Family Court as Problem Solving?

Abstract

Problem-solving courts seek to find new responses to social, human, and legal problems, often through the integration of treatment programs that modify the behavior of litigants. Focusing on child support enforcement proceedings in family court, this Essay asks if legal actors understand these cases as adversarial, non-adversarial, or problem solving. This project draws from original, in-depth qualitative interviews with an array of legal actors— including judges, family court commissioners, child support attorneys, and defense attorneys. Findings reveal that legal actors see both adversarial and non-adversarial features in child support enforcement proceedings. However, as they develop personal and potentially conflicting orientations toward their work, litigants bear the consequences. Legal actors’ suggestion that the adversarial nature of cases can be minimized may deny litigants the opportunity to zealously advocate for their position—either in the form of effective self-representation or by acquiring an attorney. Legal actors’ competing understandings of the problems underlying the nonpayment of support also suggest that litigants do not derive the full benefits of a problemsolving model. Connections to services around job access, educational attainment, expungement, transportation, and other structural issues are irregularly or partially institutionalized. Variation in legal actors’ approaches to these cases may undermine both the rights and protections of the adversarial model and the service provision of the problem-solving model.