Unified Family Courts: An Interdisciplinary Framework and a Problem-Solving Approach

Abstract

Traditional court systems are proving ill-equipped to handle the growing volume and complex scope of family law cases in contemporary American society. Family law matters impact every aspect of a person’s life; thus, having a court system that can holistically address such matters is vitally important.This chapter advocates that a unified family court is the most efficient problem-solving model to address the complex societal issues associated with family legal disputes. The blueprint advanced to design this court is rooted in a theoretical framework derived from the ecology of human development and therapeutic jurisprudential paradigms. This interdisciplinary framework urges family law decision-makers to consider and to aim to achieve outcomes that have positive consequences for families and children and that account for the various systems and connections that influence a family’s life. The chapter outlines a five-part blueprint to construct a unified family court and describes certain aspects of the current landscape of America’s family justice systems based upon the author’s national surveys conducted in 1998, 2002, and 2008. The unified family court blueprint consists of five parts, as follows: First, the court should have some type of specialized structure with judges who fully understand the legal and social issues facing family law litigants. The specialized court should be at the same level as a trial court of general jurisdiction, and the court should receive the same resources and support as the generalist courts. Second, the court should have comprehensive subject-matter jurisdiction over the full range of family law matters. Third, the court must have an efficient case management and case processing system with a one judge/one case or one judge/one team approach. Fourth, the court must offer an array of services, including alternative dispute resolution and other court-connected social services that accommodate the needs of the family. Finally, the unified family court should be user-friendly and accessible by all litigants, including the large proportion of self-represented family law litigants. The author advocates that through the problem-solving court template and the author’s blueprint for a unified family court, decision-makers can better serve the families and children who desperately need and deserve the help from the justice system.

[W]hile the challenges of a contemporary…family court docket may be fierce, we can unquestionably find ways to meet them and do better. I am simply unwilling to adopt a despairing and defeatist attitude that ‘nothing works’ or—put another way—‘everything stinks, but don’t change a thing.’¹

Introduction

State court caseload statistics reveal that people increasingly are using the courts to resolve their family legal disputes.² For example, in Maryland, nearly 45 % of the total trial court filings involve family and juvenile cases, exceeding the portion devoted to either criminal or tort cases.³ Further, the majority of family law litigants are not represented by attorneys, a recent phenomenon that presents special challenges for courts.⁴

In addition to the increasing number of family law cases, the problems associated with family legal issues are complex. Many families now regularly face challenges related to unemployment, poverty, homelessness, substance abuse, mental illness, and domestic violence, to name a few.⁵ Dramatic changes in the structure and function of the family, including new reproductive technologies and increased life expectancy,⁶ also complicate the resolution of family law matters. Adjudication of these matters challenges the court process, which often is ill equipped to handle the volume and scope of family law cases in contemporary American society.

[T]he judicial system present in most states…contributes to the demise of the family unit. Under the current system, it is not uncommon to have a family involved with one judge because of an adult abuse proceeding, a second judge because of the ensuing divorce, with still another judge because of child abuse and neglect allegations, and a fourth judge if the abuse allegations led to criminal charges. The fragmented judicial system is costly to litigants, inefficient in the use of judicial resources, and can result in the issuance of diverse or even conflicting orders affecting the family. Also, “too often courthouse resolutions resolve only the legal conflicts, leaving unaddressed the underlying personal relationship and psychological disputes.”⁷

One court reform that attempts to address these issues is a concept receiving increasing consideration and about which I have written extensively is the unified family court.⁸

[A unified family court is] a single court system with comprehensive jurisdiction over all cases involving children and relating to the family. One specially trained and interested judge addresses the legal and accompanying emotional and social issues challenging each family. Then under the auspices of the family court judicial action, informal court processes and social service agencies and resources are coordinated to produce a comprehensive resolution tailored to the individual family’s legal, personal, emotional, and social needs. The result is a one family–one judge system that is more efficient and more compassionate for families in crisis.⁹

Although the American Bar Association, the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, and the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges all advocate for the creation of unified family courts ,¹⁰ my own research over time has revealed many states have not adopted this model, nor do they have any specialized system to handle family law matters.¹¹

