Chapter Seven
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The Parenting Plan is easily translatable because parents are already used
to dividing up the chores of parenthood and readily understand the need to
determine the financial obligations of the parties subsequent to divorce.
Essentially, they already have language developed for these purposes and,
as Tomasello (2003) points out, language is learned through usage. Also,
as noted before by Conley and O’Barr (Conley 1990), most people
normally think in terms of relationships, rather than rules, and the
Parenting Plan’s purpose is to define the continuing relationship (at least
with respect to the children) of the parties subsequent to divorce.
Similarly, when the consequences of failing to follow a restraining order,
such as incarceration, are made clear, compliance is increased because
everyone is familiar with “going to jail.”
The portions of American divorce law that are more difficult to
translate are mostly those related to the legal procedures involved. That is
due to the lack of familiarity of litigants with the frame of courthouse
litigation. The rules, such as how to serve papers on the opposing party
(Service of Process), as opposed to the rules noted in the Parenting Plan or
in a restraining order, are more difficult to explain. Without previous
usage, the litigants have more difficulty understanding the concepts.
Procedure before trial involves numerous requests made to the court to
limit the issues that will be discussed in court. These requests are called
“motions” in the specialist language, a term that has no meaning to anyone
not already familiar with rules of order, such as used in legislatures or
association business meetings or courts. Most of the specialist words in the
short glossary noted above are related to the procedural aspects of the
case, rather than the substantive details (such as the facts that would be
included in the Parenting Plan).
The specialist terms used for the procedural aspects of divorce cases
come from the larger set of court rules that applies to all kinds of
litigation. Some of the specialist procedural terms can be reduced to more
meaningful terms because of the nature of divorce cases. For instance, the
litigants in a divorce are always living people, not corporations,
governments, or estates. Thus, those specialist terms (e.g., petitioner and
respondent) can be more easily translated.
In truth, the other ploys used by plain language translators, such as
charts and tables, also relate to bringing the text into something more
familiar to the reader. American lawyers learn to read long, poorly written
paragraphs that contain numerous levels of hierarchy so that they can
explain them to their clients. Devices such as charts and tables present the
information in a format that is more cognitively recognizable. They also
prominently display blank spaces wherein litigants must insert information