My name is David Kennedy, and this is my first blog post as the Senior Policy Adviser at X2X, Inc.. I want to use this opportunity to introduce myself and explain why I’ve chosen to be involved in developing what I think is an exciting set of tools for our users.
I was privileged to serve as a Family Law Magistrate and District Court Judge with the Family Division of Maine’s District Court for 15 years, until I retired in 2013. After taking a few months off after my retirement to do a long-planned lap around the United States.

I then joined the Maine law firm of Eaton Peabody as  Senior Counsel, where my practice is limited to mediation and arbitration. I mediate and arbitrate all kinds of cases, including many family matters. As both a magistrate and judge, and I heard thousands of family law cases and often saw the best people at their worst and the worst people at their best as they tried to present their family cases, with or without lawyers.

After I had been on the bench for a few years, I was talking with my friend and colleague Andrew Horton about the patterns and mistakes we saw over and over. We decided to write a book designed to help people avoid those common mistakes we saw, and to urge them to resolve their cases in a positive and civil manner. That book, Do Your Divorce Right, Straight Talk from Family Court Cases, was published in 2011 (http://www.towerpub.com). Since the publication of our book, Justice Horton and I have appeared on radio and television, and spoken at many public events.

While our book goes into a lot of detail, I have summarized it in three phrases:
Be Nice.
Take the High Road
Take the Long View

Earlier this year the founders of X2X approached me and asked if I would consider joining their team. After talking with them about their ideas of using the Internet to educate people about the dangers and opportunities that come with every family law matter, I decided that joining X2X would be another way I could help people avoid unnecessary trauma while in processes of separation and divorce.
I am now working with the X2X team to generate what we think is useful content for our users and we look forward to providing additional useful tools for you and your family. As I worked with this talented team I’ve become more convined that we’ll be helping both parents and children avoid unnecessary fall out from “messy divorces” and “nasty separations”.
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We hope you will find our initial e-books helpful, and please stay tuned as we will be rolling out additional information and tools for you to use!