Parenting Consultant:
A Parenting Consultant is a neutral party whose role it is to assist parents in divorce, paternity or legal separation matters with their parenting issues. The Parenting Consultant often fills the role of a child development specialist who may be called on when disputes occur between parents to mediate the disputed issue and to provide insight into parenting decisions and their impact on children.

Parenting Time Expeditor:
Under Minnesota Statutes Sec. 518.1751, the Parenting Time Expeditor may be empowered to enforce, interpret, and clarify existing parenting time orders or addresses circumstances not specifically addressed by an existing parenting time order. The Parenting Time Expeditor’s role may be defined and/or limited by the parties who request a PTE or by a court that makes a such an appointment on its own. How the Parenting Time Expeditor’s role is defined may often be a product of the types of conflicts that the parents have encountered historically.

Social Early Neutral Evaluation:
Social Early Neutral Evaluation (ENE) is a short-term, confidential evaluative process designed to facilitate prompt dispute resolution in Family Court custody and parenting time (visitation) matters. The program offers the evaluative impressions of experienced Family Court Services (FCS) staff to parties engaged in custody and parenting time disputes. Feedback is provided to parties and their attorneys based on case presentations and a limited amount of information gathering. The ENE process is completed within one month.

Financial Early Neutral Evaluation:
The purpose of an ENE is to provide parties with an early neutral evaluation of one or more financial issues with the expectation that if the parties have the neutral information, they will be better able to reach an early settlement before the parties’ financial resources are expended on litigation. When parties are able to weigh the costs of pursuing adversarial evaluations and litigating financial issues versus an efficient, economical settlement early in the case, most parties favor the early settlement. Often, settlement can occur before significant time and money has been spent.