About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

51 Fam. Ct. Rev. 56 (2013)
Parenting Coordination: Coming of Age

handle is hein.journals/fmlcr51 and id is 56 raw text is: PARENTING COORDINATION: COMING OF AGE? Matthew J. Sullivan The infusion of social science research into the family courts, beginning in the 1980s, together with increases in the divorce rate and changes in work and parenting patterns in society, contributed to shifts in social and legal policies favoring presumptions of shared custody when parents separate and divorce (Kelly, in press). This shift also contributed to a change in focus and increased the workload of the family courts in North America. Previously, if child custody was in dispute, the court's role was to adjudicate physical and legal custody, which was then awarded to one parent, in most cases, the mother. Shared custody after separation and divorce generally only occurred in situations where co-parents agreed to that arrangement and were able to work together collaboratively to raise their children in a mom's house, dad's house (Ricci, 1997) structure. Thus, the problems of managing higher-conflict shared-parenting families were not nearly as prevalent as they are today because there were many fewer high-conflict parents sharing custody. The unintended consequence of an otherwise laudable shift in social policy that supported shared parental involvement was that the courts became the forum for these co-parents to dispute the day-to-day issues that repeatedly arose as they implemented their shared legal and physical custody orders. These family court frequent filers, with their repeated court appearances, punctuated the poor fit between the legal-adversarial system and high-conflict co-parents. Frequent filer litigants are generally not competent co-parents, and the litigation training that these co-parents received during their repeated exposure to the legal-adversarial system compounded their co-parenting dysfunction to the detriment of their children. Similarly, already resource-strapped court systems were devoting disproportionate court resources to adjudicating holiday schedules, telephone access to children in the other parent's home, and other day-to-day details of parenting plan implementation. Shared custody requires functional co-parenting. When children transition between parents' house- holds, regardless of the time-share percentage assigned each parent, adequate child-focused informa- tion exchange and child-focused decision making are essential. For high-conflict co-parents, litigation was the default option to resolve day-to-day co-parenting problems because the same high-conflict dynamics that impaired their co-parenting also compromised parents' ability to utilize existing alternative dispute resolution (ADR) processes-psycho-education, counseling, and mediation-to resolve their disputes. In the early 1980s, judicial officers, feeling frustrated and ill equipped to address high-conflict co-parents' chronic inability to implement their parenting plans, turned to experienced family law professionals in their communities to take these cases off their docket. Interdisciplinary family court professional groups in a few jurisdictions independently answered the pleas of help from the courts. From this collaboration, a novel grassroots, need-based, court-sanctioned hybrid legal-psychological role emerged. The variety of labels for this role-special master, wise person, family court advisor, mediator- arbitrator, parenting plan coordinator-developed in a variety of manifestations in a handful of progressive jurisdictions across the United States and Canada.' Over the next decade, these informal court appointments of experienced mental health and legal professionals were increasingly structured and institutionalized. Two jurisdictions in northern California were pioneering in developing this grassroots role. Marin County, led by Joan Kelly, and an interdisciplinary group in Santa Clara County (of which I was a Correspondence: sullydoc@aol.com FAMILY COURT REVIEW, Vol. 51 No. 1, January 2013 56-62 c 2013 Association of Family and Conciliation Courts doi: 10.1111/fcre.12008

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most