Reacting to similar challenges, criminal justice systems in many states have addressed issues like those facing family justice systems —burgeoning numbers compounded by complex social problems—by creating specialized problem-solving courts . As discussed by the other authors in this volume, “[p]roblem-solving courts are part of the formal criminal justice system. They seek not to divert cases out of the system but rather to reengineer the system itself.”¹² Beginning with the first drug treatment court established in Miami, Florida, in 1989, “[t]here are now more than 2,000 problem-solving courts .”¹³ While the most well-developed problem-solving courts are community courts, domestic-violence courts, and drug courts, “there are no fewer than eleven different kinds of problem-solving courts.”¹⁴ These include, for example, “mental-health courts, reentry courts, juvenile drug courts, DWI courts, family-treatment courts, homeless courts, and youth courts .”¹⁵ The common element to all of these specialized courts is “working to ensure not just that the punishment fits the crime…but that the process fits the problem. These innovative courts encourage judges and attorneys to think of themselves as problem solvers rather than as simply case processors.”¹⁶

This chapter advocates that family law cases also deserve and require this type of problem-solving justice. Introduction of the chapter summarizes my interdisciplinary approach to family law decision-making and to court reform in family law through the application of a therapeutic jurisprudence . In Therapeutic Jurisprudence and Family Law Court Reform, I continue in a similar vein by focusing on the developmental psychology research on the ecology of human development . The Ecology of Human Development and Family Court Reform reviews my blueprint for the creation of a model unified family court that incorporates the interdisciplinary perspective. Blueprint for an Interdisciplinary Unified Family Court provides brief concluding remarks about the importance of applying the general problem-solving court philosophy to my blueprint for unified family courts .

Therapeutic Jurisprudence and Family Law Court Reform

“Family law cases focus on some of the most intimate, emotional, and all-encompassing aspects of parties’ personal lives.”¹⁷ The law is intervening explicitly by determining how families and children live. Because of this unique and powerful aspect of these cases, the legal process should seek a way to address effectively the legal and nonlegal issues, as well as a method to account for all the competing influences on the parties’ lives. Therapeutic jurisprudence , a concept from mental health law that now is applied internationally and to broad areas of the law,¹⁸ suggests how courts should proceed if they intervene in people’s lives. The ecology of human development ,¹⁹ a research paradigm from the social sciences, offers to family law attorneys and decision-makers, as well as to court reformers, an analytical tool to account for the many factors affecting parties’ lives. When these constructs are applied together, they empower the justice system to provide more effective solutions to contemporary family legal issues. I address therapeutic jurisprudence in this section and address ecology of human development in the next.

Professor David Wexler, one of the co-founders with Professor Bruce Winick of the concept of therapeutic jurisprudence, defines it as follows:

Therapeutic jurisprudence is the study of the role of law as a therapeutic agent. It looks at the law as a social force that, like it or not, may produce therapeutic or anti-therapeutic consequences. Such consequences may flow from substantive rules, legal procedures, or from the behavior of legal actors (lawyers or judges).

The task of therapeutic jurisprudence is to identify—and ultimately to examine empirically—relationships between legal arrangements and therapeutic outcomes. The research task is a cooperative and thoroughly interdisciplinary one.²⁰

Therapeutic jurisprudence applied in the family law context requires that the court focus on achieving outcomes that help the individuals and families involved in family law cases.²¹ The individual’s own viewpoint is important in determining what constitutes a therapeutic outcome, something attorneys and decision-makers must attempt to honor.²² Nonetheless, “what is ultimately regarded as ‘therapeutic’—and the law’s role in promoting therapeutic aims is a socio-political decision, decided by legal-political decision-makers, with … important input given to consumers or recipients of the law’s therapeutic aims.”²³ Therapeutic jurisprudence calls for an understanding of “the extent to which a legal rule or practice promotes the psychological and physical well-being of the people it affects.”²⁴

A therapeutic jurisprudential approach to family law practice and decision-making and to court reform in family law aims to improve the lives of families and children as a result of their involvement with the family justice system .²⁵ To accomplish this, attorneys and decision-makers must contemplate legal outcomes intended to produce more effective functioning on the part of families and children.²⁶ As I have written, “[i]n the field of family law, therapeutic jurisprudence should strive to protect families and children from present and future harms, to reduce emotional turmoil, to promote family harmony or preservation, and to provide individualized and efficient, effective justice.”²⁷ As Professors Wexler and Winick caution, however, “[t]herapeutic jurisprudence in no way suggests that therapeutic considerations should trump other considerations. Therapeutic considerations are but one category of important considerations, as are autonomy, integrity of the fact-finding process, community safety, and more.”²⁸

