Family Law ADR stands for Alternative Dispute Resolution, which covers a whole variety of items that we can use to help people resolve their case before or without going to court at all. Pretty much it’s universal that everyone has to attend some sort of mediation or other ADR before they can appear in court. It’s very much practiced particularly in Minnesota. So, there are very different kinds of ADR, mediation is probably the one most people know the most about and mediation is a neutral helping two people try and come to an agreement. Try to figure out what could work, what couldn’t work and how it might work for them – that’s one form of ADR and that is the most common kind.

So, we have two kinds of early neutral evaluation. Right now, when people file for dissolution or custody the court orders them to go to an early neutral evaluation and if it’s a case as to property and support and all that then it’s called a financial early neutral evaluation. If it is with children then it’s called a social early neutral evaluation. Social early neutral evaluations are usually done by two people, one a man, one a woman. One a family law practitioner and one a mental health person, and with those we listen to the parties, we ask questions, we get as much information as we can and then we meet together, the attorney and the mental health professional and talk about what we heard.

And we may have more questions, but ultimately what we do is go back to them and say, “So here’s our best suggestion about how this might be resolved.” And to be an early neutral evaluator you have to have done this a long time and we’re able to tell them, “This is what a court is likely to do, maybe you could get together and try and figure this out by doing this that or the other thing.” And that has been incredibly successful. The same thing with the financial one. Before anybody files discovery in interrogatory request for documents and depositions, they are ordered to go a financial early neutral evaluation, which an attorney does on his or her own, or some financial experts who do it also.

But to do that I talk to the attorneys ahead of time, I tell them what I want to see ahead of time and then we meet and we go over the balance sheets, we go over the living expenses. We look at all the property do things need to be valued? And it so cuts down on litigation. If everybody is sworn under oath to get that information in front of the other person right up front, then you pretty much can put everything together and figure out a settling of the case. So that has been extraordinarily successful also.