CONSUMERS : Tempering Custody Trials, Tribulations

Hugh McIsaac sat in his Downtown office late last week, talking with a Los Angeles couple about visitation rights for their sons. The family had seen McIsaac several times before: Their first visit was seven years ago when they divorced.

“As their lives and needs change, and the children grow up, many people come back to revise a (custody) agreement,” McIsaac explained. “They can come back any time.”

McIsaac is not a lawyer. He directs Los Angeles County Superior Court’s Conciliation Court, where the couple had their child custody dispute mediated and where they worked out a settlement, rather than going through a long, costly trial.

Although the Conciliation Court is celebrating its 50th anniversary, it is not well known outside the legal system, experts say, adding that its work should receive more notice because it offers important, cost-saving family services at 12 sites throughout Los Angeles County.

In 1981, California passed a mandatory mediation law--the first state to do so--requiring family law mediators to see all families involved in custody disputes. Most divorcing couples come to the court with their own lawyers, but that’s not required. “About one-third of the families we see are going through mediation themselves, without a lawyer,” McIsaac said, pointing out that divorcing couples--with or without counsel--can save considerable money by avoiding a trial.

Besides custody mediation, the court also offers couples marital crisis counseling, administers premarital evaluations for youths under age 18 who wish to wed, and, in domestic violence cases, issues parents restraining orders to keep their spouses away from the children.

Representatives of Conciliation Court saw 10,034 families last year, 8,304 of them for child custody and visitation mediation. Of the custody matters, more than 60% (5,034 cases) were mediated at a savings in total trial costs of roughly $15 million.

“The beauty of it is that you know what you’re getting when you make your own deal,” said Suzanne Harris, a family law attorney who chairs the Family Law Section of the Los Angeles County Bar Assn., which fields about 75 family law lawyers who volunteer to mediate child support and property issues in Conciliation Court. “And it really does clear off the (court) calendar.”

In addition to the volunteer counsel, the court has a full-time staff of 21 mediators and 12 evaluators to assist families. The mediators deal only with child custody disputes, not property issues, which volunteer lawyers handle.

“We try to train families to resolve their own conflicts, and give them some pointers to make them more sophisticated in the decision-making,” McIsaac said. “We want to take the emphasis off the parents’ rights and focus on the child’s needs. They actually write their own agreement, then take it to their attorneys for review. Then, if there’s no objection, within 10 days (the custody settlement) becomes an order of the court. Now, less than 2% (of the divorce cases) actually go to trial.”

And if couples can’t settle their own differences? Then they end up before one of the 28 Superior Court judges who handle family law cases. “Judges see the most egregious cases,” said Richard Montes, supervising judge of Family Court Services. “The majority of people going through the system settle their cases. Most arrive at what’s in the best interest of the children.”

The rest end up battling before Montes or one of the other family law judges, many in real dramas that mirror the hateful couple in the movie, “War of the Roses.”

In any divorce, Montes said, “the emotional factor involved is far greater than a civil or criminal case (and) they don’t have the same degree of finality you have in a civil case.” The circumstances keep changing, and “you’re also negotiating future contact,” he said.

Mediators initially spend two to three hours with couples after they have undergone a group orientation and seen a film about divorce from children’s viewpoint.

Sometimes mediators see husbands and wives separately. They interview the children, not to have them choose sides with parents, “but to find out what the child’s needs are, so the parents can resolve things for the best interests of the child,” said Maxine Baker Jackson, a Conciliation Court mediation supervisor. “We’re talking about their treasure, their children.”

Most couples can work out their differences with mediators, “if they can be reasonable,” Jackson said. “But some people don’t want to do it themselves. They want the judge to decide. Then they can always blame it on the judge.”

McIsaac said that couples, on average, see a mediator twice for about five hours before reaching a settlement.

Couples who can settle custody matters certainly can save on legal fees, said Stuart Walzer, a Century City family law specialist, founder of the Southern California chapter of the American Academy of Matrimonial Trial Lawyers and head of the Family Law Section of the American Bar Assn. He estimated that divorce lawyers, typically, charge $250 to $300 an hour, some as high as $500 per hour. Costs escalate dramatically if the couple take their case to trial.

“Some people can settle before mediators and that’s very helpful, but for others it’s of no use at all,” he said.

“Emotions of people enter into divorce more than in any other case. People see their hopes and dreams going down the tube, and they feel they only way be be vindicated is to win. But there are no real winners in divorce.”