2025 Mediation Update:

As we enter 2026, the mediation field is experiencing one of its most coordinated evolutions in decades. North Carolina’s rule revisions, the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC) 2025 Standards, and New York’s ongoing implementation of presumptive ADR collectively mark a tectonic shift in how mediation is understood, delivered, and regulated in the United States.

The overarching message is clear: mediation is no longer a casual alternative to litigation. It is becoming a highly structured and professionally regulated process, one that places new responsibilities on mediators and introduces new safeguards for parties.

In North Carolina, the Supreme Court amended the rule sets for superior‑court civil mediation, family financial settlement, and clerk‑referred mediations effective January 6, 2025, with implementing orders adopted in December 2024. The key operational change is the creation of two different mediator designation forms, i.e., party‑selected mediators and one court‑appointed mediators across the programs, plus a revised AOC‑CV‑836 substitution form explicitly tied to Rule 7(c) so parties can more easily replace a mediator by consent.​

On the document execution side, the rules delete requirements that attorneys sign mediated settlement agreements, both in superior court civil and family financial cases, leaving signatures to the parties (or authorized designees) and anticipating updated AOC‑DRC‑15 and AOC‑DRC‑16 forms. A new clarification allows a designee to sign the agreement only if the party did not attend the mediation in person and provided written verification of the designee’s authority, aligning with NC Dispute Resolution Commission Advisory Opinion 42.​

Confidentiality is also refined: Standard 3(d)(2) now lets a mediator testify, submit an affidavit, or tender an agreement if required not only by statute but also by a mediation rule issued by a state or federal agency, making explicit that agency‑promulgated mediation rules can support compelled disclosures. Parallel ethics work by the North Carolina State Bar underscores that mediators may not participate in settlements that restrict parties from reporting lawyer misconduct, reinforcing the boundary between mediation confidentiality and professional discipline reporting.

For mediators and counsel, the form changes should reduce administrative friction and make mediator selection and substitution more transparent, while forcing practitioners to keep their form libraries current and train staff accordingly. Removing attorney signature requirements shifts responsibility squarely onto parties, which can streamline closings but also requires mediators to be more vigilant that unrepresented or vulnerable parties truly understand what they are signing.​

The confidentiality exception, paired with ethics limits on “gag” clauses about bar complaints, signals that mediation privacy is strong but not absolute, especially where regulatory regimes or professional conduct concerns are implicated. Over time, this may encourage clearer disclosure language in agreements to mediate and more nuanced mediator explanations at the outset about when confidentiality can be overridden.

The 2025 AFCC Model Standards, developed by ABA and others, reorganize the standards into a linear sequence starting with self‑determination, then informed decision‑making, then initial education of the parties. The revision explicitly distinguishes informed decision‑making (understanding options, risks, and consequences) from self‑determination (parties’ right to decide outcomes), clarifying that mediators must support comprehension without sliding into advice or advocacy.

The new standards devote substantial attention to barriers to participation. They include, domestic abuse, coercive control, substance use, mental health issues, language and cultural factors, disability, technology access. The standards instruct mediators to focus on specific behaviors and safety indicators rather than labels when screening and designing process adaptations. They also add a more detailed termination standard listing expanded grounds to end mediation where safety, capacity, voluntariness, or fairness are compromised, or where continued mediation would be inappropriate for the family.​

Technology and online dispute resolution receive sustained treatment for the first time, with guidance on platform choice, privacy, managing remote participation, and ensuring that online formats do not exacerbate power imbalances. The standards strengthen expectations around training and competence—including ongoing education, supervision/mentoring, and specialized training for issues like domestic abuse and child maltreatment—and expand discussion of including the child’s voice, from child‑inclusive meetings with a child consultant to child‑informed approaches that bring children’s needs into the room without direct participation.​

These standards raise the bar for what counts as “competent” family mediation and will likely influence court programs, rosters, and private‑practice policies wherever AFCC and ABA standards are used as benchmarks. Mediators can expect more pressure to document their screening protocols, adapt processes (e.g., shuttle, separate sessions, support persons) when there are safety or capacity concerns, and to terminate cases that cannot be made reasonably safe or fair.​

The focus on informed decision making and party education encourages more structured orientation sessions, clearer explanations of legal context and options (without advice), and more systematic use of outside specialists (legal counsel, child specialists, financial experts) to ensure parties’ choices are genuinely informed. The technology and child‑voice guidance will likely normalize hybrid and online practice while making it harder to justify ad‑hoc, unstructured approaches to involving children, pushing programs toward formal child‑inclusive or child‑informed models with explicit safeguards.​

New York’s “presumptive ADR” initiative means that when a broad range of civil cases (personal injury, matrimonial, estates, many commercial disputes,) are filed, they are automatically referred to mediation or another ADR process early in the case, typically before extensive discovery and motion practice. Implementation details are set at the local level, with administrative judges and ADR coordinators determining when in the case life cycle the referral happens, but statewide policy expects referral “at the outset” and in many programs this is incorporated into preliminary conference orders.​

The Unified Court System is promulgating uniform rules and opt‑out pathways, so parties can avoid presumptive ADR only for good cause (for example, non‑justiciable issues, urgent injunctive needs, or strong power‑imbalance concerns). To support capacity, courts rely on a mix of volunteer mediators, court‑employed neutrals, judicial hearing officers, trained non‑judicial staff, and community dispute resolution centers, with ongoing data collection to monitor settlement rates, time to disposition, and user satisfaction.​

For civil litigators, mediation is no longer an optional, late‑stage tactic but a presumptive early milestone requiring prepared case assessments, realistic settlement ranges, and early client counseling about negotiation strategy and risk. As more cases pass through mediation, mediator demand will grow, likely expanding training and roster opportunities and pushing quality‑control efforts around mediator screening, diversity, and specialization.​

Because opt‑out is limited and referral is early, there is a strong nudge toward treating mediation as part of mainstream case management rather than an “alternative,” which can change firm economics (earlier fee realization, fewer “roll‑the‑dice” trials) and may encourage more collaborative, problem‑solving styles among litigators. Over time, data‑driven evaluation could feed back into refinements—such as triaging case types to different ADR tracks and experimenting with mandatory pre‑filing mediation in some domains—which would further entrench mediation in New York’s civil‑justice infrastructure.​

Taken together, these developments illustrate three broad trends: institutionalization (courts routinely embedding mediation into procedure), professionalization (more detailed ethics and competence standards), and safety/child‑focus (especially in family matters). Court programs like North Carolina’s and New York’s shape the “when” and “how” of referral, while AFCC’s standards shape the “how well” by defining what good practice must look like in complex family cases.​​

Mediators who adapt by investing in training around domestic abuse, child‑inclusive practice, technology, and cultural competence and by aligning documentation and processes with new rules—are likely to see increased demand and clearer professional identity. At the system level, parties will encounter mediation earlier and more often, with stronger safeguards for informed, voluntary, and child‑sensitive outcomes, but also with more scrutiny of mediator conduct and more formalized accountability when standards are not met.​