This is the 61st anniversary of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. One of its top achievements was the creation of the AAML Foundation in 1990. As past-president Cary Mogerman puts it, the Foundation provides our Fellows with a means — in addition to the application of our own professional skills — of directly assisting families and, in particular, children who have been adversely affected by the dysfunction within their family and its resulting breakup. I am proud to belong to a professional organization that includes providing charitable support for the families and communities we serve as one of its key objectives.
Mogerman emphasizes that family dysfunction is an undeniable part of the human condition. It is not aberrant in its existence, and the people affected by it are not outliers. Our Fellows know that a civil society needs predictable, reliable methods of ending the untenable, through the application of equitable laws and procedures. But the work does not stop at the end of any case — as the families we serve will be dealing with the wounds of their dysfunction and restructuring for years.
The Foundation’s goal is to support community resources for those post-breakup families.
Since its inception, it has provided a total of 441 grants totaling more than $2.1 million to grantees throughout the U.S. The most recent was a special one to UNICEF, to assist its work for the children in Ukraine.
Closer to home, Herring Law Group previously lobbied for and gained the Foundation’s funding for a mediation center in Ventura County, the Conejo Free Clinic in Thousand Oaks, and Casa Serena in Santa Barbara. I am a Lifetime Member and HLG is an annual contributor. The Foundation is proof that when people come together and work together, they can do great things toward positively impacting many families across our country.