Gerald D. Alpern, Ph.D.

Clinical Psychologist

Divorce, Child Custody, Parenting

Peter Van Domelen, Esq.

Jerry moved to Aspen in 1975 following a sabbatical from Indiana University Medical School where for 15 years he had been a professor of child clinical and developmental psychology. He had loved doing research, publishing, consulting, and teaching but was irresistibly drawn to a new life in a beautiful place where he could on a full-time basis directly proffer the skills he had been teaching. He established a private psychology clinical practice for adults and children, and soon, community needs led him to add forensic skills to the practice.

Initially Jerry's legal work was as an expert witness in areas primarily regarding children.  Increasingly, he was serving the courts with appointments for parental competency, dependency/neglect, and child abuse evaluations.  After developing a specialty in divorce matters and writing his first book for the lay public (Divorce: Rights of Passage),  consulting about post-divorce parenting and performing custody evaluations became his major professional activities.

Through serving courts in divorce matters, Jerry first developed an abiding interest and commitment to alternative dispute resolution techniques.  He explains: "I witnessed too many families victimized by ineffectual, inefficient, expensive court procedures that often were outright detrimental to children. This led me to incorporate into custody evaluations an assessment of the parents' abilities to reason together.  Essentially this was a mediation aimed at having the parents reach their own agreements regarding post-divorce custody matters. I came to consider evaluations that did not lead to a undisputed resolution of custody matters as flawed."  Jerry's successes with evaluative mediations led to regular court appointments as “ Parenting Coordinator” or “Special Advocate” where his role was to settle post- divorce custodial disputes through mediation or arbitration.

As Jerry acquired experience as a mediator in child related matters, he began incorporating the techniques into his adult clinical practice in both marital and non-marital areas. He also gained additional formal training in alternative dispute resolution techniques and added mediation/arbitration to his professional activities.

Jerry is delighted to have discovered a group of experienced professionals in his community who share his passion for alternative dispute resolution. It is this group of talented lawyers, judges, an accountant and fellow mental health professional that together designed and created Aspen Dispute Resolution. The concepts and practices of this group offer a vehicle for practicing an extremely important service toward a more humane, efficient and beneficial resolution of conflicts.

Jerry can be reached at alpern@AspenDisputeResolution.com.

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Aspen Dispute Resolution LLC, 1280 Ute Avenue, Suite 10, Aspen, CO 81611

Phone: 970-925-2445  Fax: 970-925-2442  E-mail: manager@AspenDisputeResolution.com