Logistical problems following the gigantic raid on the Texas polygamy sect: Although 350 Texas lawyers are said to have volunteered to represent the 416 seized children — each of whom presumably requires individual representation — a small army of others are expected to be needed as well, given that, for example, more than a hundred mothers may soon be locked in custody litigation. (AP/New York Post, Apr. 14).
Posts Tagged ‘family law’
Great moments in custody litigation
An Italian pornographic movie star/politician who was formerly married to wealthy American artist Jeff Koons is back in court with a child support demand, a decade after the two carried out an extraordinarily acrimonious and hard-fought custody battle over their son, now 15. In the course of losing that battle Koons spent $4 million on legal fees, “some of which he later challenged unsuccessfully. Among Koons’ complaints was his lawyers charged him for time they spent watching his ex’s porn films, one of which famously includes” a scene rather too raw for description on this blog involving a reptilian co-star. (Dareh Gregorian, “Porn Star Sues Papa To Pay Up”, New York Post, Mar. 27).
Latest child protection news
Chicago: “Child endangerment and obstruction charges were dropped Thursday against a woman who briefly left her 2-year-old daughter sleeping in the car while she and her two older daughters poured coins into a Salvation Army kettle.” A lawyer for the mother, Treffly Coyne, said that she had stayed within sight of the car while making the donation.
(“Charges Dropped for Leaving Kid in Car”, AP/Las Vegas Sun, Mar. 14). And from upstate New York: “Though not ‘ideal,’ a couple’s efforts to control the weight of their obese daughter were made in good faith and did not justify a county agency’s repeated removal of the girl from her parents’ custody, an upstate New York appeals court ruled Thursday.” (Joel Stashenko, “Appeals Court Faults Removal of Obese Child From Parents”, New York Law Journal, Mar. 3; similar case in Dundee, The Scotsman).
“Judge awards Heather Mills £24.3 million in divorce ruling”
Indicating perhaps that divorcing Paul McCartney is an only slightly less remunerative affair than being Bear Stearns, even if she didn’t get the claimed £125 million. (David Byers, Times Online, Mar. 17). Reader Jim T. sends along this video of Mills’s press statement and describes as “hilarious” the “references of how it is ‘very, very sad’ that her daughter was only awarded enough travel expenses to travel ‘B class’ even though Heather Mills was just awarded $50 million dollars.” (& welcome Above the Law readers).
Absent father of Banita Jacks children: I’m suing the city
Family members of the children Banita Jacks murdered, who apparently cared so much about the children that they didn’t notice Jacks had starved them to death months before they were discovered, “have hired lawyers to pursue claims against the D.C. government for failing to prevent months of neglect and abuse. … In interviews yesterday, the grandmothers’ lawyers declined to say when their clients last saw Jacks or her daughters.”
DC taxpayers will be thrilled to note that the city is refusing to rehire three workers fired in a scapegoating frenzy after the Jacks revelations, even after a hearing officer has held that the firings were unwarranted. More lawsuits to come. (Keith L. Alexander and Petula Dvorak, “D.C. Could Have Done More To Help 4 Sisters, Families Say”, Washington Post, Feb. 28).
For an example of the post-Jacks overreaction, see Hans Bader at POL, who has beat me to the Greg and Julianna Caplan story, which was also extensively covered in the Marc Fisher blog.
Great moments in legal services promotion
As a Valentine’s Day promotion, Charleston, W.V. radio station WKLC-FM is offering a drawing for a free divorce. “Charleston attorney Rusty Webb will handle the actual filing” and says winners should not expect anything complicated in the line of contested proceedings. (Charleston Gazette, USA Today).
Case workers and perverse incentives
A reader writes regarding our post on the perverse incentives given social workers:
Frankly, I’m surprised this story is news. The belief of every case worker I know (I’ve only been at this since July) is that if a kid on your caseload dies, the odds are that you’ll be fired no matter what you did right or wrong. Besides the perverse incentives you mentioned, that cause over-removal of children at lower levels, there are perverse incentives for the people at the top of the chain–if they make the requirements so unattainable they can never be done perfectly, and keep caseloads high enough that no one can complete all his tasks, there will always be something they can find that caseworkers didn’t do, and the caseworkers (and sometimes their immediate supervisors) can be fired.
One of the greatest needs I’ve seen for a loser-pays system has been this year in my work with county dependency courts. The Child Protective Investigators, who remove children and work with the state AG’s office to get them adjudicated dependent on the state, prosecute the most absurd cases because it hardly costs them anything if they lose.
Right now I’m working with a CPI who is trying to take custody of a 17-year-old girl from her mother–even though by the time the trial comes around and the girl is adjudicated (probably won’t be, because the CPI has a crappy case against her) she’ll be one month away from aging out of the system. Since the CPIs don’t pay if they lose, and don’t even usually show up at trial to get chewed out by the judge, they have no reason not to waste my time, the judges’ time, the attorneys’ time, and (worst of all, since these poor folks aren’t paid to be there) a phenomenal amount of innocent parents’ time and money.
The single biggest problem with the dependency system, at least here in Florida, is that we don’t have loser-pays.
Sorry for the rant. That post hit close to home!
On a similar point: see Illinois Alliance for Parents & Children, whose website isn’t quite finished.
January’s the busiest time…
…say some divorce lawyers. (Dareh Gregorian, “Splitting Time”, New York Post, Jan. 9)(via Jones/WSJ law blog).
Divorce law in the Northeast
Prompted by our post of yesterday about Virginia lawyer-legislators, commenter Hans Bader at his own blog nominates New York, Massachusetts and New Jersey as examples of how bad matrimonial law can get: “the more lawyers are in a state legislature, the more unfair a state’s divorce laws tend to be”. (OpenMarket.org., Jan. 2). Plus: our family law archives are here.
French lawyers strike
The action was “in protest at a possible reform that could cut them out of many divorce cases.” Notaries public would be authorized to handle many divorces involving mutual consent, at a large likely savings to divorcing couples. (AP/IHT, Dec. 19).