The ABA Child Custody and Adoption Pro Bono Project will award directed grants supporting the delivery of legal services to children in custody cases. Pro bono programs, legal service programs, children’s law centers, law-school clinics, court programs, and similar organizations are invited to apply. The focus for the 2007 grants is Lawyers and Law Schools Partnering to Serve Children.
Deadline: February 28, 2007
View Guidelines and Download p_directed_grant_application_2007.doc

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Join us in participating at the Louisville Bar Association Bowl For Kids’ Sake, benefiting Big Brothers – Big Sisters on February 28, 2007. A little friendly competition would be fun. Our team is Louisville Divorce Klutzes and we will bowl for the second year. If you don’t form a team to compete, we will be hitting you up for a donation; details to follow. If you are forming a team, please note this little known fact: Sandy Ragland was the 1960 Louisville Women’s Doubles champion! It should be a fun evening for a great cause.

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Deborah Vetter reports CASA a valued champion for kids in yesterday’s Courier-Journal, a timely topic for those whose New Year resolutions include seeking opportunities to volunteer for worthy causes. Many more volunteers are needed, and these dedicated folks really can make a difference in the lives of abused and neglected children. Some quotes from the article:

At a time of growing caseloads and increasingly complex situations of abuse and neglect — often fueled by drugs and alcohol — judges say the CASA volunteers are becoming increasingly important.

The advocates generally handle one case at a time, while busy social workers may have 15 to 20 or more.

“CASA makes a tremendous difference,” said Jefferson Family Court Judge Patricia Walker FitzGerald. “I wish we could have a CASA volunteer for every child in the system.”

Jefferson County’s CASA has about 170 volunteers, while Family Court judges last year handled 3,500 cases of abuse or neglect.

Though judges acknowledge they probably will never have enough volunteers to appoint a CASA worker for every case in family court, they wish there were many more.

“A lot of times, CASA is the only primary, consistent person in the child’s life,” said Stephen M. George, chief judge of Jefferson Family Court.

How to volunteer? A vist to the volunteer page on the CASA website is a good place to start.

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A Labor of Love sounds a little corny, but those who have been in law for a long time know what it means and it guides much of what we do in the profession of law.
Bar Briefs, a monthly publication of the Louisville bar Association and not available online (yet?) has this as its title for the front page interview with our new president, Tom Williams. The Kentucky Bar Association is the only required membership of Kentucky attorneys, yet the LBA claims an 80% voluntary participation rate, much higher than the 50% norm of voluntary bar associations across the country. Its leadership has made all the difference, and all for a labor of love.
The words rang particularly true to me, as I recently received a beautiful handwritten letter from retired Judge Richard A. Revell, former Chief Judge of the Jefferson Circuit Family Court. We are working on the annual domestic relations update seminar as well as the 2007 update to Kentucky Divorce, a West-Thomson treatise. He said that Alan T. Slyn (the original co-author whose updates I am assuming) always said that updating the book was “a labor of love, for the profession.” It went straight to my heart; I know exactly what he meant. It is why we have quality legal weblogs, isn’t it? Blogs are just a high tech medium of what fine lawyers have been doing for centuries, as a labor of love.
Good luck and best wishes to Tom Williams; your heart is in the right place and you will leave a good legacy, I am sure.

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Many people cannot afford a divorce. Pro se litigants are causing a huge strain on our judicial resources. Legal Aid is without the staffing and finances to help further. To its credit, Jefferson County , Kentucky Family Court has developed a set of forms for clerks to provide pro se litigants for post-divorce motions. New is a set of forms to assist pro se litigants from the outset. They are not finalized and the Louisville Bar Association has issued a call to lawyers to come by and help review the 100 pages drafted to date. Please take them up on the offer! The better assistance the clerks can be to those who cannot afford counsel, the less onerous our judge’s jobs will be.
Here’s the email call to action:
“The Pro Bono Consortium, in coordination with Family Court and the Louis D. Brandeis School of Law, has developed pro se divorce forms that are in their final stages of editing. The pro se packet (over 100 pages) is now available for review at the LBA office and we encourage your participation.
These forms were developed to help meet the needs of those who cannot afford an attorney and appear in Family Court each week unprepared to navigate the legal system. In Jefferson County, at least one-half of the cases heard during motion hour are pro se on one or both sides. Pro se cases create a backlog as most litigants appear before the judges without proper documentation and have to return multiple times to resolve their issues. More importantly, it may limit access to court services for the most needy in our community.
As a reminder, a pro se post-decree packet was created in 2005 through a pilot project between the Consortium and Family Court. Over 100 packets are distributed weekly and the Family Court judges have seen the positive impact of providing accurate forms to these litigants.
If you are interested in reviewing these documents, they will be available at the LBA office from Monday, September 25th until Monday, October 9th. They will not be available on-line until they are ready for distribution. Notification of their completion will be sent to all LBA members via email and through Bar Briefs.
The LBA’s Board of Directors will review comments from its members as they consider endorsement of the pro se divorce program.
The pro se documents will be evaluated over time and modifications made as necessary. For further information, please contact Kim Farmer, Executive Director, 569-1369, kfarmer@loubar.org or Kate Lindsay, Pro Bono Manager at klindsay@loubar.org.”
I am known to bristle at the suggestion that the practice of divorce law is filling out forms, and I have eschewed forms for twenty-five years. Yet, the volume of cases inundating our courts, and the very limited time our judges have to consider the most complex financial and psychological issues, requires that we who value our system of jurisprudence somehow deal with the massive inundation of cases clogging our dockets. For people who want or must help themselves, making the task easier for them makes the task of the judges many more times less difficult. Each week they come back on the same motion because it wasn’t done correctly the first time, means less judicial time available to hear substantive issues.

