Grief reactions and effective negotiation

Conclusion In the event of death, society has in place a wide range of rituals and supports designed to help mourners deal with their grief. It may be that assigning blame and seeking legal recourse has become a significant ritual for those who have sustained other types of losses and, in some situations, loss through death as well. However, unlike societal death rituals, which guide the mourners, no guidelines exist to help negotiators address the impact of grief on their clients. Thus, in this article, insights gleaned from studies of grief, loss, and separation have been examined in an effort to develop an awareness of the impact of grief reactions on the parties to negotiation.Grief reactions—ranging from denial, bargaining, anger, depression, and guilt to acceptance—serve a useful purpose for those who have sustained grievous losses. Consequently, a better understanding of grief factors may be advantageous to negotiators and, more importantly, to their clients. Such considerations may help challenge perceptions of other parties that may otherwise be prejudicial to one's client (as in the Lindy Chamberlain case) and assist negotiators in trying to anticipate, and thus protect their clients from, grief-related reactions of other parties. In the large number of cases where negotiation and settlement discussions are not only critical but also decisive, grief theory may provide negotiators with better insight into client, and other party, interests and may help them to formulate advice and intervention strategies that take the impact of various grief reactions into account. Nancy Lewis Buck is an attorney and social worker, currently completing a doctoral dissertation at Yale Law School. Her mailing address is 9 Surrey St., Cambridge, Mass. 02138.     

MEDIATION AND THE DEPENDENCY COURT

This study examines mediation in three dependency courts in the United States and identifies major policy questions regarding the use of mediation in these proceedings.     

A NEW LOOK AT AN OLD ISSUE:

In 1997, the Office of Child Support Enforcement initiated the State Child Access and Visitation (AV) Grant Program, which involves annual awards of $10 million to states to promote the development of programs to alleviate access problems. Telephone interviews with 970 parents who used mediation, parent education, and supervised visitation programs funded by AV grants in nine states revealed that the programs are reaching diverse groups of parents including many low-income, non-White, and unmarried parents who receive no other type of access assistance. The programs also appear to be achieving the major objectives posited for them by the federal government. One-third to one-half of noncustodial parents in every program type reported that parent–child contact increased following program participation, with supervised visitation users who typically had the lowest levels of parent–child contact reporting a significant increase in the number of days of contact. A review of child support records for 173 program users in three states revealed that child support payments increased among participants following program participation, especially for never-married parents who paid a significantly higher proportion of what they owed. These findings are similar to results reported in a five-state study of mediation programs funded by AV grants that was conducted by the Office of the Inspector General. However, both studies have some serious limitations, including low response rates and the absence of a nontreatment comparison group.     

Deleuze &; Guattari’s Intensive &; Pragmatic Semiotic of Emergent Law

The paper articulates Deleuze & Guattari’s semiotics towards a semiotic of law through a discussion of the intensive semiotics of the field of emergence and pragmatic semiotics of social power. Within the framework of the pragmatic semiotics, it is argued that the crucial tension is how social machines and their regimes of signs operate with the intensive semiotics of the field of emergence. The signifying regime of the State social machine constructs itself on the excluded foundation of the field of emergence, and what is lost are the real ontological and social conditions of emergence, intensity and affect. In contrast, the counter-signifying regime of the war social machine actively operates with the intensive semiotic of the field of emergence, and develops an image of legality and regime of signs that taps the field of emergence for social organisation and expression. Returning to the issue of emergence and legality, the concept of Emergent Law is developed as a war social machine, abstract machine, assemblage, and regime of signs, that operates a semiotic that is developed in terms of an intensive semiotics that is open to and taps the forces of the field of emergence.     

CHILD SUPPORT IN THE UNITED STATES

This article reports on the results of a telephone survey conducted with a random sample of households screened for eligibility to receive child support in the state of Colorado. Despite the recent enactment of ambitious child legislation at the state and federal levels, the accounts of 731 custodial parents reveal a massive level of unmet need, with child support problems being most extreme for those never married to the chilďs other parent. These mothers typically lack an order establishing a legal obligation to pay child support and have incomes that fall below the poverty level. Overall, women of Colorado with child support orders received only about half of the support they were due, and 73 per cent of all women due support reported that they had experienced problems in collecting support either currently or in the past. The average amount of back due child support owed to the 60 per cent of women in the sample who reported an arrearage was $12,000. Analysis revealed that payment behaviour tracked with the length of time since separation with payment patterns worsening over time and irregular visitation and/or the presence of problems around child access. Female obligors exhibited the same payment patterns as their male counterparts but were more apt to maintain visitation. The article documents the dramatic, negative economic consequences of irregular or missing child support payments for custodial parents, and discusses the additional legal and financial commitments needed to improve the situation. The efficacy of private child support transfers to achieve an adequate standard of living for all children is called into question.