10.3 Family Counseling

The concept: structured professional assistance — attached to the court — helping the family resolve the dispute, or the relationship, or both; counseling as justice's collaborator, not merely a docket-clearance step. The forms in the Nepali system: The mandatory reconciliation stage (the conciliation-first mandate): in every matrimonial cause, the court must attempt reconciliation before contest (Unit 4, § 4.3.2) — the judge-led mediation; the recorded compromise disposing of the case on its terms; Court-annexed mediation — the trained mediators of the court-connected mediation services; the settlement's decree-force; The Judicial Committees' mediation — the local level's community-proximate facilitation; Professional counseling services — the social-work and psychological support (the child-in- custody-case interviews; the violence cases' trauma support) — the interdisciplinary aspiration, thinly resourced in practice. The functions counseling serves: (i) reconciliation-and-preservation where the marriage can be saved (the restrictionist valve); (ii) civilized dissolution where it cannot — the consensual- divorce settlement, the agreed custody plan (Unit 4's dignity route); (iii) the child's interests voiced in the settlement; (iv) reduced re-litigation (the settlement's durability vs. the imposed decree's appeal). The critiques: the reconciliation stage's abuse (forced "compromise" of the vulnerable spouse — the wife pressured to withdraw; the counseling-as-delay); the non-professional counseling corps; the gender-capacity questions at the local committees.