{"id":201,"date":"2022-02-17T16:09:11","date_gmt":"2022-02-17T21:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.ryerson.ca\/eqcqmodule1\/?post_type=part&p=201"},"modified":"2022-02-25T16:36:28","modified_gmt":"2022-02-25T21:36:28","slug":"module-2-test-your-understanding","status":"publish","type":"part","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/eqcqmodule1\/part\/module-2-test-your-understanding\/","title":{"raw":"Client Module in Family Law - Test Your Understanding","rendered":"Client Module in Family Law – Test Your Understanding"},"content":{"raw":"1. An Introduction to the Module\r\n2. Background: Understanding Emotional and Cultural Intelligence in Family Law\r\n3. Meeting Gita Menon\r\n4. Issue #1 \u2013 Can Her Son Attend?\r\na. What are Your Professional Responsibilities\r\nb. What are the Risks to Ms. Menon\r\n5. Issue #2 \u2013 Can Ms. Menon Get Her Assets Back?\r\n

Background: Understanding Emotional and Cultural Intelligence in Family Law<\/h1>\r\nLike other practice areas where parties must settle personal and financial differences, a family lawyer must operate in accordance with their client\u2019s specific ability to engage in dispute resolution and litigation. In doing so, all lawyers benefit from emotional and cultural competencies. However, circumstances in family law can heighten client reliance on a counsel\u2019s competencies.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nThe need for emotional competency in family law arises because parties exploring divorce can experience a loss that some say is like death. Clients experience a range of emotions associated with grief but still have the responsibility to make important decisions that will impact them as well as their children.\u00a0 It can be especially difficult for lawyers to manage client emotions in these circumstances. To make matters worse, divorce is also a business transaction. Because few clients experience transactions as complex as divorce in their lifetime, they are rarely well prepared for the tasks they must now undertake.\u00a0 Divorce requires attending to the mundane details of documenting the separation of assets and making decisions for the future that have large financial implications. Lawyers explain the complexities and uncertainties inherent to those decisions but must still be patient with the client\u2019s capability to learn and make the decision for themselves. While it is the client who is going through the divorce, their frustration or limited ability to manage that process can manifest as frustration with their own counsel. Counsel must then manage their own emotions dealing with a frustrated client and a file that is not proceeding as expected.\r\n\r\nThe need for cultural competencies arises in family law when counsel and their client may be influenced by different cultural assumptions when communicating and making decisions. By this, we mean that they operate with different patterns of traditions, beliefs, values, and norms that influence their perspective on whether divorce arrangements meet a client\u2019s needs. For example, counsel must navigate differing views on the appropriateness of decisions impacting children\u2019s religion, diet, clothing, schools, and social activities and determine how to address it in legal proceedings.\r\n\r\nDifferences between client and lawyer may be sourced to different ethnic or national norms but also may be rooted in class, gender, hierarchy, modes of communication and other informants of community identity. Practicing with cultural competency means moving beyond minimizing culture and undertake conscious acceptance of cultural differences and adaptation.[footnote]Ritu Bhasin and Nora Rock, Cultural Competence: An Essential Skill in an Increasingly Diverse World, Practice Pro - https:\/\/www.practicepro.ca\/2014\/09\/cultural-competence-an-essential-skill-in-an-increasingly-diverse-world\/[\/footnote]\r\n\r\nThere is an increasing call for lawyers who can deploy emotional and cultural intelligence in their practice and in service to their clients. The call for emotional and cultural training in the legal profession comes from increasing attention to the diversity of the legal practice and clients they serve. However, it also recognizes that lawyers with emotional and cultural capabilities better serve clients than those who have less understanding of, and control over, their emotions as well as an inability to identify, understand, and adjust to cultural dimensions of others\u2019 behaviour.\r\n\r\nIf the capability to learn emotional and cultural skills suggests the need for educational tools, the legal profession has been slow to develop relevant programs and professional requirements. Professional bodies and law firms have generally taken up the challenge with in person training but given cost, and reluctant uptake, they are looking to other solutions. One proposed solution has been to develop e-learning modules that offer practitioners the opportunity to learn at their own pace and in a non-judgemental environment.\r\n\r\nThis is an e-learning module that allows learners to consider how they will interact with the client in a given interaction, and one in which they will receive immediate feedback on their choice of action.\r\n\r\nGiven the effort to provide something realistic, we turned to lawyers for insight into the kinds of fact patterns that pose difficulties for lawyers. It is our view that to be relevant to lawyers training is ideally practice specific and client specific. Scenarios can be developed in any area of law.\r\n\r\nThis particular scenario relates a problem that often arises in family law.\r\n

What Are Your Professional Responsibilities?<\/h2>\r\nThe Law Society of Ontario has a number of directives for practicing lawyers for this kind of situation. As a legal professional, you must demonstrate competence, adhere to a duty of honesty and candour, and duty of confidentiality. To read the full chapter on the Complete Rules of Professional Conduct, visit the Law Society of Ontario<\/a>.\u00a0 To review a few of the salient lines from the Rules of Professional Conduct, please review the following interactive module, open and closing the various guidelines in the interactive accordion below.\r\n\r\n[h5p id=\"15\"]<\/span>\r\n

Meeting Gina Menon<\/h1>\r\nIn this scenario, you are a lawyer working in a family law practice. From a written pre-screening process, here is what you know about Gita Menon:\r\n\r\n
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Your Client:<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

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\r\n\r\nMs. Menon is 45 years old and mother to a 15 year-old son, named Jayan. Ms. Menon is originally from Thiruvananthapuram, capital city of the province of Kerala in India. She immigrated to Canada 17 years ago, with her father. Shortly after arriving, she met and married her husband, Hargun Menon. She lives in a home owned by her husband and volunteers at her son\u2019s school library. Hargun owns a business that sells food, spices and catering.\r\n\r\nMs. Menon\u2019s father has recently died and left his entire estate to Ms. Menon. The conveyancing of the estate was finalized and the money was transferred to a bank account shared by Ms. Menon and her husband. Ms. Menon\u2019s husband normally takes care of the finances in the house. She has recently learned that her husband transferred the funds from the estate to another account. She is worried that he has full control of those funds and would like access them. A friend that she volunteers with at the school library suggested she speak with you.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

Issue #1 \u2013 Can Her Son Attend?<\/h1>\r\n \r\n
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Questions to Ask<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

Again, the client retains the right to have her son with her and to share confidential information with him. Some questions you should consider are how you explain to Ms. Menon the implications of her decision so that she makes this decision with as much information as possible. Some important questions to consider are the following:<\/div>\r\n