Court Reform Suggestions

August 8, 2014

The Coalition for Connecticut Family Court Reform ran a survey in May of this year to learn where members of CCFCR stood on issues. So we packed in dozens of questions we were interested in learning and launched a CCFCR survey with SurveyMonkey.com. Although a larger sample size of litigants with experience going through family courts would have been preferred, CCFCR did have 90 people, at the point of compilation of this summary, fill out most or large parts of the survey. See link at the end of the summary below if you would like to still participate in the survey.  It is still open. We will update the information in a couple of months.

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Summary of The Coalition for Connecticut Family Court Reform Survey Question:

What Can The Courts Do Better to Help Your Situation?

CCFCR MEMBERS’ OWN WORDS FOR THE REFORM THAT THEY WOULD LIKE TO SEE (In Summary)

REBUILD THE ENTIRE FAMILY COURT SYSTEM

• Increase transparency.
• Stop holding improper procedures.
• Practice due diligence for “all parties” involved.
• Stop being biased. Don’t stereotype.
• Stop sexism in the courts.
• Provide equality in justice.
• Decrease legal fees.
• Help even the playing field when a self-represented party who can’t afford representation is up against a party that can.
• Stop aiding child abuse for grown ups with issues.
• It’s a civil court which they guise up and say they handle criminal matters but they do not. Stop overlooking and avoiding child abuse and domestic violence.
• Stop retaliating against parent that brings up child abuse and domestic violence.
• Stop siding with abusers.
• Stop punishing and traumatizing children instead of protecting them.
• Stop giving custody to real abusive or neglectful people.
• Learn about Parental Alienation and what to do about it.
• Get experts to train the system on parental alienation and denial of parental access issues.
• Keep GALs out of the system.
• Courts and GALS need to acknowledge that parents and kids have rights.
• Provide court appointed attorney that works in the best interests of “all” parents and children.
• Provide oversight of lawyers
• Stop fraternal society of judges, evaluators, attorneys
• Stop extortion and racketeering methods.
• Stop bankrupting families.
• Stop destroying families.

FIX THE PROBLEM OF UNQUALIFIED OR POORLY-TRAINED JUDGES

• Set up elections for judges.
• Stop nominating cronies.
• Change the format of ONE judge deciding a case and make it a panel of 3-4 court-employed professionals, include the judge, a LMFT, a GAL and a forensic accountant or whatever panel make-up needs are appropriate for the case.
• Have a jury of peers instead of a judge deciding orders
• 4-year terms for judges not 8-year terms
• Hear BOTH sides before making a decision. Anything other than this is unacceptable
• Stop allowing delay tactics in hearing and trial schedules
• If an issue is coming up repetitively in court, solve it. It’s not getting solved if it is being repeatedly presented.
• Judges need to get better at looking at all angles.
• Consider that allegations are false.
• Provide better equality in justice.
• Judges need to make decisions instead of ordering expensive experts that are ignored.
• Stop giving abusers that sit composed aid-in-abuse
• Start seeing the parent that is upset as the normal, rational parent .– Start considering that the parent that sits composed may be the sociopathic abuser all about “winning” spite games.
• Do not assign GALs and counselors to people who can not afford it
• Investigate every JRC (Judicial Review Committee) complaint from parties and outside agencies and sanction judges where needed.
• Have a conscience and have integrity.

CASE MANAGEMENT and COURT ACCOUNTABILITY

• Courts need to keep dates and times that were scheduled in advance.
• Stop allowing attorneys to manipulate schedules to continue cases infinitely.
• Judges need to be available during the dates scheduled.
• Court should be responsible to pick up the expense when multiple lawyers are billing and court is canceled, delayed, and loses documents.

ENFORCE COURT ORDERS

• Orders about child support needs to be enforced.
• All other parenting orders, such as visitation, need to get enforced.

INVESTIGATE

• Investigate and properly evaluate even when it is out of state especially with criminal past cases.

HANDLE FALSE ALLEGATIONS BETTER

• Do not allow restraining orders without proof.
• Order consequences on persons that have been proven to be lying-with- intention-and-malice with false accusations about the other party in affadavits and in testimony. Give them punitive consequences.

PROVIDE MORE FAMILY SERVICES SUPPORT AND ACCESS TO THEM

• Provide more services to help people that are unable to pay for professionals to help resolve conflicts.

PROVIDE SOLUTIONS FOR PARENTS BEING DENIED ACCESS TO CHILDREN

• Rulings in contempt over parenting time and visitation interference need to have significant punitive consequences that are ordered.
• For every case that involves denial of parental access, absent a conviction of child abuse or neglect, conduct quarterly status conferences until the issue of denial of access to children has been resolved.
• No attorneys as GALs should get assigned to cases that involve parents being denied access to children, only LMFT or psychiatrists as GALs.

SHARED PARENTING

• 50/50 always!
• It should be joint physical and legal custody until one parent acts in a manner that would justify a change.

GAL REFORM

• Oversight and supervision of GALs jobs (Coming soon, October 1, 2014! Thank you sSB494)
• Less control and power given to GALs (Coming soon, October 1, 2014! Thank you sSB494)
• GALs need to follow appropriate due diligence.

HOLD UNLAWFUL COURT-APPOINTED PROFESSIONALS ACCOUNTABLE

• Unlawful and unethical processes, behaviors and actions by GALs, and other court-appointed professionals need to be investigated and they need to be held accountable.

DISABILITY ADVOCATES AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE ADVOCATES

• Provide disability advocates and domestic violence advocates when requested.

VIDEOTAPE THE COURTROOM

• Videotape the courtroom hearings and trials. If that is too expensive for the state, allow litigants to record it themselves on their mobile devices.

TAKE LEGAL ACTION

• People should organize class action law suits.

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You can still participate in the survey. We will update the results in a few months.  Here is the link.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TheCoalitionForConnecticutFamilyCourtReform

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Factors that have influenced the sample size were:

• Survey was only announced on a couple of individual’s personal Facebook sites, and a couple of advocate sites, a CCFCR meetup.com site and a Twitter account. The survey opportunity did not have a lot of visibility.

• Survey took about 20-30 minutes to fill out the survey so many started it but did not finish.

• Many who would have been helpful to learn about in the survey had a distrust or lack of comfort at conducting an online survey about such personal matters. Many of them still had open cases and were concerned about revealing information about their cases.

• There was also mis-information being spread in an email campaign by an individual who wanted people to not participate in the survey. This person did not understand accurately who wrote the questions within the survey and why it was being conducted and she had communicated those false assumptions in an email blast in an attempt to prevent litigants we wanted to hear from –  from participating. This may have had a effect on the number of participants.

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