Honoring Families Initiative

Current family justice systems often do not meet the critical needs of many parents and children. In response, the Honoring Families Initiative (HFI) is working to develop new models for service delivery that envision a role for both courts and outside entities. While courts alone can perform the judicial functions of fact finding, enforcement, and protection, many separating and divorcing families simply require access to problem-solving services which do not need to be located in courts. To the extent that families would benefit from these services, HFI sees a role for non-court entities in making them available.

In pursuit of this court and community partnership, HFI created an alternative for separating and divorcing families that is focused on children and the needs of the family. This HFI out-of-court model is designed to provide separating or divorcing families who agree to work together with access to comprehensive and interdisciplinary services—to empower parents to resolve their disputes and reorganize their family themselves in a non-adversarial context. To learn more about the Honoring Families Initiative, visit the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System.

The efforts of this blog, Family Restoration, at http://www.regentfamilyrestoration.blogspot.com, has long worked to connect readers with legal alternatives to family brokeness and opportunities toward restoring families and family relationships. For example, you can access more scholarship on opportunities for marital reconciliation on SSRN.

Training law students toward family restoration can bring problem-solving ideas to the family judicial system.