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Those who care about the future of children need to be proactive in developing innovative and comprehensive ways to reduce parental strife and deal more effectively with high conflict custody and visitation cases.
On October 27, 2005 I attended a special Family Law dinner meeting and the related seminar the following day. Both events were hosted by the Baltimore County Family Law Committee. The program topic of the Baltimore County Court’s new developing procedures for Handling High Conflict Child Access Cases drew the presence of about a dozen local circuit court judges and masters, several court administrators, a few mental health experts, some scholars and many interested family law practitioners. Some of the distinguished guests that I remember seeing included: The Honorable Dana Mark Levitz, The Honorable Thomas J. Bollinger, The Honorable John O. Hennegan, The Honorable Kathleen Gallogly Cox, The Honorable Robert N. Dugan, The Honorable Susan Souder, The Honorable Michael J. Finiifter, The Honorable Vicki Ballou-Watts, The Honorable Patrick Cavanaugh, Master C. Theresa Beck, Master Jacqueline E. Dawson, Master Mary Kramer (Howard County), Master William V. Tucker (Howard County), Richard P. Abbott, Esquire (Family Law Administrator), Peter J. Lally (Court Administrator), Mark Urbanik, (Family Support Services Coordinator), Wendy Sawyer (Director, Office of Family Mediation), Master Richard J. Gilbert, and Andrew Shepard, Esquire (Professor of Law at Hofstra School of Law)
Those in attendance share the view that the litigants in custody cases should be held more accountable for their contribution to increasing or decreasing levels of conflict. The availability of conflict-reducing dispute resolution mechanisms is essential in that endeavor.
The Circuit Court for Baltimore County, like most other courts around the Country, has seen a drastic increase in domestic cases that do not ever seem to end. It has become the norm to see cases that were filed in the 1990s coming back for a third or fourth hearing on a modification of custody or visitation petition. Many of these domestic cases become specially assigned to a judge, either because there is a high degree of conflict between the parties or because there are allegations of drug and/or alcohol abuse or domestic violence against a party or a child. These “high conflict” cases tend to take an inordinate amount of judicial time and do a great deal of harm to children.
While several programs are offered to litigants to assist in the settlement of disputes, it is the consensus of the Family Division that there needs to be more done to assure that the parenting plans that are put in place are successful in facilitating long-term, cooperative parenting in every case. Parents who are able to co-parent can adopt a traditional visitation schedule without too many problems. When parents cannot cooperate, however, traditional visitation schedules may exasperate a situation because they provide so many opportunities for conflict. Children are likely to be thrust into the middle of bitter arguments, and possibly into physical or emotional danger. Most successful visitation arrangements require clear communication and frequent contact between the parents. Parents who continually fight cannot carry out these tasks; the children caught in these disputes will be seriously harmed. Reducing conflict must be the primary goal in any visitation plan between parents who remain engaged in a bitter struggle with each other.
To address this problem, the Family Division delegated a sub-committee to look at how best to identify and process high-conflict domestic cases. Since August of 2004, this Sub-Committee on High Conflict Domestic Cases has been working to craft a well thought-out plan for dealing with these cases. The Committee concluded that the Plan should have the following objectives: (1) identification of domestic cases with high-conflict/domestic abuse issues very early on, (2) target the most appropriate and least intrusive services that will meet the needs of these families and, thereby conserve judicial resources, (3) encourage the parties to be self-determining with regard to how they parent their children, (4) reduce the likelihood that families will appear before multiple judges and receive conflicting rulings, (5) protect vulnerable members of the family, especially children, from being psychologically, emotionally and physically harmed, and (6) provide long-lasting resolutions to these disputes.
The processes to accomplish these objectives were explained and discussed. They are scheduled to be implemented in December of 2005. The suggestions and input from practitioners will be encouraged as the system is further developed and improved.
