Social Early Neutral Evaluation (SENE) is a form of alternative dispute resolution that addresses only custody, parenting time, and other custody/parenting issues. The process does not address child support, spousal maintenance, division of property, or other financial issues. An SENE is usually scheduled in the early stages of a divorce or child custody proceeding, and is typically agreed upon and ordered at an ICMC. If everyone agrees in advance of the ICMC that they want to participate in a SENE, they can sometimes notify the Court of this, and avoid the time and cost of the ICMC (some judges and counties allow this, some do not).

For Social Early Neutral Evaluations, there are normally two evaluators, usually consisting of one man and one women. Although, this is not required. The SENE process is more formal than the FENE process. The goal of SENE is to obtain a joint evaluative opinion from both SENE evaluators on custody and parenting time. This evaluative opinion is then shared with the parents with the hope of everyone reaching an agreement on custody and parenting time in the early stages of the divorce or custody proceeding. In doing so, the parents usually save significant litigation costs and are able to avoid a full custody evaluation. The one potential negative to an SENE is that the feedback and recommendations from the SENE evaluators are confidential and cannot be used in court in the event no signed agreement is reached by the parents during the SENE process. However, the majority of custody and parenting time matters that get submitted to the SENE process do get resolved during the SENE, so the value of the process very much outweighs any potential negatives.

Fees

Fees for SENE are determined by the county in which your divorce or other family law matter is filed within. In some counties, these are based on a sliding fee schedule based on your income, some are simply a flat fee per person (such as $100 per person per hour) and in other counties it is based on the rate of your attorney (the hourly rate for your ENE evaluator is one-half the hourly rate of your attorney). If you are requesting to schedule an SENE, it must be pursuant to a court order. That same order should prescribe the fees that you will pay to the ENE evaluator, or generally refer to the county’s fee schedule for ENEs. If you are uncertain of what this cost is, simply contact our office in advance and we will notify you what you would be required to pay as part of the ENE session.