Kristen M. Lewis, Esq., addressed the Family Law Section of the Atlanta Bar Association at the February, 2013 breakfast meeting. Ms. Lewis is counsel in the Tax Practice at Smith, Gambrell & Russell, LLP, and has extensive experience in the following areas of law: estate planning and wealth protection, "special needs trusts", trust and estate planning and administration, guardianships, fiduciary matters, trusts for pets, and charitable giving techniques.  Ms. Lewis focused her presentation on "special needs trust" planning for persons challenged by disabilities, an issue that many family law attorneys will encounter, if they have not already. 

Ms. Lewis began by explaining the frequency with which family law cases may require "special needs trust" planning.  She noted that more than twenty percent of the population has some kind of disability.  Ms. Lewis further explained that the divorce rate of parents of children with disabilities is significantly higher than of parents of children without disabilities.

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When you ask many attorneys what skills make them successful, they might respond "knowledge of the law", "attention to detail", or "thinking on your feet".  What they rarely say is "listening".

Effective communication creates understanding.  Information is shared via body language, tone of voice, and words.  Some studies have shown that approximately 55% of our communication is transmitted via body language. Another 38% of information is imparted through tone of voice, and the remaining 7% is imparted through words.  If one only focuses on words they will likely miss important pieces of information. Body language and tone often provide the context of information being imparted in words.  A statement that is meant to be funny may only be funny when delivered with a specific tone or body language.

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On January 1, 2013, the new Evidence Code (Title 24) went into effect.  Like most of you, I spent my New Years Eve reading the entire code section front to back, and updated all of my forms that contain the various evidence code sections.  In case you (or your staff) did not do the same thing, attached is a list of the most frequently used evidence provisions in family law litigation with the new and old code section numbers, for ease of reference.

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What is the best parenting plan for most children of divorce? Should infants and toddlers spend overnight time with their nonresidential parent? If not, why not? If so, how much time?  Is shared residential custody better for children than  living with one parent and varying amounts of time living with their other parent - mainly on weekends? Isn't shared residential custody only successful for a small group of well educated, higher income parents who have very cooperative, conflict free relationships, and who mutually agree to share without mediation, litigation or lawyers' negotiations?       

Questions such as those generate much debate among the judiciary, policy makers and mental health professionals. Unfortunately they also generate myths and misconceptions that are frequently presented as "the research" at conferences and seminars, on the web, or in non-academic articles. At best, those myths far over-reach and exaggerate the findings from only a few of the existing studies. At worst, they have virtually no grounding whatsoever in current research. Either way, misconceptions that are not grounded on a broad spectrum of recent, methodologically sound, statistically significant empirical data have an impact on custody decisions and custody laws.

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Please Contact Eileen Thomas at (770) 818-0301 or Eileen@ethomaslaw.com if you would like to join this year's list of sponsors.


view Family Law Institute sponsors as of January 31, 2012