The Family Resolutions Specialty Court: A Community-Based Problem-Solving Court For Families in Conflict in Hampshire County
by Hon. Linda S. Fidnick
Voice of the Judiciary
Traditional adversarial litigation can be ineffective in meeting the needs of families who are experiencing divorce or separation. Litigation may be an ultimately productive method for resolving conflicts between strangers — someone wins, someone loses, and the parties never see one another again. How profoundly different family cases with children are! Parents usually come to court at a complicated and painful time. Anger, mistrust, fear, grief — powerful emotions grip them. Yet, despite the demise of their personal relationship, parents must (and should) continue as parents. The more effectively they can work together, the easier it is for their children. Typically parents will need to continue to address one of the many unanticipated, yet inevitable, changes to their lives or the lives of their children after the case has concluded. Unfortunately, the traditional court process gives them no tools to resolve their disputes on their own.
The Hampshire Division of the Probate and Family Court is committed to finding better ways to help families through the court process. Our initiatives include a parent education program for divorcing parents that was expanded to include “For the Children” for never-married parents; “Only One Childhood,” an educational program for mid-conflict parents; a mediation program; and a program that provides attorneys for children. These programs have inestimably benefited the many families of Hampshire County. In this article I discuss a recent program developed by the Hampshire Probate and Family Court that has shown much promise: the Family Resolutions Specialty Court.
Starting in 2014, a group of Hampshire County-based professionals, including among others, Mike Carey, the Register of Probate, Pam Eldridge, Chief Probation Officer, Noelle Stern, Judicial Case Manager, Hon. Gail Perlman, former First Justice, Kathy Townsend, mediator, and Marsha Kline Pruett, Professor at the Smith College School for Social Work, began to meet and talk about ways to provide families with an alternative to the traditional court process within the court itself. The Family Resolutions Specialty Court (“FRSC”) is the result. Loosely based on a process that was developed in Australia’s family court, the FRSC has the following goals: to reduce conflict in cases involving children, to keep court proceedings child-focused, to give parents tools via mediation and the assistance of a clinically trained child specialist to address the problems facing their own family, and finally, to increase all parties’ satisfaction with the court process. We hoped that the FRSC would be more humane and more efficient than traditional family litigation, and ultimately give parents the ability to communicate well enough to obviate the need for repeated returns to court. We also created an FRSC Advisory Board comprised of a wide variety of professionals in the community. FRSC is available in most cases involving children. It has been used in initial divorces, complaints for modification, and complaints for contempt, whether the parents have counsel or are self-represented.
FRSC serves traditional and non-traditional families of all socio-economic backgrounds with children of all ages. FRSC is voluntary. Initially, both parents must opt in to the program. Either parent may opt out at any time. If a parent opts out, the case returns to the traditional court process and a different judge is assigned. Once the parties opt in, a probation officer completes an intake and screening. This initial assessment includes meeting with the parties and counsel to explain how FRSC works. If a significant history of domestic violence exists or one or both parents do not have the capacity to participate meaningfully, the family will be screened out. Once the family is screened in, its members are assigned a support team consisting of the family consultant (a mental health professional who remains involved with the case until resolution), an attorney for the children, a probation officer, and a mediator.
The family consultant conducts a guided interview to assess the family’s strengths and challenges and discusses various parenting arrangements. What is unique about this step is that the first in-depth conversation about the parenting plan comes to the parents from a mental health and developmental perspective, rather than a legal one. The parents are then referred to mediation. During this confidential process, issues requiring resolution are identified and parents are provided with tools to resolve future conflicts informally.
Next, a court conference is held. The parents, their counsel, the children’s attorney, the family consultant, the probation officer, and I attend. We sit at a table with the parents near me and facing each other. The parents bring photographs of the children. I ask each parent what his or her hope is for the outcome for themselves, for the children, and, importantly, for the other parent. Although parents are encouraged to speak directly to me, rather than by representations of counsel, attorneys are critical to the FRSC. Lawyers help participants understand their rights and obligations, identify relevant issues, ensure complete disclosures, and counsel clients to participate in a meaningful way. We use a problem-solving approach. The rules of evidence are suspended. Information is shared freely. The process is open and transparent. If a participant raises a concern that information is being withheld or misrepresented, he or she can request that the case be transferred back to the traditional court process.
At the court conference, we identify the resolved and contested issues, the information needed to determine the outcome of the contested issues, and outline the next steps. As a community-based court, we discuss whether referrals to parent education, substance abuse treatment, family counseling, or early childhood intervention may be helpful to the family. If so, the probation officer is key in referring members of the family to appropriate community agencies. The FRSC team members work with the family between conferences. The parents may choose to meet with the mediator, the family consultant, the probation officer, or attorney for the child in any combination and as often as needed. Court conferences are scheduled at appropriate intervals until all issues are resolved. The goal is resolution by agreement. However, if necessary, I will make a decision, either on a temporary basis or as a final judgment, if the parents are unable to agree.
Because of the attention to the case by all professionals involved from the very beginning, even the most complex case concluded in seven months, half of the time standard in the traditional track. This has been one of the unexpected, but greatly appreciated by the litigants, benefits of participating in FRSC.
The following are some comments of parents from their exit surveys:
“I now have much more contact with my children than when we began. . . . We have been able to agree on many issues that we did not agree on before.”
“FRSC helped ensure my child was enrolled in a high-quality pre- [kindergarten] program which has transformed our entire family’s quality of life and gave our child a strong foundation at a time when he was most vulnerable to instability.”
“This process was very beneficial to myself as a parent and was minimally stressful. . . . It has helped me to learn to never speak poorly of her dad in front of her . . . We fight almost never now and seem to be more understanding towards each other. . . . I would STRONGLY recommend this process to anyone getting divorced who have children. I hope this becomes the standard.”
“I have learned a tremendous amount through the programs associated with FRSC both as a parent and individual. . . . [FRSC] has helped to make me the best father I can possibly be. . . . We still have a long way to go but I am hopeful that in eliminating much of the negativity that typically surrounds divorce, it will allow us to become great co-parents. Truly life changing. I hope this continues and that all divorces with children can be done in this manner.”
Thus far, FRSC has succeeded in every aspect of its purpose. Children have a voice from the very beginning, which focuses their parents on the primacy of continuing to raise healthy children despite the marital or relationship dissolution. For those separating and divorcing parents who choose the process, they were able to come to closure in half the time (or less) than allotted for cases under our time standards. The families who have benefited from FRSC have been from all walks of life in our county: people from all manner of socio-economic, religious, health status, gender-identified, and educational backgrounds have benefited from it. Our hope is that the FRSC model will be the default process for all families experiencing divorce and separation throughout the Commonwealth.
Judge Fidnick is the First Justice of the Hampshire Probate and Family Court.
