DESERT FAMILY LAW RESOURCES
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Legal Support and Mediation
Gretchen Taylor is a former Los Angeles Superior Court Judge and Indio Superior Court Commissioner in the family law departments who has uncommon expertise and an outstanding personality. She is available for mediation and private judging.
Woody Mosten is one of the foremost mediators of our times. His practice is in Brentwood, California, although he teaches mediation to lawyers and other professionals all over the country. He is an incredibly wise and generous human being. He is also presently training Attorney Thurman Arnold in the art of divorce peacemaking.
Barry Noble provides real estate appraisal services for purposes of valuing property in dissolution and in estate matters throughout the Coachella Valley.
Ayotte & Shackelford are the premier court reporters in the Coachella Valley and have been serving us for 30 years.
Coachella Valley Therapists and Stress Reduction
Dr. Gary Lange is a Palm Desert specialist dealing with gambling and addiction issues.
Jaime R. Carlo-Casellas, Ph.D is an amazing resource for us. He was trained by his friend Jon Kabat-Zinn.
Couples Therapy
Paul Zak, LCSW, is a former Catholic priest who uses IMAGO techniques, psychotherapy, and spiritual principles in assisting individuals and couples in healing in all contexts.
Child Custody, Parenting and Abduction
Transforming parenting the pro-child way is an essential tool for lawyers who wish to assist their clients overcome parenting reactivity - and an essential tool for those very parents themselves!
A free, confidential, and interactive website for divorcing and divorced parents who want to protect their children from divorce harm.
Riverside County, California, site for the Department of Public Social Services
Riverside County, California.
Provides access to information and resources to help protect children and strengthen families on a wide range of topics from prevention to permanency, including child welfare, child abuse and neglect, foster care, and adoption. Information for all states.
The Children’s Rights Council is an global leader in the advocacy, development and delivery of services and information addressing rights and responsibilities in the “best interest” of children.
Find links to government and other kids' sites.
Free help for family law is now available on the Internet for the estimated 4.3 million Californians who represent themselves in court each year
Resources for parents and guardians, law enforcement, child care providers, and attorneys involving missing or exploited children.
Child Quest International is an organization dedicated to the prevention and recovery of missing, abused, and exploited children. We believe education is an essential element in keeping our youth safe. Providing awareness and safety education to children, teens, pre-teens, and parents is the foundation for our goal to stop child victimization.
This site presents general information concerning the Hague Conference as well as detailed and updated information on the Hague Conventions: texts of the Conventions, full status reports, bibliographies, information regarding the authorities designated under the Conventions on judicial and administrative co-operation, explanatory reports, etc.
OurFamilyWizard is web based tool for parents to help parents communicate mindfully over parenting schedules and support and child based reimbursements. It will help you to dial down your parenting conflict. Please see our review of this product:
Arnold Blog OurFamilyWizard
Resources for Women
An amazing online resource for women by women who are attempting to get a fresh start after divorce.
Collaborative Law and Practice and Practitioners
This is an outstanding group of professionals who assist collaborative divorce throughout Southern California, and the only collaborative team in the Coachella Valley.
Bev Jewel is an outstanding and energetic collaborative divorce coach who works with Collaborative Divorce Services. She works with women in divorce or who are involved in family law contests.
Marvin recently received his doctorate this year and is a terrific divorce coach for men. Like Beverly Jewel, he is a founding member of the Coachella Divorce Services collaborative team.
Brian Don Levy is an expert family law attorney based in Covina. He too is a founding member of Coachella Divorce Services, and is available for collaborative cases and mediation throughout southern California.
The collaborative model was created in Minnesota and this site provides a good explication of its principles.
This is a California collaborative practice organization in California.
Paul Tessler has written an excellent book for describing how collaborative practices work.
This is a useful explanation for clients considering utilizing collaborative law to resolve their marital breakups in a nonadversarial setting. Please review it to see whether collaborative process might work for you.
Mindful Divorce Resources
Kim Wright has created an amazing site. What would law be like if we consciously designed it for the benefit of everyone? What if we integrated our personal and spiritual values into our work and helped our clients fashion sustainable solutions that honored their values, too? What if we aspired to win/win solutions while realizing that sometimes we just do the best we can in a tough situation? What if we turned our attention and skills to solving the world's big problems, honoring that voice within us that knows we were called to greatness? What if that greatness is expressed by just being the best we can in our own lives?
What we all desire is peace and the end of suffering. This is a useful tool for people going through divorce proceedings or difficult family transitions.
This is an excellent description of the attitudes that will help us overcome the resentments of relationship breakup.
This is an alias for my website, which expresses one lawyer's vision of how we can reconfigure and reframe the experience of divorce.
Mindful and Holistic Law Societies and Associations
This is a cutting edge group of lawyers who care more about their roles in helping to heal clients than in earning outrageous fees.
The Institute for Mindfulness Studies (IMS) brings the contemplative practice of mindfulness to practitioners of law by offering mindfulness insights and instruction in techniques specifically designed for attorneys. Our mission is to improve the quality of life and practice for attorneys and law students and to contribute to the re-establishment of society’s recognition of the challenging and admirable role played by attorneys.
The Institute for Mindfulness Studies brings the contemplative practice of mindfulness to persons of all ages, interests, professions, and backgrounds. Using cutting-edge neuroscience research to complement the ancient traditions surrounding mindfulness and other contemplative practices, the Institute for Mindfulness Studies (IMS) offers classical meditation-based and technique oriented exercises to instruct, reinforce, and elaborate on methods of cultivating states of mindful awareness.
The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society works to integrate contemplative awareness into contemporary life in order to help create a more just, compassionate, reflective, and sustainable society.
