CMC has several services provided in the courts of Knox County.

Below is a description of the services offered.

CMC volunteer mediators are available to mediate cases during the day while court is in session, and at other times by appointment. In some courts, Judges will recommend mediation to the parties. Parties can choose to try it, or decline and have the case tried by the judge. Parties can also voluntarily choose to have their case mediated, and can ask the mediators at court to help, or ask the judge to recommend mediation.

Some types of cases mediated includes (but is not limited to!):

Landlord-tenant

Service contract

Personal property

Consumer-business

To use these services, you can either request mediation on your day in court, or contact the CMC in your area to schedule a mediation prior to your court date.

Many times when parents who are not living together go to Court over Child Support issues they end up discussing visitation, or schedules for times the child spends with each parent.

When there is a dispute as to a visitation schedule, the Judges and Referees in many local Juvenile Courts have the ability to order parents to mediation to discuss the visitation issues.

CMC schedules and mediates these cases free of charge, as a service for the courts and the communities we serve. The mediations are similar to those for divorce. The parents work together to create a parenting plan that governs visitation schedules, and any other parenting issues they may have. When the plan is completed, CMC returns it to the Court for approval, and the parents are ready to move forward.

The Juvenile Court in Knox County recognizes the importance how important it is for children to take responsibility for their actions, and to learn to deal with conflict or disputes in a constructive, nonviolent manner. Because of this, the court has agreed to refer cases involving children who are involved in their first offense to mediation. Many times the children have taken part in vandalism, school fights, theft, truancy, harassment, or even assault.

In these situations, the court refers the children and their parents to mediation. In the mediation, the children are asked to create their own resolution to the dispute or action they were involved in. Sometimes children agree to take responsibility for their actions by participating in community service, or by paying for or working off payments for damages they may have caused. In the case of fighting, the youth often arrive at an agreement that controls how they will handle similar situations in the future (e.g.-walking away from fight, contacting an adult, or talking out disputes rather than striking physically).

For youth who are able to resolve their disputes in mediation, the Court is able to remove the incident from their records, as long as there are no future incidents. This prevents children from "getting stuck in the system" and being labeled as troublemakers in the future, and allows them to move forward to their school and other goals.

CMC serves as coordinator of the Parenting Plan Program in the Knox County Court. In this role, CMC assists parents who are getting divorced in the selection of a mediator to help the parents create a Parenting Plan for their children. Mediators are paid individually, on an hourly basis. CMC receives a $25 administrative fee for each case.