Accepting therapeutic jurisprudence as a goal of family law practice and decision-making requires insisting upon this therapeutic orientation for all professionals involved in the process, including attorneys, judges, mental health professionals, special masters, and mediators, among others.²⁹ This orientation “has the potential to facilitate problem-solving and to positively enhance the quality of the parties’ daily lives, thereby rendering a more effective outcome for individuals and families.”³⁰ In addition, “[s]ociety as a whole must begin to acknowledge that this type of intervention and support is therapeutic for families, rather than viewing the intervention as an indication that families have failed.”³¹

For example, Randall Kessler describes a few experiences he has had in a Georgia Unified Family Court in which the judges and attorneys have approached cases holistically and with the goal of closure. ³² Kessler described cases where the judges and attorneys worked together to avoid long appeals process and embarrassment for the parties.³³ The “one-stop judicial shopping” provided by a unified family court results in a more efficient system where families only appear before one judge even if there are a variety of ongoing and current legal issues (e.g., domestic violence protection petition, child support proceedings, divorce, etc.).³⁴ The rationale behind the “one-stop” approach rests on the idea that the myriad of legal issues a family can experience are very often interrelated and interdependent³⁵ and coordination of efforts should result in a system that has less duplication and is more effective.³⁶

The Ecology of Human Development and Family Court Reform

To be most effective and helpful to family law litigants, the family law process must allow for a comprehensive understanding of all the legal and nonlegal issues the parties face. I have proposed the application of a theoretical research paradigm from the social sciences, “the ecology of human development ,”³⁷ as a valuable framework to structure this holistic approach to both the family legal process and court structure. This section outlines the relevant underpinnings of this Professor Urie Bronfenbrenner’s model, which promotes consideration of the interaction among individuals, institutions, and the social environment; assists with the identification of problems; and contributes to the development of solutions.³⁸ The ultimate aim of the ecological approach is to strengthen the connections among these interactions, institutions, and influences to improve families’ and children’s functioning.³⁹ Bronfenbrenner “sees the social environment as a grand human experiment, and thus invites our efforts to improve it, to make it better.”⁴⁰

Bronfenbrenner accounts for the competing influences on people’s lives by arranging the settings within which individuals live from smallest to largest⁴¹—“as a set of nested structures, each inside the next, like a set of Russian dolls.”⁴² The most immediate context within which people live is the “microsystem,”⁴³ such as the husband–wife relationship, the parent–child relationship, and sibling relationships. The next level or setting is the “mesosystem,”⁴⁴ or the relationships between microsystems, such as the interconnections between a child’s school and his home setting or between a child’s school and the neighborhood setting. The “exosystem”⁴⁵ is the next largest setting and encompasses those setting that have power over one’s life but in which one does not participate, such as the influence of a parent’s workplace on a child’s life. Finally, the overarching ideological patterns of a culture or subculture, or shared assumptions and social policy, are known as the “macrosystem.”⁴⁶ Bronfenbrenner believes that increasing the number and extent of individuals’ and families’ connections among these various systems can function as positive influences on family life.⁴⁷ He also imposes a life-course perspective with regard to the lives of families and children, recognizing that situations and their effects on individuals and families may change over time.⁴⁸

Applied to family law decision-making, the value of this ecological approach is “that it reveals connections that might otherwise go unnoticed and helps us look beyond the immediate and the obvious to see where the most significant influences lie.”⁴⁹ Further, “the ecological perspective on human development offers a kind of map for steering a course of study and intervention.”⁵⁰ Bronfenbrenner suggests that each level of the ecology can produce benefits or risks, and he urges strengthening these natural interactions or interconnections to enhance individual and family functioning.⁵¹ Applying the ecology of human development paradigm to families’ legal problems can assist lawyers, judges, and other professionals involved with the family justice system to identify the breadth and scope of factors affecting people’s lives and allow them to have a holistic view of families’ functioning. Court professionals can “look beyond the individual litigants … to holistically examine the larger social environments in which participants live, and to fashion legal remedies that strengthen a family’s supportive relationships.”⁵² This expanded knowledge permits all family justice system professionals to intervene more effectively, thereby promoting more therapeutic outcomes for families and children.

