Collaborative in the Courtroom - Go Figure

I had an idea for today's blog - yesterday.  I didn't write it down, and now that I'm sitting here, no matter how I wrack my brain, I can't remember what it was.  It will come to me, probably in the middle of the night, and in which case, I will share.  In the meantime, I had a funny thing happen on the way to the hearing yesterday.  Not only did Master Eason announce "There's the Collaborative Lady" as I entered the courtroom (we trained him at last year's AOC training), but we spent the time the clerk took typing up his order to talk about collaborative practice, and its uses for lower income folks, as well as in other areas of the law.  Who'd have ever thought we'd have that discussion, in a courtroom no less?  The other funny thing that happened was that I was appearing with my longstanding client on a child support modification.  As we sat in the witness room with her husband and child support enforcement before the hearing, we started talking....to the husband.  As we sat there, my collaborative mind kicked in, and I wanted to know more about why he was there, what was happening.  He talked, about how much money he had left at the end of the month, how much child support was taking from his check, not only for my client's children, but also his other children.  Then he talked about how the deduction for his child support arrears for my client was just killing him, because it was a amount equal to half of his child support payment, on top of everything else.  His income hadn't changed enough for a child support modification, but we talked about the arrearage, and agreed (and with my client's OK, suggested to the court), that they reduce the amount they were taking out for arrears by almost half.   The funny thing is that cutting the arrears made no difference in what will be withheld from his paycheck, because he doesn't make enough money to withhold any arrears.  The important thing is that he felt that we heard and understood his difficulty.  Why was that important? Well, because at that point, he reminded everyone about a tax refund intercept that we had discussed the year prior, but about which child support enforcement had done nothing.  As a result, my client is potentially getting four months' worth of child support arrears simply because her ex felt someone heard what he had to say.   So was I advocating effectively for her yesterday?  I'd say so.  She's potentially getting a couple of thousand dollars in her pocket that we all would have forgotten about but for my digging deeply with her ex.  She's thrilled with what we accomplished, and all for just a few minutes of time and effort.