IndyBar: Why use Arbitration in Family Law?

By Laura Gaskill, Massillamany Jeter & Carson LLP; Robert E. Shive, Emswiller Williams Noland & Clarke LLC

Why not?

That’s the question the Indianapolis Bar Association poses in the upcoming Family Law Arbitration Training set December 3-4, 2025 at IndyBarHQ, it’s Indianapolis headquarters. The Family Law Arbitration Statute was actually adopted in 2016. Despite the fact that many Family Law practitioners are unaware of its existence and have never considered its potential value in their practice, including a Family Law Arbitrator themselves. Arbitration in Family Law presents a variety of practical applications for Family Law cases featuring multiple issues or even single issues. In terms of efficiency, confidentiality, timeliness and the ability to craft the proceedings around the particular facts you’re concerned with in a particular case, Arbitration is sorely underused in Family Law practice.

The initial push to expand the use of Family Arbitration was spearheaded by former Marion County Superior Court Judge Carol Terzo, who held multiple training sessions qualifying several dozen attorneys as Family Law arbitrators. Now, IndyBar and presenters Laura Gaskill and Robert Shive hope to reignite the spark that Judge Terzo began.

The upcoming two-day seminar will focus on the statutory authority surrounding Family Law arbitration, the history of same, the practical applications, and the implementation in Family Law practice. Back to what seems so many years ago, Family Law practitioners were initially reluctant to add mediation to their toolbox. Now, mediation is mandatory in many counties and favored by all participants in the process from judicial officers to the clients themselves.

The next logical step for continued progress in the practice of Family Law is the addition of arbitration to the practitioner’s toolbox. This arbitration training will highlight just how versatile and valuable arbitration can be as well as underscore the value of adding arbitrator to Family Law attorneys’ qualifications along with so many other modern elements such as mediator, Guardian Ad Litem, parenting coordinator, and collaborative law practitioner.

IndyBar and the presenters hope to encourage participants to agree this is the next step in the never-ending progress attorneys seek in improving the Family Law experience for their clients and for themselves, resulting in better, faster, more efficient, and more specific outcomes than Courts are able to provide on a regular basis. The IBA hopes to make this the first of a biannual series of arbitration training to encourage practitioners around the state to participate and add to the momentum of this growing aspect of Family Law practice in Indiana.

Ultimately, the goal is to have awareness and usage of family law arbitration increase to the extent that it becomes and accepted and expanded part of the overall fabric of the practice just as mediation and parenting coordination have before it, with both going from small initial steps to inclusion in local rules and the Indiana Parenting Time Guidelines.

Get in on the start of this momentum and help shape this area!•

Laura Gaskill is a partner with Massillamany Jeter & Carson LLP and leads the firm’s Alternative Dispute Resolution (“ADR”) / Mediation Practice Group. Gaskill returned to private practice after serving over nine years on the bench as a magistrate in Marion County. Prior to serving as a magistrate, Gaskill was an accomplished family law litigator at Mitchell Law Group where she represented clients in all family law related matters. Gaskill is a registered domestic relations mediator and a trained Parenting Coordinator and Guardian Ad Litem. She is an active member of IndyBar.

Robert E. Shive is a partner at Emswiller Williams Noland & Clarke PC where he blends a full litigation practice with substantial involvement in mediation, arbitration, parenting coordination, and collaborative law. He is a registered civil and domestic mediator, a family law arbitrator, parenting coordinator and is trained as a collaborative law professional. He has also been a private and volunteer guardian ad litem. Shive earned his B.A. from Indiana University and his J.D. from the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. Shive is an active member of IndyBar