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What Can a Medical Neutral Bring to Collaborative Law?

Issue November/December 2019 November 2019 By Wendie Howland
Dispute Resolution Section Review
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Wendie Howland

People familiar with collaborative law (CL) understand the most common roles involved: collaboratively trained attorneys and a coach/facilitator with a background in counseling. When circumstances dictate, the CL process can also include an appropriate financial professional, a financial neutral, to help all parties understand financial implications of the process, for example, a business valuation, tax implications, or instruments like insurance or trusts, and help them reach agreements on future management after divorce, partnership disputes and the like.

I would like to introduce another resource for cases involving aspects of health and safety, the medical neutral. The medical neutral would help all parties understand any medical or developmental conditions. Most importantly, a medical neutral brings expertise in assessing needs for present and future care, equipment, architectural modifications, specialized services like home nursing or assisted living, and particular needs related to catastrophic or chronic conditions. This also means looking at existing or future funding sources, like health insurance, other benefit programs like Medicare/Medicaid, children transitioning from school-based supports when they reach adulthood, and private educational or custodial settings.

It’s important to realize that this skill set is not found in medical curricula. Physicians may have expertise in medical care, and some may even be able to project future medical needs. However, this kind of specialized information, collaboration, teaching and planning is best provided by a health care professional experienced in life care planning and case management for the particular person(s) involved, such as a nurse life care planner.

Nurse life care planners are steeped in the collaborative model from the beginning of their nursing education. While we come from any number of strictly clinical disciplines, nurses have always, historically, practiced the collaborative philosophy, working with specialists in many disciplines as part of daily work in any setting. Most important, though, we keep the main thing as the main thing: the person’s care and safety needs always come first. We can help the other members of the collaborative process by clarifying these needs and resources. This is a tremendous opportunity to contribute to openness, avoid pitfalls and, most of all, to help the parties be confident that what are often the most important things remain priorities.

Some examples:

  • A brain-injured man lives with his parents. They are aging and can foresee the time when they will no longer be able to care for him. How can the family work out a plan for his future after the family business ends with the parents’ retirement? The medical neutral can research the options and present them, with advantages and drawbacks, and help develop a path forward.
  • One of the parties planning divorce has a permanent musculoskeletal condition and wants more than half of the marital assets to compensate for inability to work. The medical neutral can consult with his physician(s) and his health insurer to clarify what can be expected.
  • A divorcing couple needs to understand what resources will be needed and can be brought to bear for their disabled child as the child transitions into adulthood. A medical neutral can collect information about the child’s individual education plan, medical and therapy plans of care, and identify possible placement options and costs.
The medical neutral role is just emerging as a resource for collaborative law. While less familiar to collaborative professionals, it’s worth remembering if any health care-related issues arise. Practice groups who would like further information or a speaker for your next get-together are welcome to call me at the number listed above. 

Wendie Howland MN, RN-BC, CCRN, CCM, CNLCP, LNCC is a legal nurse consultant and nurse life care planner with further certifications in rehabilitation and case management. She can be contacted at (508) 564-9556.

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