Conscious Lawyer, Inc. is an online resource dedicated to exploring emerging trends in the law and to devising creative legal solutions to ongoing societal issues that are not being addressed through traditional legal means.
Mindfulness Resources for Lawyers
This book is subversive. It aims to undermine the legal profession’s prevailing gladiatorial paradigm. It is, to use Professor Leonard Riskin’s phrase, something off “the lawyer’s standard philosophical map.” It promises a vision of practicing law that is very different than that taught in most American law schools.
Article published in the American Bar Association about the benefits to attorneys and clients of mindfulness practices.
Except from Halpern's new book "Making Waves and Riding the Currents: Activism and the Practice of Wisdom," recounts how he decided to break free of Big Law to create a life that fed his soul.
Recent state and national surveys of attorneys reveal a profession that is suffering from cumulative and
sustained stress. Career dissatisfaction is at an all-time high. Stress reduction is one antidote.
Outstanding text for therapists and professionals, and individuals, teaching the benefits and a practice of forgiveness. A bit technical.
A Look at the “remedial” aspect of meditation, the aspect most familiar to the public at large: meditation as stress-buster or as a way of managing the pressures of life. But beyond the salutary effect of “fixing what ails us,” meditation offers other benefits.
An article in Shambala Sun about a Judge in Illinois awakened to mindfulness principles.
Offering a unique and diverse curriculum whose sole purpose is to raise a mediator's level of practice, the AIM Institute is where leading mediators turn to continue their learning and career development. Being free of academic constraints and embracing other disciplines allows AIM to expand the frontier of this developing profession.
Christian Resources
Sold Rock was founded by Thurman's cousin, the Rev. Drew Arnold. It is a Christian summer program based in Laramie, Wyoming, modeled after Outward Bound, where youths are taught wilderness skills and Christian values.
Loma Linda is a Christian College in southern California. It includes the prestigious Loma Linda University Medical Center, and the world known Loma Linda Children's Hospital where Baby Faye underwent the worst infant heart transplant in 1984. Thurman is currently attending its Masters Program in Family Studies.
Hiring an Attorney/Attorney Client Fee Disputes
This is a discussion that might assist you in matching the qualities in your family law attorney with your own values.
This is a sample form for clients wishing to arbitrate fee disputes with their former lawyers.
These rules govern the arbitration of fee disputes.
If an attorney sues you for fees, you can stay the action pending an arbitration.
Government and Legal Associations
Public access to all information concerning California Courts and the court system.
Public access to the Riverside County Courts and dockets.
Riverside jury services; requests to postpone jury service.
Indio Superior Court case records, including docket searches for family law cases pending in Indio.
Public access to San Diego Superior Court.
Public access to San Bernardino Superior Court.
Public access to Orange County Superior Court.
Public access to the Los Angeles Superior Courts.
California statutes updated through 2008.
California business searches, including corporations, agents for service of process.
Research the reported disciplinary history of any California attorney.
The RCBA was created in 1894 to encourage social interaction between the bench and the bar. Over the years, they have evolved into a professional organization that provides many valuable services to both member attorneys and the public.
The Desert Bar Association is a professional association of civil and criminal lawyers practicing within the Desert Judicial District of the Coachella Valley, comprising the desert cities of Palm Springs, Rancho Mirage, Cathedral City, Palm Desert, Desert Hot Springs, Thousand Palms, Indian Wells, La Quinta, Indio, Coachella, Thermal and Mecca.
There is a wealth of legal information in this site.
Useful resources for Orange County residents.
The is the premier American Bar organization. There is much useful information available for public access free of charge.
California Lawyer is a monthly magazine that combines hard-hitting legal news, case commentary, and coverage of technology and business trends. Each issue contains news, reviews, profiles, and opinion.
The LII is known internationally as a leading “law-not-com” provider of public legal information. They offer all opinions of the United States Supreme Court handed down since 1992, together with over 600 earlier decisions selected for their historic importance, over a decade of opinions of the New York Court of Appeals, and the full United States Code.
This locator links to state laws which correspond to Uniform Laws in the subject areas of matrimony and family. In cases where the text of the Uniform Law, as originally promulgated, is available on the Net it also links to it.
The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) is a federal agency funding state, territory, local, and tribal organizations to provide family assistance (welfare), child support, child care, Head Start, child welfare, and other programs relating to children and families.
This site is all about crime prevention and victims of crime.
Domestic Violence
The California Partnership to End Domestic Violence is a catalyst and advocate for social change through innovative solutions to ensure safety and justice for victims and survivors of domestic violence and their children.
SFTS is our desert cities shelter for victims of intimate partner abuse.
This is the number one question most people want to understand. The question, however, should be "Why does he batter?" The question why does she stay places the blame on the victim. The reality is that the majority of battered women make heroic efforts at leaving, but because of the reasons listed here, most are unsuccessful.
Legal information, help and support for women, teens, and girls living with or escaping domestic violence or sexual assault (custody, divorce, restraining orders, orders of protection, immigration, military law, tribal law, kidnapping, stalking, dating violence, and more).
An American Bar Association publication.
Substance Abuse and Recovery
The Betty Ford Center is the alcohol treatment center and drug rehabilitation clinic for families suffering from narcotic and chemical dependency and addiction to alcohol and other drugs
AA meetings within the desert cities.
All support meetings within the Coachella Valley.
Gary Lange is a Palm Desert specialist dealing with gambling and addiction issues.
Helpful Blawgs
- California Family Law Blog Hosted by Thurman W. Arnold, III
We are striving to bring you all kinds of answers and information to help inform your family decisions.
Tax and Financial Advice for Divorcing Couples
Estate Planning and Health Care
A simple do it yourself California AHCD