Anoka County tries to take trauma out of divorce court

The pilot program will try to help divorcing parents work out disputes before the case goes to trial.

By PAUL LEVY, Star Tribune

August 17, 2008 at 1:55AM

Anoka County will launch a pilot program Monday that could save divorcing parents thousands of dollars and countless hours of angst.

The county's Early Neutral Evaluation (ENE) Program will connect divorcing parents with judges and other evaluators who will hear their sides early in the judicial process and then project how things will play out in court. The hope is to spur resolutions in child-custody and financial disputes.

"I think it can reduce the tensions involved," said Judge Sharon Hall, one of five Anoka County jurists who volunteered to be part of the six-month pilot. "It will allow them to keep some control over their divorce situation. And those divorce situations can be very horrible. You walk into the courtroom and the parties have been slandered and vilified. Tensions are running very, very high. It's like walking into a volcano."

Hall recalled being removed from a divorce case that ultimately lasted nearly eight years. In many instances, the longer divorce cases last the more everyone loses -- especially children, who are shattered emotionally and whose futures can be crippled financially by legal fees. While 95 percent of divorce cases are settled before trial, the damage is still staggering for those involved.

The Anoka County Bar Association decided to push for an alternative, which divorcing parents could try early on -- with the option of going the traditional divorce route in court.

The program is similar to one that Hennepin County launched in 2002, said Bethany Fountain Lindberg, a lawyer with the Anoka County Attorney's Office, who helped spearhead the ENE program.

The program was championed by Judge James Swenson, now the chief judge in Hennepin County. Swenson thought judges had to be very outgoing or proactive in managing divorce cases as soon as they were filed, said Hennepin County Judge Tanja Manrique, the lead jurist on the current statewide initiative regarding family law reform. Growing acrimony

When judges didn't act immediately, the acrimony between divorcing parents festered and grew. Because many cases don't come to trial for six months after papers are served, the divorcing parents become so polarized that judges can do little to calm them, Manrique said.

Nearly half the 27 counties in the Third and Fifth Districts in southern Minnesota use a variation of the ENE Program, as do Ramsey and St. Louis counties.

As for Hennepin County, there's a major difference between its ENE Program and the one making its debut in Anoka County: Hennepin's court services department has a budget that provides for its "social" ENE program, that is, cases that aren't financial, Manrique said.

Anoka County has yet to make similar budget provisions, she said. In Anoka County, the program came together thanks to volunteers who put in 1,400 hours, Lindberg said.

Lawyers agreed to work for sliding-scale fees -- less than what normally would be charged -- to help get the program started. And supervisors, such as Robert M.A. Johnson of the Anoka County Attorney's Office, freed lawyers from other duties so they could get the program on its way.

Sherri Hawley, a private-practice attorney who participated in the ENE process in Hennepin County, was chosen to be the project coordinator. If divorcing parents agree to try the ENE Program, Hawley meets with them and tries to find a team of evaluators -- neutral professionals -- who can meet with both parties. When those parties have met with each parent individually, the couples and their attorneys can then try to reach a resolution that satisfies everyone. If not, there's always divorce court.

"Every divorce case is different and every parent involved is different," Hall said. "The cases have only one thing in common: Nobody looks forward to divorce court.

"Any step we can take to make the process less painful is a big one."

Paul Levy • 612-673-4419

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PAUL LEVY, Star Tribune

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