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Legal Aid still needs our help:
“I am processing the most recent list of clients off the Uncontested Divorce List and need several volunteers to accept a case at this time. Any help you can provide will be greatly appreciated. They (clients) have been patiently waiting for a couple of months. Please consider assisting one of our clients today.”
Andrea Y. Robbins
Andrea Y. Robbins, Program Assistant
VOLUNTEER LAWYER PROGRAM
425 W. MUHAMMAD ALI BLVD.
LOUISVILLE, KY 40202
PHONE: (502) 585-6980 EXT. 243
FAX: (502) 584-8014

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“Join Operation Stand By -YOU Can Make a Difference”

From Mark Sullivan, our North Carolina colleague and author of the 2006 ABA Military Divorce Handbook:

“Join Operation Stand By -YOU Can Make a Difference”

“One of our Operation Stand-By volunteers – Howard Gum of
Asheville, NC – recently completed a difficult child custody jurisdiction
matter for a Marine. He is on the Operation Stand-By list & wrote to tell
us of the experience. Here are his own words* –

In early July of 2005, I was contacted by phone by a Lieutenant Colonel, a
Legal Assistance Attorney with the United States Marine Corps, on behalf of
a Staff Sergeant in his command. The Legal Assistance Officer and the
StaffSergeant were in the State of Virginia.

The Staff Sergeant and his wife had three young children, ages 4, 3, and 2.
The Staff Sergeant’s wife had fled the State of Virginia with all three
children and showed up in Buncombe County, North Carolina.

She contacted a legal services office and presented them with allegations
ofdomestic violence that caused her and the children to flee the State of
Virginia. These allegations were subsequently proved to be groundless but
they were sufficient for legal services to accept her case and file custody
proceedings in North Carolina under the UCCJEA.

The Marine Corps Legal Assistance Attorney put the Staff Sergeant in touch
with me and he related that his wife had had a history of emotional
problemsand mental health issues and that he was very concerned for the safety and
welfare of their children and did not know of their physical whereabouts
although he was in intermittent and irregular contact by cell phone.

We agreed that he needed to retain counsel in Virginia to file an action
there seeking custody of the children but it was clear that he could not
afford to retain counsel in two states. He and his wife had recently
purchased a new home (at her insistence) and one of the manifestations of
her emotional and mental health problems was mismanagement of credit.

Under these circumstances, I agreed to represent the Marine on a pro bono
basis and filed a Motion to Dismiss the North Carolina action under the
provisions of the UCCJEA relating to jurisdiction. The Marine was able to
retain a lawyer in Virginia to file an action on his behalf.

The matter came on for hearing in Buncombe County and after hearing the
Court invoked the emergency custody provisions of the UCCJEA and awarded
emergency custody of the three children to the Marine Staff Sergeant,
pending action by the Virginia Court. Our Court declined to exercise any
further jurisdiction in North Carolina and transferred the matter back to
Virginia.

I understand the custody matter was resolved satisfactorily and favorably
for the Marine Staff Sergeant in the Virginia proceeding. I was pleased
and gratified to have the opportunity to assist this service member in a
difficult and some times terrifying situation given that he did not know
the circumstances of his very young children.

Please consider volunteering for Operation Stand By. By listing
your contact information on our list, JAG lawyers can call upon you to help
our men and women in uniform by providing even the simplest advice or help
in your jurisdiction. In order to add your name to the list, please
contact
the List Administrator, Melissa Kucinski at mkucinski@dberlin.org. If you
have additional questions about Operation Stand By or the work of the
Military Committee, please contact its Chair, Mark Sullivan at
mark.sullivan@ncfamilylaw.com.”

*The names have been omitted, but the facts have been untouched.

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