What Is Collaborative Law?
Collaborative Law refers to a set of rules adopted by the Mississippi Supreme Court that offers a voluntary, alternative process for resolving family law disputes. While it is not a legislative act, the new rules are based on the Uniform Collaborative Law model and went into effect on August 26, 2024
2024 Mississippi Collaborative Law Act
The Mississippi Supreme Court recently approved new rules which will allow family law disputes to be resolved without adversarial court proceedings before a chancellor.
The new rules offer a way to work out family law disputes including:
marriage, divorce, dissolution, annulment, and property distribution;
child custody, visitation, and parenting time;
alimony, maintenance, and child support;
adoption;
parentage;
premarital, marital, and post-marital agreements;
modifications, enforcements and contempts.
The new rules allow parties to a family law dispute to sign a Collaborative Law Participation Agreement. The Collaborative Law Participation Agreement requires the parties to forego court intervention while using the collaborative family law process to work towards resolution of their dispute. If collaborative efforts fail, new lawyers would be retained to undertake the traditional adversarial process of filing suit in Chancery Court.
The Mississippi Bar through its Board of Bar Commissioners petitioned the Supreme Court to establish Rules for Collaborative Law.
An ad hoc committee appointed in 2020 by then-Mississippi Bar President Jennifer Ingram Johnson of Hattiesburg and chaired by divorce and family law attorney Mark Chinn of Jackson studied rules governing alternatives to litigation in domestic relations and other civil matters in other states. The committee modeled its proposal on the nationally recognized Uniform Collaborative Law, an American Bar Association approved model.
Bar leaders in letters supporting adoption of Rules for Collaborative Law said the process benefits families, lawyers and the courts. Courts potentially benefit as Collaborative Law Participation Agreements could relieve crowded court dockets.
