The Family Law Section of the Montgomery County Bar Association recently held its annual Toby L. Dickman seminar focusing, this year, on an overhaul to the Montgomery County Family Court’s custody procedure. These revisions are the result of a multi-year effort initiated by President Judge Thomas M. DelRicci and developed by Family Court Administrative Judge Carolyn Carluccio and Judge Daniel Clifford incorporating the experience and opinions of judges, conciliators, attorneys and litigants. Montgomery County’s goal is to decrease the time between a petitioner’s filing date and the issuance of a final custody order and foster a system where each stage of the process can be a meaningful opportunity for resolution. Through these improvements to the custody procedure, DelRicci intends to avoid having a child “suffer from the paralysis of marital instability longer than was absolutely necessary.” Here are some of the highlights:

Our Children First Seminar

The Our Children First seminar is typically a litigant’s first involvement with the custody process and has been the subject of an extensive reexamination of both the substantive information provided in the seminar, as well as its format. For many litigants, this seminar may be the only co-parenting education they receive and represents a valuable opportunity to educate parents on practical communications tools in an effort to foster productive co-parenting relationships. The four-hour seminar has been reduced to two hours to increase participants’ retention of a more pointed program, as well as to better accommodate work and child-care schedules. The evolution of the seminar will eventually encompass increased utilization of technology and other tools to improve accessibility by participants.

Mediation