February 2021 
Austin AMFT CEU Presentation

Zoom Presentation

Friday, February 12

11:30 am - 1 pm

(Breakout Room Small Groups for Networking - First 15 minutes)

Zoom Event Link

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1  CEU Hour | Approved for LMFTs, LPCs, LCSWs, & Psychologists

If you would like to receive CEUs, you must pay the registration fee and complete the evaluation form after the event. Your CEU certificate will then be emailed to you.

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This event will be recorded and accessible through our website afterward. You must be a current Austin AMFT member to access. This recording will not be available to non-members.

TOPIC

Assessment and Treatment

through the Legal System

when there is ongoing Parental Conflict

PRESENTER

Michael Hiller, Attorney

PRESENTATION SUMMARY

For years, parental conflict in the legal system has been harming children and parents. Most custody litigation is throwing gas on the fire. My talk will center on how lawyers like myself began to realize that false accusations of child sex abuse and the like were usually the result of a personality disorder, parental alienation, and/or high conflict personalities. The therapeutic world and organizations, such as the High Conflict Institute, began to understand and explain the underlying issues to lawyers who were willing to listen. My talk will guide therapists through the evolution of the best way to handle cases with these issues, including where the resistance is and where the openings are, especially for assessment and treatment. I will explain the difference between a “high conflict” custody case and a parental alienation case. Last but not  least, I will present my ultimate solution to these cases – tight control by arbitrators and ultimately by judges. 

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

• How lawyers often get introduced to these cases – for example, by defending false accusations – and how it’s easy to think that high conflict is always just that and nothing more 
• Why it’s so important to understand the difference between parental alienation and high conflict child custody - true parental alienation is complete rejection of the other parent by a child
• A journey through various courts as we try to get assessment and treatment ordered - whether to ask judges for this relief when they are uneducated about personality disorders, parental alienation, and that healing is a role for the courts to embrace
• Alternatives to court – getting agreements in arbitration & mediation
• Start2Finish Divorce Arbitration™ - A model to reform the court system – fixing the underlying problem

BIOGRAPHY

Michael Hiller is a Texas Board Certified family lawyer who has 31 years of legal experience in handling all kinds of family law cases and is specifically trained to handle high conflict divorce and custody cases for high net worth and successful individuals. He has been ranked in the top 1% of lawyers in the nation by the National Association of Distinguished Counsel. In addition,  Michael helps clients with a variety of family law issues such as divorce, child custody, high net worth property divisions, prenuptial and postnuptial agreements, mediation and collaborative law. Primarily, he is known for his innovation while still being able to maintain a traditional practice. 

Interested in more than just facilitating divorce through the courts, he was one of the first lawyers in Texas to become a mediator, 30 years ago. He attended the very first training in collaborative divorce held in Texas, in the year 2000. He is also one of the few lawyers anywhere who is dedicated to helping couples learn better relationship skills – for example, his reconciliation law practice – focusing on marriage improvement, prenuptial and postnuptial agreements, as well as predivorce and anti-divorce petitions. 

Michael has been certified and trained in many areas such as Divorce Court, Collaborative & Reconciliation law, as well as mediation. He is passionate about helping families maneuver through combative legal processes, with cutting-edge understanding of “parental alienation” and high conflict case clients' solutions for their dilemmas. He is a founding member of The American Academy for Certified Financial Litigators (AACFL), an organization dedicated to educating lawyers about the financial and property issues in their cases. 

In 2018, he received attorney-training from Children4Tomorrow (C4T) for handling cases involving high conflict personalities and parental alienation in custody cases – since that time, he has focused on filing motions in court and trying to negotiate solutions in arbitration & mediation to have assessments done to determine whether there are high conflict personalities and/or parental alienation in a family. 

Mr. Hiller has developed a system called “Start 2 Finish Divorce Arbitration™” that he has already begun using. Several years ago, he examined the family law system, found major inefficiencies, and was determined to find a solution. This arbitration system includes mediation and binding arbitration (private judging) from the very beginning of the case through the final order and after the divorce. He maintains that this system allows the arbitrator to order parties to  get assessments and treatment they need, and if they won’t do so, it allows the arbitrator to impose a behavioral modification program such as “Three Strikes and You’re Out”. It also allows parties who do not have these difficulties to resolve their cases more quickly and with less expense. 

Last, but not least, Michael is a family man. He has been married for 39 years to the same woman, Minette (February 1982), and has three children – Lori (1992), Andrea (1994), and Joshua (2007). He finds the key to that is to make relationships number one and to limit his hobbies and organizational life!

This presentation is designed to be useful for all levels of training and experience.