You should listen and engage when the Family Law Section brings proposed legislation to you implementing systemic change. You likely know our lobbyist, Stephanie Johnson of Khoury Johnson & Leavitt. She is well informed on the issues facing family law attorneys and our clients.  The Family Law Section has been working on modifying the dedicated family court legislation, because that existing legislation has not worked out as intended.  We are proposing that we change how judges are appointed and elected to the family law bench, imposing requirements on family law judges to have experience in family law cases, making changes so that the judges actually sit one judge for one family, and requiring family court plans that put judges with family law experience in the family law seat. 

You probably have heard about “shared parenting” legislation. The issue comes before the Legislature approximately every two years.  The proposed legislation would create a presumption that children would have 50/50 parenting time, and require clear and convincing evidence for a judge to depart from 50/50.  The proposed legislation is focused on the parents and not on the best interests of the child or the child’s established custodial environment.  The Family Law Section of the State Bar of Michigan, along with family law attorneys all across the country, have uniformly opposed this type of legislation because it takes away judges’ discretion to decide custody and parenting time based on the best interests of the child in that particular case before the court.    

Once again, you have been asked to consider proposed shared parenting legislation.  Historically, the Family Law Section has responded to the shared parenting legislation by suggesting edits to the proposal or simply outright rejecting it.  We have come to realize that the reason the shared parenting legislation comes before the Legislature every two years like clockwork is really due to an institutional, systemic problem.  The problem is that we have family law judges who are not experienced or trained in family law.  And some of those untrained and inexperienced family law judges are not following the law.  We have come to realize that the solution to the problem that the shared parenting legislation seeks to fix has a better solution: change how we select and elect family law judges, impose requirements for an attorney to qualify for the family law seat, and change how the Supreme Court adopts family court plans. We need your help to accomplish these tasks!

Educate yourself and your colleagues on problems that arise in family law cases. One way to do that is by reading Kids Caught in the Middle. You have a hard job, and very few of you have been legally trained. This is why it is even more important for you to engage with the Family Law Section.