Law Would Place Divorce Focus on Kids
Memphis Business Journal - by Christie Watts Kelly
Tennessee ranks fourth in the nation for its divorce rate, and third for the percentage of children living in single-parent homes, according to a Feb. 1, 1999, report by the Administrative Office of the Courts. In addition, the number of divorce cases filed for FY 1996-97 amounted to 29% of all civil cases filed in chancery or circuit court.
A pilot project, established in six Tennessee judicial districts over the past 18 months, aims to lessen the detrimental effects of divorce on Tennessee children, as well as lighten the divorce-related caseload of the courts. Known as the Parenting Plan Pilot Project because of its focus on parent education and a detailed parenting plan for divorcing parents, the bill is now up for consideration to be adopted statewide in the upcoming 1999 legislative assembly, sponsored by Bob Patton (R-Johnson City) in the House and Thelma Harper (D-Nashville) in the Senate, and recommended for consideration by House representative Carol Chumney (D-Memphis), chair of the House Children and Family Affairs Committee.
It will help bring Tennessee's family law code into the 21st century, according to the project's brainchild, Don R. Ash, circuit court judge in the 16th judicial district in middle Tennessee.
Ash conceived the project when, as part of his master's degree in Judicial Studies at the University of Nevada, he drafted a rewrite of Tennessee's family law statutes based on the Washington state model.
"Research students from Vanderbilt University helped me find what we perceived as the best state custody law," says Ash. "I re-wrote the Washington law to make it applicable to Tennessee."
According to Ash, the pilot program contains four components - parent education, a detailed parenting plan, turning to mediation if unable to agree on a parenting plan during the divorce, and attempting to solve post-divorce matters through mediation before going to court.
Teach the Parents Well
Parent education is at the core of the new law. Divorcing parents are required to attend a minimum four-hour parenting seminar within thirty days of filing a divorce petition.
"It shows parents the impact that divorce has on their children, shows how the judicial process works, describes mediation as an alternative to litigation, and describes problems they can anticipate from being a divorced parent," says Ash.
Stephen F. Libby, the attorney who coordinates the Parenting Plan Pilot Project in Shelby County, says the educational aspect has been met with positive reviews from parents, although the project as a whole wasn't initially greeted with open arms in the legal community.
"There was a perception that the parenting plan added another layer of bureaucracy," says attorney R. Miles Mason.
Memphis attorneys also attribute the plan's lukewarm reception to confusion over its implementation. Although some Tennessee judicial districts are running the pilot in their entire district, others, including the Shelby County area, have only one court running the program. Currently, of the 12 civil courts in this district, only Karen Williams, circuit court judge, Division 3, is implementing the program.
Attorney Amy Amundsen says because a court is chosen randomly for any given case, clients may not know right away if they even fall under the program.
"It's not across the board, it's not in all courts," she says. Some clients feel they have to do extra things or have the perception they are spending more money, says Amundsen.
"You might have clients saying, 'Why is it that I have to go to this parenting class and sit down for mediation with my husband when my next-door neighbor going through a divorce does not?' "
But Jocelyn Wurzburg, attorney and mediator, says the perception of spending more time and money on the front end isn't supported by initial results from the pilot program.
"A study by the Tennessee Bar Association shows that the average billable time in divorce was 35 hours prior to the project implementation," Wurzburg says. "Under the project, the average of similar cases using mediation is 12.7 hours and the average of those cases able to come to terms without mediation is only 10.5 hours."
Hashing out the Details
In addition to the parent education, developing a detailed parenting plan based on a 16-page template provided by the state, is an essential part of the new process. Here, the law removes some of the abrasive and adversarial tone of yesteryear.
"It does away with the terms custody and visitation and replaces them with words such as parenting responsibilities," says Ash.
Wurzburg feels this is an important improvement.
"Custody is for prisoners and visitation is for funeral homes. These (old words) spoke of your children as if they were your property," she says.
Latest News |
