Celebrity Divorce Without Tabloids: It Can Be Done!

Without noise, paparazzi, or even appearance on a public docket, Tim Duncan and his ex finalized their divorce by settling it, in a non-public document.  As with the Schwarzenegger/Shriver settlement, they decided that a long bitter public court battle wasn't anyone's best career move.

...and incidentally, an acknowledgement for the pointer and a hat tip, to Peter Salem of the AFCC,  whose (co-edited) Family and Divorce Mediation: Models, Techniques and Applications was name-checked in the Onion article about Duncan!

A Divorce App?

Per the Wall Street Journal, a new online "divorce manager"

Why Do People Divorce, and Should We Make it Harder To Do?

A family law blogger colleague argues against Maryland’s pending reduction of the minimum waiting period for entry of a divorce judgment.

In support of his argument that this is a bad thing, he republishes a study which notes a statistical correlation between a state’s minimum time for completion of divorce proceedings and the divorce rate in the state (and also cites a similar correlation as to foreign countries).

Leaving aside a myriad of science/statistics problems with the underlying study, I’ll ask, provocatively, “So what?”

A state could reduce its divorce rate to zero, quite simply, by either making divorce a sufficiently long or expensive process, or by simply eliminating it completely, by repealing its divorce statute. That would not mean, obviously, that the families in such state would be “less dysfunctional”, or that the children in those families were better-adjusted, or anything like that.

The more significant argument is buried within the discussion: there is some reason to think that divorce has a better outcome for kids if we allow married parents to finalize their divorce more quickly if they reach a complete agreement regarding the custodial arrangements for their children (or stated more realistically, that we don’t allow couples to dissolve the marriage quite as expeditiously if they DON’T reach an agreed resolution of their issues).

There also is some evidence that suggests that some sort of dispute resolution counseling may both reduce the rate of divorces completed, and result in a substantially better outcome for the kids involved.

Which is lovely, except that the budget for any such intervention (custody mediation, dispute resolution education and counseling) has never been adequate, and at least in California, is now evaporating.

A while ago (in the last century, actually) I’d argued that the best way to lower the divorce rate was to remove some the impediments to divorce (cost, minimum waiting periods, congested court calendars, etc.) , but to add similar impediments to marriage. Originally my feeble attempt at Swiftian satire, I’ve now come around to the view that this is an idea worthy of serious consideration; if you put the counseling and waiting period in at the front end, the outcomes are likely to be far better at the back.

. . . or should we just say “. . . those that are married already. . . . . . shall keep as they are”?

Kentucky Nixes Arbitration in Family Law, As, Among Other Things, Classist?

The Kentucky Court of Appeals has held that an agreement to submit all or a portion of a family law dispute to binding arbitration, without independent review by a sitting "real" judge, is an impermissible delegation of the court's power.

Among the more notable comments the court made, however, was the following, made without any citation of further authority:

Notwithstanding that the parties agreed to pay the arbitrator fees, what is most distressing about this scenario is that arbitration is obviously not a viable alternative or available to parties with lower incomes who can not afford to pay an arbitrator the sum of $225 per hour. This effectively creates a class system within Jefferson Family Court proceedings where more affluent individuals have the opportunity to pay for a “private judge” to conduct their proceedings – while
parties of lesser means and income must have their case heard by constitutionally elected judges in perhaps a less expeditious time frame.

Regardless of how noble the intent of utilizing arbitration in divorce proceedings, such a system that permits affluent individuals the opportunity to expedite the disposition of their domestic
relations cases in family court that is otherwise unavailable or cost prohibitive to persons of lesser incomes, appears to be both unconscionable and unconstitutional on its face, in our opinion.

Now I know, from reading the rest of the opinion, that commercial arbitration is permissible in Kentucky, and I'll bet that, whether they know it or not, Kentucky bank customers, HMO patients, customers of real estate brokers, and lots of other folks have entered into arbitration agreements regarding the services of those providers, just like their California cousins.

I also know that there are a significant number of folks in Kentucky who end up going to family court without a lawyer, because they can't afford to hire a lawyer. I'll also guess that in general, they don't do as good a job in presenting their cases as attorneys would have done for them.

So, seems to me, there's a "class system" in place already. It also seems to me that if litigant couples have the resources and the mutual willingness to take their cases "out of the system" to an arbitrator, mediator, psychologist, clergyperson, or even a guy who'll adjudicate their dispute using a Ouija Board, this actually works to free up scarce judicial system resources for everyone else.

Am I missing something?

A tip of the big grey fedora to Diana L. Skaggs of Kentucky for the pointer.