In family law practice we are dealing increasingly with international aspects of broken relationships. Once children are involved, severe questions of habitual residence occur when one of the parties decides to return to his or her land of origin.Over the past years the 1980 Hague Abduction Convention has been criticised in the Netherlands, mostly because of the duration of such proceedings.In the Netherlands a change in legislation is now almost a fact, introducing a set of measures one of which is offering parents a Cross Border Mediation.This summer, The Hague Conference will come off with a ‘Guide of good practice’, to introduce Cross Border Mediation in international child abduction cases. The Netherlands stand out in having a Cross Borer Mediation system already integrated into their legal practice, soon to be legal system. So far the results have been evaluated positively in such a way that Cross Border Mediation should be considered as a useful tool in preventing abduction cases as well as in regular relocation cases.

Research shows that many companies are unfamiliar with Effective Dispute Resolution (EDR) methods. Increasingly however managers wish to effectively solve disputes. This has resulted in the development of a simple tool for managers. Our conflict resolution chart is based on a literature study of factors proven to play a role in the choice for a particular dispute resolution method. The conflict resolution chart was refined based on the answers of ten managers to a questionnaire about the developed tool. The manager can use the chart as a first indicator of what course of actions with regard to the conflict he has to take.

In companies people work together intensively, especially in family run companies. In such a situation, the interests (income, capital and employment) can be enormous when parties fail to live up to each others expectations.How to deal with situations when parties are in a dead-lock and the continuity of the business is at stake? Depending on the legal form of the company and the type of conflict, there are different legal actions to settle a (legal) conflict. However, there are so many rules and different procedures for each type of legal form, that it may dazzle the reader. Moreover, these procedures may take a long time, while the parties in a family dead-lock desire an expert/arbiter/mediator proceeding expeditiously.In a sense a marriage is also a family run company. The following experiences from the area of family law are described: the processes of a divorce, the break-up announcement (the opposite of the marriage proposal), the experiment in court with the so-called regierechter in family cases, the prenuptial agreement and the plan for parenthood after a divorce. Our conclusion is that in case of a dead-lock, parties need to have a good set of rules on the settlement of disputes, to find a qualified expert/arbiter/mediator having knowledge and experience in financial/tax/pension/legal matters and familiar with dealing with emotions in a deadlock.

In Dutch case law mediation has become a common phenomenon. Therefore, recent cases focussed on fundamental aspects of mediation are discussed.

In this contribution some aspects of the pluralistic society and its impact on mediation are discussed. For that purpose, first the focus is in on what is generally understood by ‘culture’ and ‘conflict’, followed by a description of communication problems that might arise in (mediation)situations with a particular cultural dimension. Next the question is posed to what extent a mediator should be susceptible for cultural dimensions in conflicts to perform his job well. And if he is prepared to do so, what pitfalls and challenges he should be prepared for?