After ten years in operation, a special family court in western Massachusetts is hoping to spread its collaborative divorce model to other parts of the state.
The Family Resolutions Specialty Court (FRSC), based at the Hampshire County courthouse in Northampton, was created in 2015 as an alternative to traditional, adversarial divorces, which can be particularly hard on children.
“If you just look at the paperwork, it's somebody versus somebody, and immediately they become sort of legal enemies, one against the other, each looking to get the best that they can for themselves,” said retired family court judge Gail Perlman. “And our feeling was that that's really not a productive way for families to make this very difficult transition between being a one household family and a two household family.”
The specialty court assigns each couple a team at the state’s expense, including a social worker and mediator who work with parents to reduce conflict.
Each parent has the option of hiring their own lawyer, and in some cases, a lawyer is assigned to the children as well. But Perlman, who is now a volunteer consultant for the court, said the legal process is more collaborative than a traditional divorce.
“The judge comes down off the bench, sits at a table with the parents, has conversations with the parents about whatever's going on, encourages them to stick with the team if it's getting rough in the system for a while,” Perlman said.
While the judge may end up making the final decision on an issue if parents can’t agree, “it's not seen as a negative,” she said. “It's seen as the parents having worked hard to try to solve things.”
Perlman said this process tends to go much faster than traditional divorces. “And people don't get locked into being enemies. They work on the problem, they fix it, and they get out.”
At the same time, she said, the social worker counsels parents on ways to negotiate the divorce that are least harmful to the children.
“The parents learn, for example, that it's never a good idea to speak ill of the other parent because the child takes that in,” Perlman said. “'That's half of who I am,' the child thinks. ‘You know, am I bad like my parent who's being bad mouthed?’ And the parents learn not to do that.”
Court administrators say the data shows this approach supports families. They report that, over the last decade, 232 parents – or 117 couples – resolved their custody disputes after an average of 10 months, which is shorter than traditional divorces. And they say more than 80 percent of specialty court cases finish within the recommended 14-month timeline, compared to 55 percent in other cases.
Although courts in other parts of the state have expressed interest, Perlman said she’s not sure why the model hasn’t caught on beyond Hampshire County. There are financial hurdles, she said, as it costs money to hire the additional team members and keep the process free for families. But she thinks it also comes down to changing the legal culture around divorce.
“You need a new understanding of what parents need, and a new understanding of how the professionals in the process should go about behaving in order to make the new process hold,” she said. “And that takes time to be solidified.”
This month, administrators plan to train judges from Worcester, Berkshire and Franklin counties to preside over cases from the family specialty court.