Four counties add alternative dispute resolution programs

A statewide program that’s slowly grown over decades has made its way to Hamilton County, helping low-income residents resolve family law disputes outside of the courtroom.

The county’s Alternative Dispute Resolution program offers qualified low-income residents the opportunity to utilize mediation services and court-ordered programming they otherwise wouldn’t have access to because of their income.

“A lot of the options that make family law more agreeable and less contentious, they’re gone if you don’t have the means to which to pay for them,” said Hamilton County Circuit Court Judge Andrew Bloch. “I view this program as kind of a leveling the playing field for people that may not have the means of other litigants.”

Hamilton County’s program falls under the purview of the statewide ADR Program, which was established in 2003 under House Enrolled Act 1034 and made available in all 92 Indiana counties.

For 20 years, the program has approved services to lighten the load of courts and help residents resolve their disputes in a timely, less stressful manner.

Hamilton County is just one of a few counties preparing to launch their own program in 2025: White, Carroll, and Fountain counties will begin using their ADR plans as well. And in 2024, Clark, Floyd, and Spencer counties established their own plans.

So far 53 counties across the state have active ADR plans, making crucial family law resources widely available to around 5.5 million Hoosiers, according to Joseph Fischer, who runs the statewide program.

What the program does

Leaders in Hamilton County have been talking about drafting an ADR plan for years, well before some of today’s judges were appointed to the bench.

“It’s just been something that’s sort of in the backs of our minds of something that we wanted to do, something that we felt that there was certainly a need for,” said Hamilton County Superior Court Judge David Najjar, who was appointed in 2017. “But it was just a matter of, you know, is it the right time? Do we have the right resources in place?”

A strong campaign by the Indiana Supreme Court helped bring the program to Hamilton County, Bloch said. To participate, counties develop a strategy that aligns with requirements found in Indiana Code Section 33, which includes determining how money within an allocated fund will be used in the county’s circuit, superior, and probate courts.

The funds must primarily support county residents with limited finances. Once a plan is established, it’s then reviewed by the Indiana Office of Judicial Administration before it goes into effect.

Under the program, participating counties can impose a $20 fee on filings for legal separation, paternity, and divorce cases. These fees go into the county’s ADR fund.

Hamilton County will begin requiring the $20 fee starting Jan. 1, 2025. The county’s strategy is supported by a grant from the supreme court that matches the number of requests for waived filing fees the county granted in a calendar year, Bloch said. After the first year, the program will be self-sustaining through the ADR fund.

The county is using a sliding fee scale based on income for residents who qualify for the program, according to a press release from the county. For families earning less than $35,000 per year, the ADR program will offer access to services like mediation and guardian ad litem with a total maximum co-payment of $100.

Hamilton County will also support residents’ access to parenting coordination and parenting classes, the latter of which is required in the county for cases that involve children.

Other counties in the state

Despite becoming a state program in 2003, the first iteration of the ADR program was established in Allen County years before, Fischer said.

When state leaders saw Allen County’s program was a success, parties worked to bring it to the state Legislature, where it was approved in July 2003.

One Hoosier county that’s seen continued success in its ADR program is Monroe County, where Circuit Court Judge Catherine Stafford said the program has been well-received by both county leaders and residents.

“We’re really lucky that our community supports these needs,” she said.

Monroe County has had its ADR program in place since 2004, providing mediation services and co-parent counseling to residents in need.

Services like parent coordination help families find middle ground to establish quick solutions in co-parenting situations.

“They can help say, ‘okay, you know what? In my reading of the order, I think it’s, you know, mom’s weekend, or this is dad’s weekend,’” Stafford said. “It gives people kind of a mini arbitrator kind of a situation where they can just resolve some of those quick disputes more efficiently.”

Stafford said that while low-income parties in a criminal case have access to a public defender and occasionally a probation officer to help them through their proceedings, “in a family law case where our children and the future of our society are at stake, you don’t have the right to a public defender, you don’t have the right to an attorney, and you don’t have the right to any services,” she said.

To further support residents, the county hires contract mediators to handle family conflicts that require special skills the mediator on staff may not have.

“If we have a family law case that’s combined with an adoption case and maybe a CHINS case, maybe we need an attorney who’s really familiar with those areas of the law to come and do the mediation,” she said.

Both the statewide and individual county ADR programs continue to evolve as family cases require adaptation to change.

In July 2023, the state program expanded to include guardian ad litem services per a recommendation from the Family Law Taskforce, which said the state lacks uniformity and consistency in its GAL practice. Historically, the state has not had a funding source to pay for GALs, Fischer wrote for the Indiana Court Times.

And Carroll and White counties, which share borders in western Indiana, will soon be the first to launch a joint program that covers family law in both counties.

“They don’t co-mingle the money they collect, but they are working together because there’s a limited number of providers there, and they created a plan where they could ensure that their providers are not being double booked into the same area,” Fischer said.

Counties with existing programs also continue to update their own plans as needed.

These plans not only help counties support their constituents but also themselves, as judicial leaders continue to battle the ongoing attorney shortage plaguing the state.

“Anything that we can do to sort of reduce the case load and not have so many cases come to court and be litigated, but we can achieve resolutions outside of trial, I think everybody wins on that,” Najjar said.•