January 26, 2008

Family Court Project takes different road to resolutions

By Deb Kelly

TERRE HAUTE — Some of the most contentious and time-consuming court proceedings in Vigo County are not high-profile criminal cases, but rather, the hundreds of custody, divorce and paternity battles that rage off the radar each year.

As the overwhelmed courts struggle to find time for family legal issues, a little-known resource is working hard to clear the court caseload and make the process less painful for the families involved.

The Family Court Project of Vigo County, which began in 2004 as part of a pilot program of the Indiana State Supreme Court, helps the courts identify families that can benefit from a more informal method of resolving disputes — namely, mediation.

Mediation is a method of nonbinding dispute resolution involving a neutral third party who tries to help the disputing parties reach a mutually agreeable solution.

The neutral third party, the mediator, sits down with the family members – in a custody dispute, usually the two parents – and helps define the issues, needs and desires of each party. Sometimes attorneys are involved, but often the parties do not have representation.

Whatever agreement is reached has to be agreeable to both parties. The mediator is not a judge and cannot make a binding ruling, but if both parties in a mediation work through the process and compromise, the outcome is positive, according to family law mediator John Roach. Roach, who also serves as Terre Haute City Court judge, has been mediating family and civil cases since 2006.

Roach, during a recent interview, said family law mediation is useful in situations where the parties have to continue to deal with one another because of child custody, support and visitation issues.

“The mediation … if it’s done correctly, forms a basis for parties to be able to communicate in their further dealings with one another,” he said. “They have to be able to talk to one another, and if they participate fully in the mediation, it can provide a good basis for them to be able to communicate in disputes down the road.”

Magistrate R. Paulette Stagg, who oversees the juvenile court in Vigo County, is the judicial officer for the family court project.

Stagg initially wrote the grant to obtain funding for the project. She said she decided to pursue the grant because, “I was having constant problems in paternity cases with returning – usually visitation – arguments, but also our custody cases.”

Because there were so many returning cases, many filed by people without attorneys, the delays were significant, Stagg said.

“The delay between the date something is filed and the court date is usually three to four months,” she said. “That is clearly not good for the children or the couple, and I could not give them very much time in the court, just a half an hour.”

With the family court project, Stagg reviews all the petitions submitted by parties without attorneys, and families who have continual visitation or custody issues often will be referred to family court.

An outside administrator, employed by the not-for-profit organization Friends of Families, then reviews the case, contacts the parties, and determines whether they are eligible for mediation.

Stagg said the entire process takes about a month.

“It goes much faster,” she said. “It saves the court time, and is just better for everyone, certainly for the children, because we don’t have continuing conflict hopefully and we get a case resolved.”

Parties can meet with the mediator for up to five hours at $100 per hour, which is paid out of family court funds, Stagg said.

Funding for the program comes through the Indiana General Assembly; Vigo County’s current budget from the state is about $9,000, including a $2,500 grant the court received in December. The budget for 2007 was $13,800, Stagg said.

The bulk of the family court funding is distributed each year to new pilot counties as seed grants for a two-year period. All the family court counties in the state have received transition grants in the years after their seed grants to help them transition to permanent local resources. From the inception of the Family Court Project through 2007, $1.6 million has been distributed directly to family court counties, according to the state family court Web site at www.in.gov/judiciary/family-court/.

The intention is that pilot counties would transition within a reasonable time from seed funding to local funding. Family Court counties are directed to create local funding sources and/or reallocate existing court resources and positions.

Nyala Bolen, who coordinates the not-for-profit Friends of Families advocacy service, said that the concept of family court takes some of the stress out of ongoing family legal battles.

Friends of Families provides initial assessment to parties who have been referred for family court, and then refers them on to an outside mediator.

“I think any time you can avoid being drug through the whole court process, it’s a relief to everybody,” Bolen said. “It’s a relief to the court because of the numbers of cases they have, and it’s a relief to the family because of the stress the court proceeding imposes on the family, and I think the children get to stay out of it even farther that way.”

Vigo County Circuit/Superior Court Judge David Bolk supervises the family court program.

“I think it has been very successful,” Bolk said. “It does take out the winner/loser mentality in child custody cases. People understand they’ve got the ability to work things out on their own.

“[People] can really hopefully resolve issues on their own with the help of the mediator, and realize that there are options other than coming to court if Mom or Dad is 15 minutes late for whatever,” he added.

The most frustrating aspect of any family law situation, Bolk said, is “when parents lose sight that their children should come first in terms of their well-being. They don’t always do that, and they have their feelings for their ex-spouse or significant other get in the way of doing what’s best for the children,” he said.

Bolk added that a neutral mediator has the ability to help some of those parents think through those issues, as opposed to a judge in a court proceeding, whose role is just to hear both sides and make a decision. The third party is trained to help the two sides come to an agreement.

Roach explained that a mediation can be more like a discussion than like a court proceeding.

“It’s obviously a lot less formal,” he said. “There are no rules of evidence in any mediation session, and it is more of a discussion among the parties. You don’t call witnesses, you don’t present evidence per se, you don’t have a judge making a decision – in fact a mediator does not ever make a decision … [The mediator] doesn’t make decisions for the parties and doesn’t advise the parties; he’s there just to facilitate to see if you can find some common ground for the parties to resolve their disputes short of going to court.”

In a more formal type of alternative dispute resolution, called arbitration, there is – instead of a mediator – an arbitrator or a panel of arbitrators who make a binding decision, Roach said.

Stagg said success in the family court project is defined in terms of how many full and partial settlements are reached. A full settlement means the parties reached an agreement that was approved by the court, whereas a partial agreement means that the parties still will require a court proceeding, but that at least some of the issues have been agreed upon.

Roach said family court can make a difference in the lives of families whose legal issues may span 15 or more years when children are involved.

“You always hope you are able to focus the parties on what’s important to them, and on getting the case resolved,” Roach said. “Particularly where there are children involved, if you can get the parties to focus on the best interest of the child then hopefully down the road they would keep that in mind and work out visitation issues.

“If you have young children, you could have a span of another 18 years in the case of an infant or 15, or 16 years, of dealing with visitation,” he added. “There has to be compromise.”



Deb Kelly can be reached at (812) 231-4254 or deb.mckee@tribstar.com.

By the numbers: Vigo Family Court Cases

2004: 47 cases, involving 62 children: seven settlements

2005: 84 cases, involving 127 children: 32 full settlements

2006: 43 cases, involving 63 children: 27 full settlements

2007: 26 cases, involving 39 children: 19 full settlements

Source: Vigo County Family Court Project