In practice, this holistic approach encourages court personnel to consider the variety of influences on the family in order to provide more effective solutions.⁵³ For example, the courts would consider the organizations and relationships the family members have with their neighborhoods, religious organizations, and schools.⁵⁴ Although the courts may not be able to change the family’s mesosystem, it would be able to consider it in deciding how to apply the law in a way that is best for the family. That means the entire court process would do a better job of accommodating the complex factors that contributed to the family being within the court system.⁵⁵ One way that unified family courts do just this is through the “one-stop” approach. Many families who are in need of court interventions are also dealing with employment and financial strains. By considering these strains and making the process more efficient, the families will have a better chance at success.

Likewise, the court structure itself must assist decision-makers to consider the various systems affecting the family. Courts must be guided to view schools, neighborhoods, places of employment, religious organizations, and other institutions within which family members participate as potential influences upon a family’s legal matters. I have created a blueprint for a particular court structure, the unified family court, with the theoretical underpinnings of therapeutic jurisprudence and the ecology of human development set within the general problem-solving template, as the mechanism to achieve this structured consideration of families’ and children’s lives, thereby assisting in the fashioning of more effective resolutions to families’ legal problems.⁵⁶

Blueprint for an Interdisciplinary Unified Family Court

A unified family court is one that coordinates the work of independent forums and agencies, each of which has some limited role to resolve family legal matters.⁵⁷ This section describes the blueprint for a model unified family court framed by the ecology of human development and driven by therapeutic jurisprudence. This interdisciplinary framework empowers the family justice system to fashion the most appropriate outcomes for families and children. The section also describes certain aspects of the current design of America’s family justice systems based upon the results of a national survey, which I have conducted in 1998,⁵⁸ 2002,⁵⁹ and most recently in 2008.⁶⁰

Separate Court Structure

It is imperative to consider family law issues within a specialized court due to the diversity of and relationships among the legal problems, as well as the intimacy of the participants and the effect of these problems on the stability of people’s lives.⁶¹ As one scholar has noted, “a single court could examine the entire relationship between parent and parent, parent and child, child and child, family and in-laws, and family and the public. And, having explored the whole complex of relationships, a single court could provide consistent and continuing consideration of each aspect of the problem.”⁶²

Courts within the last decade have begun to restructure their processing of family law cases by creating separate specialized courts or by creating divisions or departments of existing courts, known, for example, as family divisions or family departments.⁶³ In fact, only 13 states currently operate without some form of family court in existence somewhere within the state, although the rest do not necessarily have a unified family court system.⁶⁴ Given the numbers of family law cases our nation’s justice systems are handling, along with the importance of family legal matters in people’s lives and their effects on society, it is imperative that any family court, regardless of its structure, be established at the same level and receive the same resources and support as a trial court of general jurisdiction.⁶⁵

Another issue related to court structure is that of judicial specialization. As I have written, … judges assigned to specialized family courts must themselves be specialized family court jurists. The types of choices required by decision-makers to resolve family legal matters compel the need for judicial specialization. Not only must these judges fully understand the intricacies of the entire body of family law , but they also must possess an appreciation for and understanding of the social settings within which family members function, including any problems attendant to each of these settings, such as substance abuse and domestic violence .⁶⁶

Because of the complex nature of the cases, family court judges equipped to fashion the most effective or therapeutic outcomes for families and children are those educated about relevant social science literature, including child development, family dynamics, domestic violence , mental illness , substance abuse, and other issues related to family law cases.

Length of judicial assignment is another issue critical to court structure. “In order to fully comprehend the breadth of family law proceedings, as well as to understand from an ecological focus the various settings within which family law litigants live their lives, family law judges must remain within the family court system for significant periods of time.”⁶⁷ In my most recent survey of America’s family justice systems , I have found that in those states with some form of family court, the length of a judge’s term ranges from 1 year to a life-term assignment.⁶⁸ In the majority of jurisdictions, family court judges generally serve for a term ranging between 2 and 10 years.⁶⁹ Some scholars estimate the minimum length of judicial assignment to a family court at 4 years,⁷⁰ but we do not yet have any empirical evidence that provides guidance on what would be the ideal term or even the ideal way to train these judges.

Comprehensive Subject Matter Jurisdiction

To enable a unified family court to address a family’s legal and related nonlegal problems holistically, rather than in a fragmented and unrelated manner, the court should have comprehensive subject matter jurisdiction over the full range of family law issues.⁷¹

A court without this power will struggle to fully strengthen the family’s interactions among the various systems within which it functions. Similarly, the court would not be at liberty to resolve related family problems, which severely interferes with the effectiveness of the court’s intervention.

