After over a year and a half of review, the Tennessee Supreme Court adopted on April 1 a new rule governing the increasingly popular form of alternative dispute resolution known as collaborative family law.
The new rule is Tennessee Supreme Court Rule 53, and it went into effect on April 1.
The introduction explains:
The distinctive feature of collaborative law, as compared to other forms of alternative dispute resolution such as mediation, is that the parties are represented during negotiations by collaborative lawyers who they retain for the limited purpose of acting as advocates and counselors during the negotiation process and obtaining court approval. . . . The goal of the collaborative family-law process is to achieve an agreement on all issues considered in the collaborative family-law process . . . .
Elsewhere the rule notes this voluntary dispute-resolution process begins when the parties sign a collaborative family-law participation agreement.
If you want to know more about collaborative divorce, how it works, etc., a good place to start is this podcast:
Here are answers to frequently asked questions about collaborative practice. You can contact one of the three practice groups in Tennessee to learn more:
- East Tennessee Collaborative Alliance;
- Middle Tennessee Collaborative Alliance; and
- Memphis Collaborative Alliance.
I encourage all Tennessee family-law attorneys to contact one of those practice groups for information on how to become trained to handle collaborative divorces.
Knoxville divorce coach Emily Heird prepared this educational brochure for our East Tennessee practice group:
Source: Tennessee Supreme Court Rule 53 (April 1, 2019)