Divorce and separation create a situation where the parties
often have a continuing relationship with each other through the children
or through spousal support. Particularly where children are involved, the
adversarial system seems to create additional conflict. The present adversarial
system asks parents to determine who is a better or worse parent when
families rather need to learn cooperative parenting skills for raising children
in two separate homes. In addition, the child support system is broken resulting
in billions of dollars of uncollected support and a large number of
cooperative parents finding the guidelines not a very useful tool when more and
more parents follow an equivalent or nearly equivalent schedule of exchanges
. The more the legislatures and courts try to address those 5-7% of cases
that represent the toxic, high conflict personality types, the harder it is for
the general public to obtain a reasonable divorce process without excessive
costs, whether their case is simple or complex. In all instances, there is the
real danger that they start out wanting to be cooperative and then find that they
must view the other spouse as their adversary.
A small group of
divorce professionals have been meeting for the past 18 months to try to
determine new ways to move divorce into an arena where cooperation is stressed,
where evaluations and investigations are limited and where the excesses of the
adversarial system can be avoided. Several people who have been a part of
that group will speak on progress that has been made.
Presenters:
Marilyn McKnight, Erickson Mediation Institute
Andy
Dawkins, Attorney at Law
Steve Erickson,
Mediator
CLE Credits:
1.0
Standard CLE credits approved | Event Code: 186961
Details:
Date:
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Time: 12:00 - 1:30 p.m.
Location:
MSBA
600 Nicollet Mall, Suite 380
Minneapolis, MN
55402
A brief section business meeting will
be held at Noon with the CLE presentation beginning at approximately 12:15
p.m.
Cost:
ADR
Section Members: $0.00
MSBA Members
but not Section Members: $10.00
Join the Section and Attend
at No Additional Cost: $37.00 (must call Jennifer Carter to use this
option)
Non-MSBA Members: $15.00
Law Students: Free
Remote
Participation:
Teleconferencing is available for this event. Please select
this option when registering. Instructions will be emailed to you on
January 13.