a weekend stay with her father, Jason. Relations between Vicky, 42, and her ex — with whom she shares custody — have been strained for years.
‘And this,’ she says, pointedly, ‘is why.’ Because inside one of her daughter’s school shoes was a Post-It note bearing the message: ‘These are sweaty toe-crushers.’
‘It was typical Jason,’ she says. ‘I wouldn’t have minded, but they were Clarks shoes. I’d had her properly measured and everything.’
It was only the latest criticism (as she sees it) of Vicky’s parental skills. ‘He disrespects me constantly,’ she complains. ‘His nit-picking drives me mad.
‘He says Rosie shouldn’t be eating sweets, that her diet, which is perfectly balanced, is all wrong. He went through a phase of sending me links to parenting websites. One was about the proper way to brush teeth. Recently, he sent me a guide to bottom-wiping. Seriously!
‘I can’t deal with him. Most of the stuff seems trivial, in isolation, but I can’t cope with it any more. My solicitor has an entire box file of emails he has sent that are just ridiculous. He has brought me to the end of my tether. At times I think I am actually going mad.’
She giggles through bits of this story; cries through others.
It is anything but funny, however. It is desperately sad. This week, Vicky’s very painful — and, until now, very private — spat with her former partner will go public. Both she and Jason Kennedy have agreed to let the cameras into the mediation sessions which are aimed at finding some resolution to their situation before they go to court to seek a formal custody agreement.
Mr v Mrs: Call The Mediator, is a fly-on-thewall documentary that offers viewers a rare view into other people’s relationships, or the remnants thereof.
Remember the classic quiz show Mr & Mrs, where couples discussed each other’s foibles?
Well, this is not that show. This is about what happens when love turns to hate.
The warring couples involved have accepted that their marriages or partnerships are over, but have reached stalemate over financial or custody issues.
Several of the men have had no access to their children. All seem set on a costly path to the courts — unless the mediators can help.
On paper, the show might sound a bit Jeremy Kyle, but this is a very BBC production.
There are no security guards to stop participants killing each other, just a very gentle, softly- spoken mediator armed with a flip chart that she hopes will help them to find the Holy Grail of bickering divorcees — the elusive ‘middle ground’.
The service is means tested, with Vicky and Jason paying around £120 per session.
‘For all of these couples, the next stage is court and that is what they are trying to avoid,’ says mediator Irene Jackson, who allowed the BBC’s cameras to follow her work for a year.
‘They have agreed to mediation, which is an important first step.’
What a job the mediators have, though. Vicky and Jason won’t even agree to be in the same room.
At Vicky’s insistence (‘He is a bully. He reduces me to a jabbering wreck. Why should I have to sit in the same room as a man who disrespects me?’), they are placed in different rooms and poor Irene has to shuttle between them.
This is not uncommon, apparently. ‘We actually call it “shuttle-mediation”,’ she says.
So why did they agree to air their dirty linen in public?
Several of the couples have agreed to talk to us, and even the process of interviewing them — separately — is an eye-opener.
Jason says he hoped that going public ‘ might help someone watching’, although he admits it has been ‘cringeworthy’. Vicky says she ‘wants everyone to see what it is like, having to live with this’.
Interestingly, the only thing he and Vicky can agree on is why their relationship ended (the other one was a control freak, is the consensus).
When they separated in 2011 after five years together, they agreed to share the care of their daughter Rosie, but this, according to Vicky, has ‘turned into absolute hell’.
By the time they pitch up for media- tion, all communication has to be through Vicky’s new husband, Matt.
‘I couldn’t deal with Jason directly any more,’ says Vicky. ‘Trying to communicate with him is like talking to a brick wall.’
Jason’s account is similar, although he quips that eventually ‘the wall would at least understand’.
‘She cannot take any input from me as a father; zero. Dealing with Victoria is just impossible,’ he says.
Jason is perfectly open about his penchant for offering parental advice to his ex, but also perfectly clear that he thinks his way is right.
‘She has actually asked for help in the past. She struggles with bedtimes and getting to school on time. I make suggestions about things she might want to think about. There are a lot of parenting websites and blogs. They can be helpful.’
He feels Victoria should be thankful: ‘If someone offers you advice, you can take it as a criticism or you can take it in gratitude.’
Post-It notes in shoes though? He seems genuinely baffled as to why anyone might find this annoying. Jason repeatedly tells me that Vicky has said he is a good father. She does not contradict this.
‘Rosie adores him. I have only ever encouraged them to be in touch, and I think mums who don’t do this are very wrong.
‘But he has turned my life into a living hell. He has nearly split up my marriage. I just do not know where to go from here.’
So does mediation work for them? Sadly — but unsurprisingly — no. Once the cameras stopped rolling, without them ever making it into the same room, they went to court, seeking clarification about how many days a week each parent should have Rosie.
Afterwards, they started to communicate again — fleetingly. Now, the lines have again been cut.
What does the future hold? Vicky says she got a glimpse of how things could be when they attended a school function together and Rosie ‘who just wants us to be friends’ saw them sitting together.
