Monthly Archives: February 2018

In Tribute To My Child

[To the reader: I wrote this “tribute” in December, 1999, and gave it to my children at Christmas of that year as a “stocking-stuffer”.  My children (a daughter and a son) were teenagers then and I’m pretty sure they would have preferred something more “cash-worthy” at that time.  Nevertheless, as a parent it was meaningful to me and heartfelt – and as the years have flown by the words have become even more meaningful to me … and I felt that perhaps some of you parents out there might enjoy taking a moment in time to read it.]

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IN TRIBUTE TO MY CHILD

There is a quiet, almost unspoken bond of devotion which a parent has for a child.  No one on earth knows the heart and soul of a child in the way a parent knows.

I adore my child.  And I remain just as adoring a parent as the day my child was born.  If truth be told, I am also in constant wonderment of my child as my child, day-by-day, grows older.  My child’s gentle spirit will remain strong; my child’s willingness to be caring is God-given; and my child’s creative and inquisitive personality is self-acquired.

Yet, as my child grows older, I can still search for and find in that face that same child which I have prayed for every day since my child’s moment of birth.  And I already miss my child … because just as a meandering stream carries a single leaf ever onward and away from its point of beginning, so does each passing day carry my child towards a life joined in spirit with, and yet separate from, mine.  Although I try to remember that we are all children, with some of us simply older than others, I also know that I shall be a parent forever, and my child shall always be my child.

I pray that my child always has a strong sense of home.  My child should always know and feel that the love of this parent is everlasting, timeless … and unconditional.

I write this in tribute to my child.

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Early Neutral Evaluation In The South Carolina Family Courts – Finding A New (Better) ADR Way Forward

I very recently had the privilege of successfully joining with two of my great friends (and former colleagues on the South Carolina family court bench), Joseph W. McGowan, III, and Robert E. Guess, in a joint venture – “Early Neutral Evaluation Services”, and we formally launched our professional business model on January 1, 2018.

However, before I provided you, the reader, with the specifics about our particular business model (we are using a “team concept” approach), I wanted to spend some time reminding all of us family law attorneys that for almost 6 years now – since April 30, 2012 – “early neutral evaluation” (ENE) has been “hiding among the South Carolina Alternative Dispute Resolution Rules“, and that once we are able to “deconstruct” (so as to better understand) these ENE rules and target the family court issues the ENE rules are/were intended to resolve, then my two colleagues and I remain absolutely convinced that, within the next 5 years, “early neutral evaluation” in the South Carolina family courts will be THE first choice of dispute resolution utilized by our State’s family court bench and bar.  Period.

In researching the history of “early neutral evaluation” in my own efforts to better understand (a) what it was, and (b) how we could utilize it, if at all, in the South Carolina Family Court system, I came across an excellent article in FindLaw For Legal Professionals, entitled “Neutral Evaluation: An ADR Technique Whose Time Has Come”.  I found this article hugely helpful to me and enlightening, and I wanted to share just a few of its excerpts (there were more than a “few”, and I would urge that you please read the entire article if you have the time).  Here they are (and I’ve taken some slight editorial license on the emphasis):

“Any dispute resolution process by definition brings a certain amount of ‘baggage’ to the table, generated by its very structure and purpose.  This structural ‘baggage’, like everything else in life, always has a plus and minus to it.  For example, the primary structural baggage which litigation and the trial bring to the table is the requirement that there be a winner and a loser. …

The baggage which arbitration brings to the table is similar: arbitration is an adjudicative process, where the win/lose hammer can be even more final than in classic litigation, and thus where the stakes can lead to nearly as much desperation, expense and insane results as a trial (it just happens a little bit more quickly, and you can drink coffee and eat donuts in the comfort of some attorney’s office while it happens to you). …

The baggage which mediation brings to the table is primarily emotional: mediation is avowedly a settlement process, where the parties have already, just by agreeing to engage in it, let down their guard a little bit as far as their ‘toughness’ about the ‘invincibility’ of their positions.  This aspect of mediation, i.e., the fact that by its very structure it requires the participants to acknowledge that they are there to settle the case, often presents such a psychological barrier that the technique never gets used until the parties are forced to use it …

Neutral evaluation, on the other hand, carries with it neither the settlement baggage of mediation, nor the adjudicative baggage of (trial and binding) arbitration.”

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