New Ways for Families in San Diego

By Bill Eddy, LCSW, Esq.

New Ways for Families™ is a new method being tried in San Diego County for handling high conflict parenting cases in family court. Supervising Family Law Judge Lorna Alksne has authorized the downtown San Diego judges to try this method for three months, then it will be evaluated for further use.

New Ways is a structured method with short-term counseling at the front end of potentially high conflict cases. It can be ordered whenever a parent or the court believes that one parent needs restricted parenting (supervised, no contact, limited time), at the beginning of a case or any time a parent brings a motion for restricted parenting – including post-judgment litigation.

This method emphasizes strengthening skills for positive future behavior (new ways), rather than focusing on past negative behavior – while still acknowledging it. It is designed to save courts time, to save parents money, and to protect children as their families re-organize in new ways after a separation or divorce, for married or never-married parents. It is designed to help manage cases with allegations of domestic violence, child abuse, substance abuse, false allegations, and/or alienation.

This method was developed after studying the dynamics of high conflict court cases. There are four basic steps:

Step 1: Getting Started

Parents can agree to use New Ways, or a judge can order it while also making temporary parenting orders, support orders, and restraining orders. Then, each parent selects his or her own Individual Parent Counselor from a list of local counselors trained in the New Ways method. Before the counseling begins, each parent prepares a Behavioral Declaration and a Reply Behavioral Declaration, which are the only declarations provided to their counselors.

Step 2: Individual Parent Counseling

This includes 6 weekly sessions with a separate, confidential counselor for each

parent using a Parent Workbook. Both parents are ordered into this counseling at

the same time, with no presumptions about who is more difficult. The focus of

these sessions is strengthening and practicing three skills: flexible thinking,

managed emotions, and moderate behaviors.

Step 3: Parent-Child Counseling

This step includes three sessions with each parent and their child/ren, alternating weeks over six weeks. The parents share the same non-confidential counselor. They each have their own Parent-Child Workbook for these sessions. The Parent-Child Counselor does not write a report, but can be called to testify at court. The focus of these sessions is having the parents teach their children the same three skills they learned in their Individual Counseling, hearing the children’s concerns, and discussing the new ways their family will operate.

Step 4: Family (or Court) Decision-making

Finally, parents use their new ways skills to develop a lasting parenting plan with the assistance of their attorneys (if any), Family Court Services, a private mediator or a collaborative team. If they are unable to settle the case at this point, then they go to Family Court to report what they have learned, then try the case. The judge then orders long-term parenting, support, and other orders, which could include long-term restraining orders, batterers treatment, drug treatment, parenting classes, a psychological evaluation, etc.

New Ways for Families can be used at any time by any family, from the beginning of the separation process or even after the divorce. While this method was developed for high conflict family court cases, it can also be used in out-of-court settings, such as Collaborative Divorce, Divorce Mediation, and in negotiated divorce settlements with or without lawyers. After basic parenting decisions have been made, this method can also be used in conjunction with a Parenting Coordinator.

While the counselors who have been trained in New Ways charge their own rates, they have been asked to keep their fees to a maximum of $150 per hour for the Individual Parent Counselors and $200 per hour for the Parent-Child Counselors. With six individual sessions and three parent-child sessions, each parent would pay a maximum of $1500. Counselors have also been encouraged charge a reduced rate in one out of three cases. Using this structured approach, it is more likely that a potentially high conflict case could be completely resolved without ever going back to court.

Will this approach work? We will see over the next three months. Ask for New Ways!

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Bill Eddy, LCSW, Esq., is a family law attorney (CFLS) and a therapist (LCSW) in San Diego, where he is currently Senior Family Mediator at the National Conflict Resolution Center (619-238-2400). He is the President of the High Conflict Institute, based in Scottsdale, Arizona. For more information about New Ways for Families, see www.HighConflictInstitute.com or call 602-606-7628.