‘But then it all started again. He can’t help himself. And I can’t bear it. The awful thing is that I know it is affecting our daughter; she’s been disruptive at school — and it is our fault.’ Yet, when it comes to future hopes, Jason is not just on another page, but on another planet.
His dream solution is for Vicky and Rosie (and Vicky’s new husband Matt, presumably) to move in next door to him.
‘Rosie would love a tunnel where she could come and go as she pleases and she would be safe. I think it would be a much more sensible arrangement. I’d rather she saw me when she wanted to, even if it’s only for an hour every week, rather than all this “it’s not your Saturday” stuff,’ he says.
Each couple comes to this programme with different issues. We meet Peter and Sue, who thought they would retire together, but are instead at loggerheads over the family home.
Sue walked out on Peter, we discover, without warning (and bizarrely, after making a casserole for dinner) and moved straight in with another man — Peter’s former boss.
She is now demanding 50 per cent of their marital assets, which will mean Peter having either to sell up, or take on a £200,000 mortgage.
He is incandescent. Her grown-up sons, who live at home, aren’t delighted either. One refuses to speak to her.
As impossible as this situation seems, there a resolution here.
Without giving away all the programme’s secrets, the couple don’t exactly part as friends, but at least the horrors of the courtroom are averted.
Ditto with Yvonne and Alan, who spent 13 years together but are now arguing over whether Yvonne and their two children can afford to stay in Surrey, where they live.
Her plan is to move to more affordable Somerset but to buy a new house she reckons she will need £205,000, more than two-thirds of what their current house (bought with money Alan had before they married) is worth.
Is she being greedy or pragmatic? To the credit of all involved, they end up compromising.
Alan might be the ‘loser’ financially, but when we say goodbye to them, Yvonne has decided not to move because the children do not want to leave the things they love — their dad included. Somehow it feels like a win all round.
The National Family Mediation service estimates that more than 80 per cent of its clients do reach some sort of agreement.
‘But even if they don’t straight away, just opening the lines of communication
‘He has turned my life into a living hell’ ‘She struggles to get our daughter to school on time’
can be helpful. Quite often couples return,’ says Irene.
That is unlikely to be the case with Mandy Dearling and her former partner Peter Fuller, who also spoke to the Mail this week.
Healthcare worker Mandy, 49, and Peter, 58, a refrigerator technician, share two things — a flat in Wimbledon and a 14-year old-son, Josh.
They split up when Josh was seven, and Peter has seen his son just once since then. Predictably, each of them has different versions of why their relationship eventually failed.
Peter says that after their son’s birth he felt ‘pushed out’.
‘From the moment he was born, she was obsessed. There was only room in her life for Josh, and family. My family didn’t matter. I was just the sperm donor.’
Mandy admits Peter was not her priority, but is still furious that he expected to be.
‘My mother was desperately ill and my father wasn’t coping. I was spending the week with them, taking Josh with me, because Peter never did the day-to-day stuff, and coming back at the weekends, mostly to cook and clean.
‘One Friday night I came home, exhausted, and he said “we need to talk”.
‘He said he was feeling “neglected”. He wanted me to give up my family. I saw red. I packed a case for him and put it out the door. He was not going to hold me to ransom.’ Peter, who has remarried, claims he made repeated attempts for contact with Josh. ‘She found out I was seeing someone else and from then on, I was never going to get near him. She was a woman scorned.’
He says he consulted solicitors and kept phoning: ‘She’d say Josh wasn’t there.’
Why didn’t he seek access through the courts? ‘I couldn’t afford it. When this happens the women have you. And all the time she was turning him against me.’
Mandy remembers things differently: ‘I never refused to let him see Josh; I did say he couldn’t do it on his terms, whenever it suited him. I wanted a proper agreement in place and Peter wouldn’t have it.’
This pair can’t even agree on why they are in mediation now. Peter says it is ‘because I want to see my son’. Mandy says it is because of a dispute over their flat.
Although she took over mortgage payments for the property immediately (‘he hasn’t paid a penny since he left’), Peter’s name is still on the deeds. She wants him to either sign the flat over to her, or place his share in trust for Josh.
Peter says he will give up his share if he is allowed to see Josh: ‘I don’t give a toss about the flat but if I lose it I have lost every link with my son, and I’ll not have that.’
Their pain is palpable. Mandy weeps as she talks about how the mediation process was a ‘waste of time’ and it now seems they are heading to court after all.
To her, the future seems out of reach. ‘He is my past. I want him, this, all left in the past, but it’s stuck to my back and it’s not fair’.
It is desperately sad for all the couples for whom this process has not worked, and frustrating to watch them go round in circles, often over things that seem entirely solvable to the outsider.
It is sadder still, though, for the children. I ask Josh’s parents about the possibility of him watching the show, given he is 14.
His mum says: ‘No, he won’t.’ His dad says: ‘I hope he will.’
Mercifully, Rosie, at six, is too young to properly understand. Long may her innocence last. Mr V Mrs is on BBC2 at 9pm on Tuesday June 21.
‘If I lose the flat, all links with my son will be gone’