Research of actual situation of consumer mediation and proposals for the reform of consumer bankruptcy legislation

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Our research intends to make clear the actual situation of consumer mediation to work out a plan of repayment. We investigated procedural documents of consumer mediations in Tokyo and Osaka Summary Courts. However, the methods of conserving the documents are so different in these two courts that our analysis focuses on the Osaka data and that Tokyo data are supplementarily used.Male debtors of this procedure are from thirty years old to fifty years, but the age of female debtors concentrates on twenty or thirty years. This data show the necessity of common application for married couples. When the mediation successes, the procedure ends by one or two days in court ; when the mediation ends by the decision of the court based on Art.17 of Civil Mediation Act, it needs three or more days. However, we expect that the debtor will prefer the civil rehabilitation procedure for the cases that are hard to negotiate after April 2001. The period from the first borrowing to the application for mediation is longer for independent tradesmen than for office workers ; this phenomenon results from the amount of borrowing and from the necessity for tradesmen not to damage their trust. We must consider some measures to make these tradesmen to apply civil rehabilitation at a more early stage. Concerning the ways of conclusion of procedure, we can recognize the difference by creditors. Banks or credit card corporations are inclined to accept the mediation, but consumer loan firms does not accept it, so the court is requested to make decisions of Art.17. Finally, by the plan of repayment, nearly 10,000 yen is paid a month for 300,000 or 400,000 yens of every creditor : the average period of mediation plan continues three or four years.