Login | November 15, 2024
High Court workgroup creates the OG web portal for DR practitioners
RICHARD WEINER
Technology for Lawyers
Published: November 15, 2024
For all domestic relations practitioners—judges, magistrates, practitioners, GALs, legal staff, etc., who wanted a standalone web portal into all Ohio DR law, this one’s for you.
It took about four years, said Cuyahoga County Domestic Relations Judge Diane Palos, but the Ohio Supreme Court’s Subcommittee on Family Reform Implementation to the Supreme Court Advisory Committee on Children & Families, headed by Judge Palos, created and posted the ultimate guide to the state’s incredibly complex DR laws.
I used to practice domestic relations law in that court and, believe me, this huge accomplishment will be welcomed by anyone with business before any DR court on any issue.
The project began as a conversation among the committee members on how to update the judges’ “desk book.”
“The last update we had to the desk book was 2014,” she said. “We had a large three-ring binder” with cases, statutes, filings and so on, which had to be updated manually any time the law changed.
“At one point, I think I had five or six of them,” she said.
So when the 10-member committee started meeting about updating the desk books, it was obvious to all that something needed to change.
The material was available, said Judge Palos, through Judicial College courses that many on the committee had taught, plus the CLE classes that they had taught and more, and put it all through a sort of running grid of potential topics to cover as they took all of their knowledge and shoehorned it into something that would make sense online.
And it does.
The Domestic Relations Resource Guide is in two parts: Section 1 has links to all substantive law, while Section II has links to all law regarding domestic abuse.
While designed primarily for the use of court personnel, the guide is open to the public and will also be extremely useful to practitioners and lay people seeking DR information.
Ohio DR law can be very confusing, Judge Palos said, a fact that anyone who has practiced in a domestic relations court can attest to.
But now there’s a tool that organizes all of that law and puts it one click away.
It’s here: https://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/courts/services-to-courts/domestic-relations-resource-guide/