Unified family courts must be equipped to respond as comprehensively as possible to these related legal matters. Subject matter jurisdiction should include dissolution and related matters, such as distribution of marital property, separation, and annulment; child custody, visitation, modification, and interstate custody cases; child support establishment, modification, enforcement, and uniform interstate family support cases; determination of paternity; child abuse and neglect ; termination of parental rights; domestic violence proceedings; adoption; juvenile delinquency proceedings; adult and juvenile guardianship and conservatorship; mental health matters, including civil commitment and confinement; legal-medical issues, including right to die, abortion, and living wills; emancipation; and name change.⁷²

Although experts differ about whether to include the criminal jurisdiction over intrafamilial issues as unified family court subject matter jurisdiction, such as child abuse and domestic violence,⁷³ some states are experimenting with integrated domestic violence courts.⁷⁴ Integrated Domestic Violence courts hear all civil and criminal cases involving a family with domestic violence concerns.⁷⁵ The aim of these courts is to protect and assist victims and to promote defendant accountability,⁷⁶ but there are possible due process issues that the courts must address.

According to my most recent survey of America’s family justice systems , of the 38 states (including District of Columbia) that have some form of family court, 24 states and the District of Columbia assign their family courts comprehensive subject matter jurisdiction.⁷⁷ Empowering unified family courts with the most inclusive subject matter jurisdiction feasible allows courts to respond as comprehensively as possible to all of a family’s related legal and nonlegal matters. This promotes a more holistic assessment of a family’s problems and facilitates the fashioning of more effective outcomes for the family.

Specialized Case Management and Case Processing System

In order to prevent family legal problems from remaining unresolved and escalating, it is important for these cases to receive prompt attention from the justice system. Case management and case processing, or the method by which cases proceed from initial filing through resolution, should proceed without undue delay and with active, hands-on participation from court personnel as early as possible.⁷⁸

A judge, a professional court administrator, a trained intake worker, or a team of these personnel can evaluate each case filing or intake and can determine whether the parties require immediate attention. The initial evaluation process also can result in referral of the parties to appropriate [social] services, as well as scheduling an early status conference. At this conference, the parties, their attorneys, and the judge can frame the issues in the case, discuss settlement possibilities, and consider alternatives to an adversarial trial or hearing.⁷⁹

The active case management process is ongoing throughout the life of the case and requires constant monitoring.⁸⁰ For example, in New York, the judge has an active role in leadership and the team approach with the case conferences. These case conferences allow for a more efficient approach that can better accommodate timely and appropriate interventions.⁸¹

A related aspect of case management and case processing necessitates considering who should become familiar with the history of each case, as well as how this historical and holistic knowledge can be acquired. The one judge–one case method, or the individual assignment system, of case management means that the same judge oversees a case from start to finish.⁸² This method facilitates more therapeutic and ecological decision-making because a judge develops a more comprehensive awareness of the family’s problems, allowing for the fashioning of more effective outcomes. For example, if a judge knows that a particular intervention was not helpful or effective in the past, she will have a better idea of the types of interventions that may be better suited for the family. Another type of case management is the one judge–one family approach, where the family appears before the same judge every time the parties come to court and on any number of cases.⁸³ While this approach offers the same benefits as the one judge–one case method, there is concern that the judges’ impartiality will be compromised due to “judicial overfamiliarity” with the parties.⁸⁴ In other words, the characteristics that make the one judge–one case method appealing can also be a source of criticism if the judges do not guard against becoming so familiar that they are no longer unbiased. A third method of case management, the one family–one team approach, ensures consistency in processing a family law case due to the same team of court administrators’ involvement in a family’s case every time the family utilizes the court system.⁸⁵ The advantages of this method are the same as the other two case assignment methods.

My 2008 family justice system survey reveals that of the 38 jurisdictions that have some form of family court, 12 jurisdictions apply the one judge–one family case assignment method.⁸⁶ Five states currently use the one judge–one case assignment method.⁸⁷ Four states⁸⁸ assign cases through the traditional calendar method.⁸⁹ The remaining 16 states employ a variety of case assignment methods.⁹⁰

Operating a unified family court with a therapeutic and ecological approach requires a high level of administrative coordination, including providing a family court administrator and an administrative or presiding family court judge.⁹¹ “The court management system, including nonjudicial personnel, must aim to resolve disputes in a timely manner, to supply and to coordinate efficiently the necessary resources or services, and to network appropriately with other courts in the system to share information about families that allows for consistent judicial decision-making.”⁹² This type of court administration, coupled with the specialized case management and case processing systems detailed above, promotes more effective resolutions for family legal proceedings.

