Last week, my daughter, my mother and I took a train ride together. Years ago, my mother added the ride from Toronto to Vancouver to her "bucket list."  After finding a great sale for winter trips, we planned the trip and departed on  January 29, 2018.  Little did I know that I was about to learn a little bit more about what it might feel like to be a litigant in the American legal system.

A friend and fellow mediator, Jeff Molenda, often quotes John R. Van Winkle's book, "Mediation:  A Path Back for the Lost Lawyer."   In the first section of his book, "The Litigation Train," Van Winkle claims that at the end of the twentieth century in the United States our litigation system is broken and has to come resemble a long, expensive train ride.  

After a tragedy, folks often gather to help out those who have suffered, any way  they can.  At one time, we probably would bake casseroles for each other and plan a church service.  Today, one of the things that I've noticed happening is that folks set up a Go Fund Me account to help cover medical or funeral expenses. 

These accounts often raise funds for the victims and may be helpful.  However,  I am concerned that sometimes they may not be as effective as other ways to help the victim or their families.  In fact, in some situations, the accounts may cause further harm to the family.

Restorative Justice provides options for educators in Virginia and West Virginia to improve the classroom environment. Brenda Waugh worked with experts from Harrisonburg, Virginia and Morgantown, West Virginia to create a two day workshop on restorative justice. During the workshop, participants were introduced to victim-offender conferencing and restorative justice talking circles.

I recently traveled to Harrisonburg for the Zehr Institute of Restorative Justice, part of Eastern Mennonite University to participate in a workshop with Howard Zehr and Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz. The Institute hosted a group of judges, social workers, and attorneys from Brazil who are working to bring restorative justice into their schools and judicial systems. During their time at EMU, they had the opportunity to visit the Harrisonburg City Schools and the Harrisonburg Police Department and Prince George’s County where they could see RJ in action.

Should I call the police?

A few days I had a call from a father of a family that I’ve been working with in divorce mediation. He wanted to know if he should call the police when his wife did not permit the children to come with him for his custodial time. He wanted to document the problem.

When property is damaged and when we are injured, we should expect that the insurance company will treat us fairly. However, insurance companies do not always treat claimants fairly, and you may want to talk with an attorney to be sure that the insurance company is following the law in responding to your claim. Waugh Law & Mediation works with people who have suffered losses and are seeking compensation from the insurance company.

Contempt of court occurs when a court issues an order requiring that a person (or company) do something, and that person disobeys the court order.  The injured or aggrieved party requests that the court find that person in contempt and take action to ensure compliance with the order. In other words, once the court issues a ruling, so long as that ruling is in effect, anyone who is ordered to do something in the order must do it, or the court may find them in contempt.

The NLADA recently produced a webinar on new child support regulations most of which go into effect this month. The new regulations require that the states make changes in their policies and procedures to improve the processes states use to collect and distribute child support.  They direct a few issues about child support collection that have created problems for some parents. The states are required to make  changes in their guidelines that address incarceration and unemployment among other issues.

Tomorrow I will be joining several colleagues as we travel to Calhoun County, West Virginia for two days to meet with community leaders, education professionals, and law enforcement to discuss the potential applications for restorative justice in the community. 

After you've injured your back or neck in a car wreck, you may be wondering what's wrong with me? Can you feel better? How long will it take? First of all, let me remind you: I am not a physician, and this is a blog post that does not include legal or medical advice. You should always talk to your doctor and design a treatment plan that is best for you. In this post, I’m going to list some of the kinds of treatment that clients in my legal practice have told me that they find helpful for their back and neck injuries.  

January is a popular month to file for divorce.  Why?  For many people, the new year is a time that they reevaluate their lives and decide to make changes.  Perhaps they have waited or tried to make a marriage work for some time and the new year seems like a good opportunity to go ahead and pursue divorce.  Others may want to wait until after Christmas to plan for their a divorce. Some people postpone divorce into the new year for economic or tax reasons.  Whatever the basis, if you have decided to divorce in 2017, should you file?

On December 7, 2016,  I’ll be joining Howard Zehr for a webinar on Restorative Lawyering.  Restorative Lawyering is a model of practicing law that I have been developing along with colleagues such as Marshall Yoder and Susan Marcus.  Restorative lawyering adopts the guiding principles and values of restorative justice.  In doing so, we look at each situation, problem, or conflict and often start by asking,  “Has there been harm that needs to be addressed?” and “What can be done to make right the wrongs?”  These fundamental questions, central to restorative justice, change the focus from what statute or rule has been violated to what can be done to make things better.  

Over the past few months on this blog, I’ve covered many of the issues that we consider in mediation when a couple is planning to file for divorce.  My posts in this series have examined everything from how to divide marital property, how to calculate child support, and how to make schedules for holidays for the children.  Along with resources such as the free forms from the West Virginia Supreme Court, these posts may help you decide whether or not you want to retain a lawyer, reach an agreement before you select a lawyer or file for divorce, or if you want to consider collaborative law.

Father's Day is Sunday---which brings up the question:  How do we divide holidays in the parenting plan?  Whether you are working with a mediator, with your collaborative attorneys, or on independently, once you have worked through the decision-making part of your plan and the primary custodial time, you are ready to work on holidays and vacation.  Here are some ideas on how you can divide those times to maximize the time that your children spend with their parents. 

In today’s post, I’ll continue to share ideas on how to develop a custodial schedule in your parenting plan.  Once you have the decision-making portion of the parenting plan developed, have agreed on some of the objectives and conceptual details about custodial time, you might stumble when creating a calendar, due to unique problems in your family.  In this post, we’ll address some of the challenges I’ve seen parentings struggle with and how they’ve resolved them.

With your decision-making parenting plan in one hand and the answers to some important questions about jobs and schedules in the other, you are ready to start marking up a calendar to decide how to divide custodial time.  You might want to print out some calendars and mark them up with different schedules.  Printed calendars make it easier to evaluate the possible plans.

When you are working in mediation or collaborative law, you can create most any schedule you want to create to suit your families' needs.  

The schedules I’m describing in this post are examples of what has worked for some families. Of course, if you cannot develop a plan through mediation, negotiation, or collaborative processes, you will be stuck with a schedule that a judge creates that may or may not be as tailored to your families’ needs.  

Last week we looked at how to create a parenting plan to divide your decision making after divorce. Establishing details and processes for decision making is the foundation of a terrific parenting plan.   Create a plan with the help of an experienced mediator, family counselor, or collaborative attorney to draft a strong agreement-- built to withstand a lot of wear of tear!  Next, you’ll develop the second part of your parenting plan, a schedule outlining what nights your child is sleeping at each house—or “allocation of custodial responsibility.”