Family mediators will want to take note of a decision reported this week by Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly regarding the enforceability of premarital agreements in the Commonwealth.
In a case known as Eyster v. Pechenik, a Middlesex Probate and Family Court judge has ruled that a spouse can enforce a premarital agreement in his or her divorce even when the agreement has been drafted by the couple themselves without the assistance of counsel. The agreement will be enforced if there was full disclosure of each parties’ assets prior to its execution, and so long it is fair and reasonable when signed and fair and reasonable when subjected to a “second look” at the time of its enforcement.
According to Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, the husband drafted the agreement after consulting articles from books, newspapers, and magazines, and both parties opted not to seek the advice of attorneys prior to signing it. Among other things, their agreement provided that property acquired prior to and during the marriage would remain with the party who acquired it. At the time of their divorce, the wife argued that the agreement was ambiguous and therefore unenforceable.
This stands as a cautionary tale not only for couples contemplating marriage but also for mediators who assist couples in negotiating the terms of premarital agreements. There is no doubt that premarital agreements, and the conversations that lead up to their creation, can be a useful means for couples to define how best to divide their assets upon death or divorce. Mediation can play an important role in that process, helping couples make those decisions together.
However, premarital agreements hold significant long-term legal consequences. And informed decision-making is of course integral to the mediation process. Mediators will therefore want to remind their clients of the importance of seeking independent legal advice before signing on the dotted line.
(The decision, alas, is not available for free online, although you can, if you wish, pay to have Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly fax it to you. Warning: MLW will charge you the exorbitant sum of $34.50 to do so. You can also read the decision on p. 35 of the print version of the March 27, 2006, edition of MLW.)
Ian Best, the law student I told readers about who is blogging for credit at Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University, has at last completed his taxonomy of law blogs.
Hunting through Best’s categories is rewarding for anyone whose work is grounded in or shaped by the practice or study of law. Explore at random to sample law blogging in all its seemingly infinite variety. Best’s categories break blogs down in numerous ways, including by state (my home state, Massachusetts, has two) and by specialty.
There’s something for everyone here, mediators included, since Best has included a category for alternative dispute resolution blogs. Visit Best’s blog, 3L Epiphany, to see for yourself. (And congratulations to you, Ian, on a job well done.)
For several years now I’ve served as a trainer in a nationwide dispute management and conflict resolution training program at Coca-Cola Enterprises, Coca-Cola’s bottling business. This ambitious program will train over 40,000 managers and employees at all levels of the company in mediation and conflict resolution skills.
I was therefore fascinated to learn through Neville Hobson’s blog about the efforts of the Coca-Cola Company to use blogging as a medium for its employees to share their views and give feedback on Coke’s “Manifesto for Growth“–its vision and mission, together with its values. Employees around the world will be invited to join the conversation.
Meanwhile, high-level executives of other companies, large and small, should ask themselves what they could be doing to get the conversation going with their own employees. After all, getting people talking can get people motivated.
(Via Kevin O’Keefe at Real Lawyers Have Blogs.)
Back in December I introduced readers to ChangeThis, which I described this way:
ChangeThis…[is] a web site born of a radical and hopeful idealism: to virally transmit ideas through a culture medium of community, respect, and dialogue.
Recognizing that “the best discussions in science, medicine, business and politics have always been the civil ones”, ChangeThis publishes what it calls manifestos–proposals for change which serve as “a reasoned, rational call to action, supported by logic and facts”. The goalis to provide a forum for “the rational and thoughtful arguments that help people change their minds to a more productive point of view.“
Sound intriguing? Be sure to visit this site. And while you’re there, download “Thinking Through Problem Solving” a recently published manifesto written by Valarie A.Washington, CEO of Think 6, a strategic consulting company. Washington’s manifesto offers fresh ideas on problem solving which conflict resolution practitioners will find value in.
Of particular interest are Washington’s insights into the obstacles that inhibit successful problem solving. These include the Einstellung Effect–the extent to which habit or experience hampers our ability to see alternative solutions to a problem–and the Dispositional Effect, which accounts for the disconnect between our ability to address the problem and our will to do so, along with our difficulty in recognizing that there’s a problem in the first place.
Washington ultimately proposes a new model for addressing problems: the Ladder of Problem Solving, a non-linear way of thinking about problems which provides impetus for groups “to develop personal accountability, collaborative problem solving, and growth.”
As Einstein once said–and Washington quotes–”We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that we used when we created them. “
