NH subcommittee reviews family court mediation, ADR programs and gaps in coordination with criminal cases

The House Children and Family Law Committee's subcommittee on family court met April 1, 2025, to review the New Hampshire Judicial Branch's mediation and alternative dispute resolution (ADR) programs and discuss recommendations for the family division of circuit court.

The briefing, led by Erin Cregan, general counsel for the judicial branch, and Heather Culp, senior administrator for the circuit court, summarized program statutes, usage data and operational details for divorce-and-parenting mediation, reopened-case mediation and neutral case-evaluation sessions. Committee members asked about confidentiality protections, how active domestic-violence matters affect mediation eligibility and whether better cross‑agency and cross‑court information systems could reduce missed case links.

Culp told the subcommittee that the statute creating the judicial branch's Office of Mediation and Arbitration was passed in 2007 and that the branch follows those statutory goals when designing ADR services. She said the office manages ADR programs across the supreme, superior and circuit courts and that family-division ADR includes divorce-and-parenting mediation, minor guardianship mediation and neutral case evaluation in certain contested matters.

Key figures and process details presented to the subcommittee: - Calendar year 2023: roughly 3,400 mediation sessions in divorce-and-parenting cases out of an estimated total case volume of about 6,700; Culp said she can provide exact numbers on request. - In cases with minor children involved, “a little over 50 percent” of cases were referred to mediation; about 25 percent of divorce cases without minor children went to mediation. - Culp said about 40 percent of…