About Judith Kaluzny, founder and director of The Safe and Sane Divorce Project:
Judith Kaluzny has practiced family law in Fullerton, County of Orange, for over 30 years. She began practicing law in 1976 when the “no fault” system was just a few years old, courthouse mediation for “custody” was being developed, and an awareness of domestic violence was growing.
She has a solid record of change-making accomplishments, before, during and after law school, in addition to raising seven children, three of whom have Ph. D.s.
In Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, she was part of a human rights group that instigated a state law for fair housing. In Fullerton, she served as chair of the Fair Housing Council that was parent to the Orange County Fair Housing Council with her on the original board of directors.
She led her local PTA in an ultimately county-wide effort resulting in a Fullerton general plan change that preserved several acres of county regional park.
She was a founding mother of Community Open School, a public elementary school alternative that lasted 11 years, and which programs continue to positively impact the Fullerton elementary district.
At Western State University College of Law, she was co-founder, with Vivian Rauckauckus, of the Women’s Caucus.
While in law school, she became a member of the first board of directors of the Women’s Transitional Living Center-the third shelter for battered women in the state and country– and instituted a program of legal counseling. She served as chair of the board during acquisition of facilities making WTLC the largest shelter in the country.
Kaluzny’s attention to the murder of two children in a divorce case led to the convening of a consortium convened by Alice Oxman in Los Angeles in 1989-90 to develop protocols to deal with domestic violence in the court mediation departments. She served on this committee, along with Sheila Kuehl, other lawyers, judges, mediators and law enforcement members.
In 1992, she was part of the Orange County organizing committee for the first Mediation Week recognition. Previously, she had been a speaker at a Women’s Forum of Congressmembers Patterson and Ferraro, 1982; and speaker, Law Day Orange County 1978. In younger days, she was a journalist, writing for the Menomonee Falls News and The Milwaukee Sentinel. And taught criminal law at California State University, Fullerton.
In 2011 she was again a presenter at OC Mediators Mediation Week day-long conference.
She began learning to mediate in 1986, and now limits her practice to guiding people through various marriage and partnership issues, from pre-marital agreements, staying-together agreements to resolve problems and improve the relationship, to the divorce process.
It became obvious to her years ago that the family court system all too often inflicted or permitted great harm to children and their families. Her midwestern, logical, problem-solving mind began to devise a better way.
The Safe and Sane Divorce Project intends to fully develop such a process, the rationale and means for it, and garner support for that better way.
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