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Just because a court proceeding has started, it doesn’t mean you will be going to court. The majority of cases settle prior to trial; in fact, the number of civil court proceedings in the Supreme Court of British Columbia that are resolved by trial is less than 5%! There are a few reasons why this is the case. First, trials are time-consuming and expensive. Second, you can never be absolutely sure what the result is going to be. You're always rolling the dice when you go to trial. Third, you can usually find a way to settle a dispute sooner than the first available trial date.
It also helps that the rules of court — both the Provincial Court Family Rules and the Supreme Court Family Rules — are written to promote settlement and finds find ways of pushing litigants toward the offramps that lead away from trial. (It says something, I think, that the rules of the province's two trial courts are designed to discourage trials.) This section talks about these offramps, the rules that are intended to encourage people to propose settlement options, the rules that provide judges to help people negotiate settlements, and the rules that penalize people for going to trial without fully thinking things through.
===Introduction to rules promoting settlement===