Melissa Kucinski
Bio
Ms. Melissa Kucinski is the owner of MK Family Law, PLLC based in Washington, D.C. As part of her law practice, she mediates complex cases that span multiple states and countries. In 2013, Ms. Kucinski consulted for The Hague Conference on Private International Law. She has authored over a dozen publications, many with a focus on cross-border family mediation, and recently authored a chapter in an upcoming treatise on the Hague Conference on Private International Law‘s work in international family mediation. She has presented at nearly 50 national and international conferences on cross-border family cases.
Ms. Kucinski chaired a Steering Committee for International Social Service in Geneva, Switzerland, and was designated as a Legal and Mediation Expert to an international delegation to The Hague Conference’s 7th Special Commission meeting on the Practical Operation of the 1980 and 1996 Hague Conventions in 2017. She sat as an advisor on several past delegations for the U.S. government, including for The Hague Conference’s 6th Special Commission meeting in 2011, and a delegation that traveled to Tokyo in 2014 to discuss the bilateral operation of The Hague Child Abduction Convention with Japan’s Foreign Ministry. While in Tokyo, Melissa conducted a 2-day mediation training for Japanese family mediators. She co-designed a 40-hour international family mediation training offered by the American Bar Association in 2013 and 2015 and has offered advanced training for the Center for ADR and UC Law SF College of Law. Ms. Kucinski, a fellow of the International Academy of Family Lawyers and active on its Dispute Resolution Committee, is a panel mediator for 5 separate state and federal courts in 3 different jurisdictions in the United States. In 2019, she was a guest of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs to be the plenary speaker at a symposium in Tokyo celebrating the 5-year anniversary of Japan’s ratification of the Hague Child Abduction Convention. She spoke on the promise of mediation in child abduction cases.
Ms. Kucinski teaches the International Cross-Border Family Mediation Training, non-academic and open to the public, for Hastings’ Center for Negotiation and Dispute Resolution. Learn more here.