Recent Posts in In the News Category

Palm Springs Divorce Recovery Group Begins June, 2012

Marriage Counselor/Divorce Coach, Bev Jewell, is offering another 6 week "Growing Through Divorce™" support group beginning the first week of June. This opportunity is ideal for people who are recently separated, stuck within the divorce process, or who are coping with the aftermath of relationship end months or even years following your breakup. 

As you well know, divorce is a crisis that dramatically alters the foundations of a person's life. "Growing Through Divorce™" helps to create a sense of security, community, support and personal growth so people can get through this stage of confusion and grief and start to productively build their new life. Sharing this experience with others who are similarly situated has immense power and benefits.

The group's focus includes moving through the emotional stages of the divorce process in order to reintegrate and rebalance ourselves;. These stages often involve denial that the divorce is really happening, questioning (bargaining) if one could have done more to prevent the divorce, becoming unstuck in patterns of blame/anger at "the other" for "doing this to them".  These emotions, as well as the deep sense of loss, have to be addressed and dealt with before forgiveness and acceptance can be approximated or achieved. It is also important to understand the roles that partners played in the marriage, the lessons that can be learned, and to feel gratitude for what was good and wonderful, when it was. Without this healing process people often rebound into another relationship, carrying their previous baggage with them, or transfer their distress to their children or others.   

Each group is limited to a maximum of 8 people, in order to create a more personal and intimate dialogue and experience. The workshop is six weeks long. Each session is 90 minutes, The cost is $25 a week per person, and is intended to be affordable.

If this process sounds like it might have value for you, please call Bev Jewell at 760-699-7027 for more information and to reserve your spot in the group! 

Related Websites: www.growingthroughdivorce.com, www.desertdivorcesolutions.com and www.essentialfocus.com  

Divorce and Family Law Mediations, Riverside County, California

MEDIA ADVISORY FROM BARRIE J. ROBERTS, DIRECTOR OF ALTERNATIVE DISPUTE RESOLUTION PROGRAMS, RIVERSIDE COUNTY SUPERIOR COURT

May 3, 2012

NEW MEDIATION PANEL HELPS FAMILIES RESOLVE DIVORCE, CUSTODY, SPOUSAL AND CHILD SUPPORT DISPUTES WITHOUT COURT TRIAL

RIVERSIDE COUNTY: The Riverside County Superior Court is pleased to announce a new resource for families and couples facing family law disputes.

The new Family Law Private Mediation Panel lists over 20 attorney-mediators countywide who are ready to help parties work out solutions to their divorce, custody, visitation, spousal and child support disputes without adversarial court hearings or trial.

The panel includes mediators who serve every area of Riverside County, including Blythe, Indio, Palm Springs, downtown Riverside, Hemet, Banning, Temecula, Moreno Valley, Corona and more.

The new panel was posted on the court's website today: http://adr.riverside.courts.ca.gov/adr/fl/  Also posted was a new web page filled with information about private mediation for family law cases: http://riverside.courts.ca.gov/adr/famlaw_privatemediation.shtml

According to Presiding Judge Sherrill Ellsworth, "Our family law judges strongly encourage parties to use alternative dispute resolution, including mediation, to resolve their disputes."

"Costly and stressful adversarial court hearings are rarely in the best interests of the children or the parents," said Indio Family Law Judge Dale Wells. "Mediation gives parties the opportunity to express their concerns in a safe and private environment. With the mediator's help, the parties can reach voluntary agreements that are custom-made for their particular situation."

And, Judge Jackson Lucky, Family Law judge in downtown Riverside points out, "Family law decisions are so important because they deal with children and family finances. The parties understand their needs better than anyone else. Mediation puts control where it should be: with the parties. It allows them to make the best choices for themselves, instead of hoping that a judge, who is a stranger, will make the right decisions for them."

All mediators on the court's Family Law Private Mediation Panel are attorneys with at least 5 years of family law experience in Riverside County. Many have had extensive training in family law mediation. Several are certified as Family Law Specialists by the State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization.

To schedule a mediation session with a member of the new panel, parties simply contact the mediator of their choice. Each panel mediator has posted an on-line Profile describing his or her background, contact and fee information, including whether reduced rates are offered.

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Divorce and Family Law Mediation

What Marriage of Davenport Means for Mediation

The Take-Away

Davenport is a ground-breaking decision on a number of fronts, but particularly because it chronicles in painful detail the types of aggressive and adversarial conduct that relationship breakup and the accompanying litigation tend to generate. It is more than a cautionary tale for lawyers. It reminds us that while some lawyers are busy proclaiming that their only concern is protecting clients who've been allegedly mistreated, when these warrior representatives become overly enmeshed with their clients' views and experiences that there is a huge but in some ways natural risk that they will lose all objectivity and become so identified with their clients' fears and hurts that the lawyers themselves act as if they were the ones who are divorcing the other side.

I call this a "natural" risk because I admit from my own experience that it requires effort and continuing reflection for attorneys (and even more so the parties) to remain focused on the process of solution-finding in a civil and non-emotional manner. This is a "tall order" to be sure. A good example of what happens when one is failing in this regard is that attorneys may abandon decorum and professionalism, and ignore well-established legal rules including the fact that mediation is, and must remain, confidential.

