Once again, both parties must attend the Financial Dispute Resolution (FDR) appointment. The FDR appointment ‘must be treated as a meeting held for the purposes of discussion and negotiation’. In other words, the idea of the FDR appointment is for the parties to use their best endeavours to settle the matter by agreement, with the help of the court. As part of this process, the party that issued the application for ancillary relief must, not less than seven days before the FDR, file with the court details of all offers or proposals made by either party (even without prejudice offers – see glossary), together with the other party’s responses to them.
The FDR appointment is usually conducted quite informally. The district judge hearing the appointment will usually indicate his or her views as to what final order is likely to be appropriate, and can advise the parties that the costs implications make it sensible to examine how the gap between them can be bridged. Note, however, that the court cannot impose a settlement upon the parties at the FDR appointment. Note also that, to ensure that the
parties approach the appointment openly, anything said at the appointment (including any offers disclosed) is not admissible in any subsequent proceedings. In addition, the judge conducting the appointment will play no further part in the proceedings.
If the parties are able to reach a full agreement at the FDR appointment, then a consent court order can be drawn up, signed by the parties and handed in to the court, in much the same way as the consent orders referred to above. If there is not time to draw up the order, then written heads of agreement (i.e. an outline of the agreement) can be signed by the parties and handed to the judge, with a full order filed later.
If no agreement is reached at the FDR appointment, then the court will fix a date for a final, contested hearing and give any other directions that it considers appropriate.