Judge Pierce’s appointment as Family Court Judge was effective January 1, 1982. She was appointed as acting District Court Judge of Family Court from her position of Municipal Court Judge by Chief Judge Harold Kalina for a term of one year, subject to possible reappointment.

Family Court is familiar to Judge Pierce. She was appointed the Family Court’s first woman referee in October 1973. She has also acted as assisting Family Court Judge when previous Family Court Judges have gone on vacation.

She served for six months as Referee before she was appointed to the Municipal Court bench in April 1974 by then-governor Wendell Anderson. Preceding her appointment to the Court as Referee, she practiced law for fifteen years. A large percentage of her private practice was in family law.

Delila Pierce was born in St. Cloud on January 21, 1934, the second-eldest of seven children. In 1942, she moved with her family to the north side of Minneapolis, which remains her neighborhood.

Judge Pierce states that she knew that she wanted to be a lawyer since the age of fourteen. "I wanted to help people; I had a relative who was a judge, and my dislike for dissection in biology steered me away from being a doctor," said Judge Pierce, explaining how her career commenced.

She graduated from Patrick Henry High School in 1952 and entered the University of Minnesota pre-law program which allowed her to enter law school after two years of college. She was graduated from law school in 1958, cum laude, after having spent two years on law review. After law school, Judge Pierce clerked for Chief Justice Oscar Knutson of the Minnesota Supreme Court and then began her own private practice. During her years of private practice, she served for three years as chairman of the Hennepin County Bar Family Law Committee, participated in a 1971 panel on no-fault divorce bills in New York City, and spoke on numerous television shows presenting the practitioner’s view of family law.

"During my fifteen years of practice, I saw a dramatic change in the marriage dissolution laws and saw the advent of divorce reform groups and how those groups interacted with the Hennepin County Family Law Committee," Judge Pierce said.

One problem that Judge Pierce will confront in her new position is calendar congestion and delay in Family Court. New statutes passed in the last legislative session, the growing numbers of child abuse cases, and the loss of one referee has resulted in a larger than normal case load. Judge Pierce hopes to alleviate this problem by seeking help from the Juvenile Court Referees when they are able. She also will try to convince the legislature to allow the vacancy caused by Referee Daniel McLean’s absence to be filled.

Judge Pierce said that she might testify before the legislature on this proposed legislation, but that generally she will limit her testifying or her public support of legislation to procedural issues related to the court, and that she would not testify on proposed substantive law changes in family law.

"If I have to rule on the constitutionality of laws or interpret them, it would be unjust if I lobbied for specific ones," she explained.

She is also pretrying her own cases. "By pretrying my own cases I will free up the referees to hear other matters, and hopefully be able to settle more cases," Judge Pierce said.

"At the pretrials, I will carefully determine how long a case will take to be tried and those trials which will take over a week will be routed to the general district court bench," she added, explaining how her new pretrial policy should reduce some of the delay in Family Court.

Another problem that Judge Pierce is seeking to minimize is the delay intrinsically built into the marriage dissolution calendar.

To reduce this delay, she proposes to eliminate the ninety-day rule in settled cases (Rule 2 of the Fourth Judicial District Rules). Although Judge Pierce is quick to note that she has not yet obtained the district court’s approval on this proposal, if she has her way, no longer will parties have to wait ninety days after they have settled their cases to schedule a default hearing.

"Having to obtain an order advancing the hearing is a waste of time for the court, and for the lawyer," Judge Pierce said.

In addition, Judge Pierce hopes eventually to reduce the delay from the filing of a certificate of readiness to the final hearing to approximately one month. To accomplish this goal, she plans on reducing custody mediation to two to three weeks, and custody evaluations to less than a month. "At present there is a sixteen-to-twenty week delay caused by the custody mediation-evaluation system," Judge Pierce said.

Judge Pierce further mentioned that she will not order custody mediation evaluation or visitation mediation if either party does not want it. "If one party is hostile, the Department of Court Services will not be able to do a good custody evaluation," Judge Pierce explained.

"Referees may still encourage custody mediation, but if a party does not want to be involved, he or she should not be forced to participate. But for the parties starting a dissolution action, the court would not be able to interfere in these people’s lives. I believe that such intervention by government or the court into these people’s lives should be kept at a minimum. The court will not extend itself into people’s lives except to resolve the disputes they have asked the court to resolve. The court’s relief, therefore, will be limited to what the parties have requested. Generally, I am guided by a principle favoring minimal intrusion of government into people’s lives," Judge Pierce explained.

Other changes proposed by Judge Pierce include phasing out The Divorce Experience and the Joint Child Custody Experience—monthly evening lectures that are sponsored by the Department of Court Services. Judge Pierce stated that she was concerned that the custody seminar was a "sales pitch" for joint custody. She suggested that the referees need not participate in the seminars, that legal issues not be discussed and that oral questions not be taken from the audience. Judge Pierce is considering whether it would be feasible to present the same information regarding dissolutions to the public through T.V. video tapes similar to those used in conciliation court.

With regard to joint custody, Pierce stated that she will not order joint custody over an objection by either party, and that she will only order either legal or physical joint custody when there is an agreement by both parties.

"If the parties cannot agree on custody matters, they will not be able to agree on what school or church the child should go to, or what medical treatment would be best. A court order telling the parties to cooperate with one another will not work in these cases," the Judge explained.

Judge Pierce also would rather not bifurcate custody cases, except in emergencies. Judge Pierce hopes to have the delay in setting trials eliminated so that property issues could be tried at the same time custody issues would be tried so that she can avoid having two hearings.

Judge Pierce has also drafted new Family Court rules which she hopes will be approved by the district court. These rules will eliminate any duplication of statutes or the Minnesota Rules of Civil Procedure and will be no more restrictive than the general rules.

Judge Pierce also expressed concern that attorneys might be reserving motion times and canceling scheduled hearings to switch other cases. To prevent this, the securing of times by telephone will be closely monitored to make sure that no trading of times will be allowed.

Although the Judge stated that she did not want to make any statements about substantive family law policy, she wants the bar to know that findings of contempt may be more readily available, together with the possibility of jail sanctions. Furthermore, she mentioned that she might assess legal fees against attorneys who make spurious motions.

Judge Pierce added that her proposed changes are not carved in stone, and that she will change them if they do not accomplish her goals.