MEDIATION & FAMILY LAW

Virginia Story has seen a lot of growth throughout Williamson County since she opened her law practice in downtown Franklin nearly four decades ago. 

“When I started practicing, there was nothing but Franklin, and just a little bit of a city in Brentwood just off the interstate,” she recalls. “Cool Springs was all farms, Nolensville was all farms, and Spring Hill was all farms.”

In a few short years, things would change dramatically as more families began moving into the area. Story, who graduated from the Nashville School of Law in 1985, initially wanted to pursue criminal law, but her career path would shift to meet the needs of her growing community. 

“I navigated toward Family Law,” she says.

The increased need for legal services for families came soon after the opening of the GM plant in Spring Hill in 1990. A number of families moved from Michigan to Tennessee to run the Saturn plant, and for many, the transition wasn't an easy one. 

“It led to a lot of divorces,” Story says. “People were working crazy hours as the plant up and started; there were three shifts, a lot of overtime. Some of the women who came with their husbands were not acclimated to Southern life. They were used to being in a big city, and cultural differences moving from the North to the South spurred a lot of domestic relations work. So, I started getting busy around that time.”

Soon, Franklin saw a population boom, as well. 

“Everybody wanted to live in Williamson County to go to the schools here,” Story says. "And with more families, unfortunately, that meant more domestic relations issues: child support, visitation, parenting plans, and divorces.”

As a result, her law practice, Story, Abernathy and Campbell (with partners Joanie Abernathy and Neil Campbell) continued to grow. 

“Today we have 10 lawyers, and out of 10 lawyers, probably seven of us do mostly domestic relations. We also do estates, wills, anything to do with families."

Story is also a Rule 31 Mediator. 

“Rule 31 is our Supreme Court rule that sanctions mediators,” she explains. “You have to go through a qualification process, then 40 hours of intensive training.”

Family law mediators serve as impartial third parties to help couples work through their issues and avoid the expense, time, and emotional trauma of going to court.

“It’s a much quicker and more congenial process to try and get parents to amicably agree on division of property, how they’re going to parent their children, what their visitation schedule’s going to look like, child support, and all of those issues.”

Story usually schedules a full day for mediation at either the Franklin office or the newer Mediation Center in Berry Farms. 

“During mediation, the parties are not in the same room together,” says Story. “People always think, ‘Am I going to have to sit there and argue with them?’ No, you and your attorney are in one conference room, and the other party is in another. Then, they go back and forth until they reach an agreement. And I would say there’s at least a 90 percent success rate.”

Not all couples come to mediation with attorneys.

“Sometimes parents will say, we have a house, we have a 401k, we have a mortgage, and we have two kids, we’re simple. We each have a W-2, this is our income. Can you sit down with us and work out our divorce? And we can do that.”

Those couples still need an attorney to draw up an uncontested divorce, and Story can recommend someone in her office to do that. 

She says mediation helps families move forward without the lingering negative effects a court battle can often have on the children. 

"I'll run into people who'll say you were our mediator, and we walked through that with grace and ended up both buying houses in the same subdivision, and it made it so nice for the kids. Or I didn't realize how miserable I was; thank you for everything you did for me.”

It's those interactions, she says, that make the work so rewarding. 

“That’s why we do it.”

To find out more about Story, Abernathy and Campbell visit: https://williamsoncountyattorneys.com/