Marriage and Family Courts

Marriage Education Conference in Baltimore this July

The National Association for Relationship and Marriage Education, NARME, is holding its second annual conference in Baltimore, Maryland on July 19-25, 2012.  This is the leading marriage skills education conference in the U.S., largely filling the role of the Smart Marriages conferences that were held from 1997 to 2010, including many of the same people — family therapists, educators, clergy, and others interested in helping people improve their marriages, including a few from the legal professions.

Most of the over 100 sessions are on various aspects of marriage education programs. There are several programs on African-American communities and military families, domestic violence screening, and relationship education for teens. Relatively new topics include fatherhood programs; adapting to men’s learning styles; new options for online education programs, and other ways of disseminating knowledge other than in-person classroom-style programs.

 Sessions of possible interest to family lawyers and judges include Prof. William Doherty on “Discernment Counseling for Crisis Marriages”; Houston collaborative divorce lawyer Michael Hiller on “Reconciliation Law: Working With the Legal System to Give Couples the Option of Staying Together”; a plenary address by former Georgia Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears (a native Virginian and first cousin of our late Chief Justice Hassell), and an overview of joint custody nationwide.  There are a couple of sessions on modest divorce law reform proposals for one-year waiting periods like the one Virginia already has, but which involve divorce education and relationship education as well.

For more information and registration go to www.narmeconference.com. A list of sessions and speakers is at www.narmeconference.com/presenters. There are substantially reduced fees for attending only one or two days. Most sessions are July 23-24; the other days are mostly pre-conference trainings.

 

Leading judges launch "Marriage Foundation" to fix root causes of divorce

"Judge launches foundation to reduce 'disease' of divorce:

A senior High Court judge is launching a foundation to defend marriage and reduce of the "scourge of society" of family breakdown."

By Matthew Holehouse in The Telegraph

Sir Paul Coleridge wants to halt the "appalling and costly impact of family breakdown" and said people are looking to "recycle" partners instead of trying to fix their marriages. He said the prospect of 3.8m children in the family justice was a "complete scandal" and "almost every dysfunctual child is the product of a broken family".

He plans to open a Marriage Foundation at a cost of £150,000 a year to lobby for family-friendly policies, hold seminars and commission research into strengthening marriage. ... Sir Paul wishes to encourage people not to have children unless their relationship is stable, and if it is stable, to encourage them to get married.

“Marriage, as the best structure in which to raise children, needs to be affirmed, strengthened and supported. Recycle your rubbish by all means, but be very slow to recycle your partner,” he told The Times.

"We have to rid ourselves of this dream that we are going to find the partner who is perfect in every way: emotionally, physically, intellectually - it’s just a nonsense.

"People want to change horses mid-stream - it’s the disease of the modern age. Soon you find the new partner is as flawed as the last. It is like a hydra: you cut off one head and get rid of a boring partner but inherit 26 new problems, your new partner’s children, family and so on.”

Family breakdown is the “scourge of society”, he added. “It affects everyone, from the Royal Family downwards. In about 1950 you weren’t allowed in the royal enclosure at Ascot [if divorced]. That would now exclude half the Royal Family.”

“It is a myth that children, even older ones, don’t care. They care greatly and a break-up shocks the whole foundation of the family, it never recovers.”

“My message is mend it — don’t end it. Over 40 years of working in the family justice system, I have seen the fall-out of these broken relationships. There are an estimated 3.8 million children currently caught up in the family justice system. I personally think that’s a complete scandal.”

Sir Paul married aged 23 in 1973 and has three children and three grandchildren.

He added: “I desperately want to avoid a moral crusade. And this is not just a cosy club for people who are happily married and can say, ‘Look how well I have done’. It will, I hope, appeal to people of every class, creed and ethnic background — including those who are divorced.”

The organisation is backed by Baroness Butler-Sloss, the former President of the Family Division; Baroness Deech, a leading family academic and currently chairman of the Bar Standards Board; and Baroness Shackleton, a leading family lawyer whose divorce clients have included the Prince of Wales and Sir Paul McCartney.

“The profession has made its fortune from marital breakdown; it is now time to put something in,” he said.

The judge, who awarded a record £48m to Beverley Charman in her divorce against husband John said: “I get intensely frustrated: I see hundreds and thousands of people traipsing through the courts, and nothing is being done about the problems that sent them here,” he said.

However, Anastasia de Waal, director of family and education at think-tank Civitas, questioned the intervention by a leading judge. She said: “It is very important where you’ve got a judge who is making decisions about families that they are not clouded by a particular view but are looking at what is going to serve the family.”

[Hm. I wonder if Ms. de Waal would say the same about judges who have spoken in favor of no-fault divorce. Ladies Butler-Sloss and Deech are leading progressive family law judges.]

•  Marriage Foundation web site