An Array of Services

It is essential for a unified family court to have available an array of services it can offer families in order to fashion the most helpful outcomes. These services can assist judges in the family law case management process and can aid their understanding of the entire context of a family’s legal problems, including any underlying social and psychological issues related to the family’s functioning.⁹³ “This informed decision-making enables a judge to fashion a creative resolution to the family problem…”⁹⁴ In addition, “[t]he accelerated and coordinated provision of social services is … unified under the authority of the family court, as is coordination of collateral and ancillary matters … for family members not directly before the court.”⁹⁵

Alternative dispute resolution procedures, such as negotiation, mediation, neutral case evaluation, and other informal processes, should be part of any family court’s functioning because they all work together to distance the case from the traditional adversarial system.

The earlier the court incorporates these alternatives into family law proceedings, the more successful the court becomes at circumventing the adversary process and locating services to assist families. In contrast to … programs existing independent of the court system, court-connected programs are likely to gain greater acceptance by the parties; they tend to view procedures in this setting as unbiased….”⁹⁶

The nature of the services can vary, depending upon the needs of the court clientele and community.⁹⁷ Services can be court-supplied or court-connected, where the court links the parties to existing services within the community, a more fiscally prudent process.⁹⁸ Examples of services, in addition to alternative dispute resolution efforts, include assessment and evaluation, counseling, parent education, children’s programs, supervised visitation, neutral drop-off centers, substance abuse services, domestic violence victim advocacy and representation, and assistance for self-represented litigants.⁹⁹ But the number of services is not the ultimate answer; courts should be seeking empirical evidence on what types of services are most effective for particular situations and family’s needs. Unified family court judges are likely to be better equipped to consider the empirical evidence because of their specialized knowledge and commitment to social science research.

The provision of appropriate services requires the unified family court to work closely with the community, creating a court–community connection. Whatever services are deemed appropriate for a given family within a particular court setting, the earlier the family members receive the services, the more likely they are to benefit from them and thus to reap the therapeutic outcomes these courts should provide.¹⁰⁰

A User-Friendly Court

Given the enormous volume of family law cases,¹⁰¹ it is essential for the unified family court to remain accessible to users and be user-friendly. The unified family court also must account for the tremendous numbers of self-represented litigants.¹⁰² A unified family court should be centrally located,¹⁰³ and it should be child- and family-oriented, including maintaining appropriate waiting rooms for children and witnesses, separate interview rooms for privacy, and adequate courthouse security.¹⁰⁴ Creating a user-friendly court also means that courts are designed for the convenience of the clientele and that all court personnel are trained to treat the clientele courteously.¹⁰⁵ One relatively recent improvement involves new technologies that permit courts to install computerized kiosks that disseminate prepared legal forms¹⁰⁶ and to make form pleadings available via the internet and in courthouse centers for family law matters.¹⁰⁷

Although no one court design is adaptable to every jurisdiction, this blueprint for a unified family court , grounded in a therapeutic and an ecological perspective, most closely approaches the model court defined by the Standard Family Court Act in 1959 but never established in the necessary comprehensive sense.

To protect and safeguard family life, in general, and family units, in particular, by affording to family members all possible help in resolving their justiciable problems and conflicts arising from their interpersonal relationships, in a single court, with one specially qualified staff under one leadership, with a common philosophy and purpose working as a unit, with one set of family records, all in one place, under the direction of one or more specially qualified judges.¹⁰⁸

Because more effective resolution of family legal matters can benefit the entire society by strengthening individuals’ and families’ functioning, it is imperative that all lessons learned are applied to family justice system reform. The interdisciplinary unified family court model proposed in this chapter is enhanced by applying principles from the recently established problem-solving courts.

Conclusion

Why is it vitally important to consider unified family courts within the problem-solving or specialty court context? I believe the unified family court idea is the best way to address the myriad of issues that families bring to the legal system. Family law matters touch on every aspect of a person’s life; having a court system that can more holistically address those matters is vitally important. By using the problem-solving court template and my blueprint for the unified family court we can better approach the whole of the family rather than piecemeal tactics that will continue to fall short. A unified family court that comprehensively approaches the needs of families from an interdisciplinary perspective and is able to do so in a user-friendly way will meet the current challenges of overburdened courts and families that desperately need their help.