Understanding a Child’s Resistance to Visitation   With the increase in claims of parental alienation in custody disputes, family lawyers must understand the fine distinctions between true parental alienation and other forms of visitation refusal. Otherwise, you may claim parental alienation on a case or end up defending against it without fully understanding other options. To avoid barking up the wrong tree, it is imperative to understand the difference between full blown parental alienation, alignment, estrangement, enmeshment, alienating behaviors without resistance and normal developmental visitation refusal. Parental alienation is a...

The Ohio Rules of Professional Conduct remind us, that as attorneys we function not only as advocates in adversarial situations, but also as negotiators, evaluators and advisors.[1]  The Rules outline our affirmative duty to provide information reasonably necessary to inform clients or other persons seeking our advice of the advantages and disadvantages of proposed courses of conduct which includes discussion of the client’s or other person’s options and alternatives.[2]  The Rules also provide that it is our clients who determine the scope of our representation and that we must respect our clients’ decisions concerning the objectives...

What Can We Learn About Making Collaborative Law Work By Thinking About When It Won’t? William A. Wilson, Esq. INTRODUCTION Practitioners of collaborative law, whether lawyers, financial experts or mental health professionals, have an emotional and psychological bias toward the ideology, process and types of outcomes associated with collaborative practice. But not every dispute, and not every party in a dispute, is appropriate for collaborative practice.  This article will discuss some examples of situations where collaborative practice will not work- and in so doing, attempt to shed light on when it will. As a preliminary matter, let’s...

by: Kimberly Fauss, Esq. As Collaborative professionals become more adept through mastery of interest-based skills, we seek to expand our understanding of the underlying reasons clients respond (or not) to the challenges of self-determination. The centrality of relationship founded in trust, both between a professional and client as well as between and among teams of Collaborative colleagues, reveals a key to durable solutions we can craft together. The real challenge of Collaborative work ultimately rests with the personal commitment of the Collaborative professional. The internal change we undergo as professionals working together is the...