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July 30, 2024
The Mississippi Supreme Court recently approved new rules which will allow family law disputes to be resolved without adversarial court proceedings before a chancellor.
The Rules for Collaborative Law were adopted on July 26 and will go into effect Aug. 26.
The new rules offer a way to work out family law disputes including:
∙ marriage, divorce, dissolution, annulment, and property distribution;
∙ child custody, visitation, and parenting time;
∙ alimony, maintenance, and child support;
∙ adoption;
∙ parentage;
∙ premarital, marital, and post-marital agreements;
∙ modifications, enforcements and contempts.
The new rules allow parties to a family law dispute to sign a Collaborative Law Participation Agreement. The Collaborative Law Participation Agreement requires the parties to forego court intervention while using the collaborative family law process to work towards resolution of their dispute. If collaborative efforts fail, new lawyers would be retained to undertake the traditional adversarial process of filing suit in Chancery Court.
The Mississippi Bar through its Board of Bar Commissioners petitioned the Supreme Court to establish Rules for Collaborative Law. Mississippi Bar General Counsel Adam Kilgore explained the proposal in the August 2022 petition: “Collaborative law is a voluntary, contractually based alternative dispute resolution process for parties who seek to negotiate a resolution to their matter rather than having a ruling imposed upon them by a court or arbitrator. The parties agree that their lawyer’s representation is limited to representing them solely for the purposes of negotiation, and that if the matter is not settled, new lawyers will be retained if the matter proceeds to litigation or arbitration.”
An ad hoc committee appointed in 2020 by then-Mississippi Bar President Jennifer Ingram Johnson of Hattiesburg and chaired by divorce and family law attorney Mark Chinn of Jackson studied rules governing alternatives to litigation in domestic relations and other civil matters in other states. The committee modeled its proposal on the nationally recognized Uniform Collaborative Law, an American Bar Association approved model. More than 20 states, including neighboring states of Alabama, Louisiana and Tennessee, have adopted the Uniform Collaborative Law. The Louisiana Legislature approved that state’s Uniform Collaborative Family Law Act earlier this year; it goes into effect in Louisiana on Aug. 1.
Bar leaders in letters supporting adoption of Rules for Collaborative Law said the process benefits families, lawyers and the courts. Courts potentially benefit as Collaborative Law Participation Agreements could relieve crowded court dockets.
Johnson wrote in a Sept. 21, 2023, letter to the Supreme Court, “Issues of divorce and custody touch upon the most intimate and emotionally driven relationships in our lives, and as such, it makes sense to implement an alternative to the adversarial litigation process.”
Former Mississippi Bar President Blake Teller of Vicksburg said in a Sept. 20, 2023, letter to the Supreme Court, “Of all legal matters before our Courts, these matters should be handled with great care to preserve relationships to the greatest extent possible. Amicable, respectful proceedings promote good co-parenting.”
The Supreme Court’s order and the Rules for Collaborative Law are at this link:
https://courts.ms.gov/appellatecourts/docket/sendPDF.php?f=700_681245.pdf&c=95418&a=N&s=2.
MageeNews.com is the online news source for Simpson and surrounding counties as well as the state of Mississippi.