As I've written countless times, the adversarial, government sponsored method for resolving relationship breakup in anything approaching a holistic fashion is deeply flawed - principally because we humans are hard-wired to fight, flee, and react. One way that Family Court can meet its promise of protecting all the people who resort to the Courts requires that the consequences for obstreperous and unruly behavior be made known to disputants and legal professionals, and that divorce judges in appropriate cases impose those monetary consequences. Sanctions deter misconduct from continuing, and attorney fees compensate the victims of such misconduct. Historically judges have been relatively timid in awarding sanctions and fees in sufficient amounts to really compensate aggrieved parties from out of pocket losses caused by litigiousness, but this is judicial attitude is clearly changing. Appellate and family court bench officers are realizing that if they don't step in and manage out of control litigants in a meaningful way, that the public's confidence in government generally and the judiciary specifically will continue to erode. In the absence of accountability, those contestants and lawyers who insist on being bullies and running up fees will succeed in controlling the very asylum their behaviors create.

Fortunately for you, since you've bumped into this Blog and had enough interest to wade through it, something about mediation and the too common tragic consequences of adversary litigation resonates.

While it takes two sides to agree to mediation and then to stick with it in good faith, and mediation gives no guarantees (indeed, to whatever extent it was attempted in Davenport it was evidently doomed to fail by the attitudes of at least one side), Justice Richman together with his colleagues, Justices Kline and Lambden, provides us with a template that is instructive:

• The parties are responsible for the tone of their family law proceeding 

• The parties reap the rewards or pay the consequences for the choices that they make, or which their attorneys make for them

• Selecting your attorney in a family law case is a critical decision. It is also problematic because it is challenging to obtain enough information, that is reliable, at the outset to know whether these attorneys will walk their talk (the sanctioned behavior of the law firm that represented Jill Davenport contradicts the Mission Statement and Firm Philosophy pages on that firm's website; to be fair such statements are aspirational, but they also need to be authentic). Most  people must initially make a leap to faith in their selection

• As one of the two parties to family litigation, you have an ongoing duty to yourself to evaluate whether the case is heading towards solutions, or devolving into name-calling destructive chaos. If you find yourself invigorated by the ongoing conflict, and are instructing your gladiator to thump the other side 'no matter what it costs' you risk losing yourself within a dark and dangerous forest and the blame and responsibility is rightfully yours

• It is entirely natural, nonetheless, to have moments where you feel overtaken by the trance of the divorce experience (or to have periods of clarity where you recognize that you've been stewing in reactivity, much like when we find ourselves standing in front of the bathroom mirror with a toothbrush in our mouths, remembering nothing about how it got there). The trick for parties, and for lawyers, and what may make all the difference for you and your family, is that we benefit from clearing our heads from time to time and from exercising a willingness to put the past aside (I'm speaking to reactive outbursts) and start afresh, time and again. If we don't do this, we may become prisoners - we are only helpless when we fail or refuse to stop and reflect, something no one else can do for us

• Consider mediating your matter while having a willingness to not view that process as a more sophisticated way of achieving the same financial or emotional outcomes you might seek or expect in litigation. Mediation works when people chose to cooperate on at least some levels. If everything must be your way, and if your mind tells you that you should get exactly what you feel entitled to (what the other party thinks is important be damned), you always have Family Court waiting out there ready to swallow you up!

• Be respectful of others, and be kind and patient with yourself. Even if you must litigate (as where the other side insists), seek out expert lawyers who value peacemaking.

And rest assured that your efforts to mediate will be appreciated and safeguarded by outstanding Family Court bench officers and their counterparts in the higher courts. 

Artwork Courtesy of www.Love-Art.com

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310-948-6408

• The Hon. Gretchen W. Taylor, Judge Retired, CFLS* (Judge Taylor is provided to us through ARC)
• Thurman W. Arnold, III, Esq., Certified Family Law Specialist* 
• Dr. Jane Ellen Shatz
• Karen Horwitz, M.A., M.F.T.
• David Hayes, M.A., M.F.T.

*Let us help get you out of this mess, intact!

Thurman W. Arnold III
Hon. Gretchen W. Taylor
Certified Family Law Specialists

"You Need the Bears"

We are pleased to announce that DFMS Mediator, the Hon. Gretchen Taylor, Ret., will be regularly featured in Los Angeles Family Magazine in a section entitled "Ask the Family Judge" beginning with the November, 2010 issue. 

Los Angeles Family is dedicated to being a premier parenting resource for southern California parents and their children.

To read Judge Taylor's November article, click here.

Mediator Jane E. Shatz

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We are pleased to announce that Mediate.com, the largest information source for all types of mediation in the country, has recently published an article by Thurman W. Arnold entitled "The Peacemaking Option for Divorce and Dissolution of Domestic Partnerships:  How Family Scientists Support Interest Based Conciliation and What That Means for Separating Couples". 

Excepts:

"Family scientists have gathered considerable information that suggests that peacemaking solutions to divorce and breakup might offer a brave new option for people transitioning out of relationship. Peacemaking offers a “controlled” alternative to the chaos of adversarial struggle. While peacemaking lawyers are not therapists, the process that peacemaking facilitates is itself entirely therapeutic because it allows both parties to concentrate on their felt interests and the interests of their families. It a 'controlled process,' managed by the parties themselves and orchestrated by a peacemaker."

"Adversarial divorce does have devastating consequences for children, but peacemaking divorce possibly need not have. Social scientists have learned that parents who divorce are subject to “inter-generational transmission,” an increased likelihood that divorce will happen to them too. For instance, researchers have found that parental divorce increases the chances of a daughter’s marriage ending within the first five years by as much as 70%. Incredibly, if both the husband’s and the wife’s parents have been divorced, these odds increase by 189%. This has the effect that for children’s marriages to be successful such children of divorce may need to consciously guard against behaviors that might undermine their marriages. How parents model divorce for these children has lasting implications for their children’s success in doing so. Understanding this common reality is transformative for the next generation."

For More Information, Please Contact DFMS