The Docket- The Children’s Law Center
Learning Beyond Our Cases
Heather Kalachman, Esq.,
Simon Daillie, Esq.,
Genevieve Tahang-Behan, Esq.,
Casey Benavides, LMSW
I
n May 2013, the Children’s Law
Center of New York (CLCNY) sent
four staff members from across
the legal and social work disciplines to
attend the Association of Family and
Conciliation Courts’ (AFCC) 50th Anniversary Annual Conference, which
was entitled Riding the Wave of the
Future: Global Voices, Expanding
Choices. The AFCC Conference focused on current trends and expected
changes in the Family Court and how
they might affect custody litigation
practice for the next 50 years and beyond. Presentations and themes at
the conference included the impact
of media technology on children and
families, the crisis of the self-represented litigant, the dilemma of the
incarcerated parent, and the rising
trend of co-parenting.
The Self-Represented Litigant
New York State seems to have partially avoided the major crisis of selfrepresented litigants in American
Family Courts. In contrast, we were
surprised to learn that in California
in custody and visitation and some
other family court matters, indigent
parents and children are often left
unrepresented. Pro se litigants on
average tend to have fewer resources
and to be less educated, yet in many
states they are essentially practicing
law, potentially to the detriment of
their children’s interests. Andrew
Schepard, Professor at Hofstra
University School of Law, presented
the problem of the self-represented
litigant in Family Court as a massive
16? CLCNY Fall/Winter 2013
community problem that requires an
overhaul to the legal education system and new models for delivering
legal services.
Incarcerated Parents
While California is not particularly
generous in providing legal representation to Family Court litigants and
children, there is a non-profit organization in Los Angeles that does provide free representation to formerly
incarcerated parents attempting to
regain a role in their children’s lives.
During its presentation, the Harriet
Buhai Center for Family Law also
strongly advocated for visitation between incarcerated parents and their
children while they
are still in correctional facilities as positive
for the child’s
psychological
development
and supportive of
the parent’s reentry
into society upon release. The upward trend
of incarceration nationally has
had significant consequences for the
children of those imprisoned, and the
Harriet Buhai Center is attempting to
address those effects as counsel for
parents. In New York, the Osborne
Association is a leading organization
working with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated parents and their
children to stay connected.
moving towards encouraging at least
shared parenting time, if not joint decision-making. Several vendors were
pitching their Internet-based products for assisting parents with the
communication needed to co-manage the raising of a child. However,
we know as attorneys for children,
parents coming to court to litigate issues of custody and parenting time
are often too acrimonious to be able
to make joint decisions that are in the
best interests of their children. Furthermore, we know all too well the
financial constraints of parents in our
community, and although these Internet-based products may seem
valuable to the process,
they are not financially
feasible to most. The
concepts to help parents communicate
are good ideas, and
we often suggest to
parents or counsel
for parents if they
are represented by
counsel, a shared communication book, sharing a Gmail account for their
communication about their child, or
texting to communicate. In providing
children with legal representation,
it’s especially important that we value
the impact we can have, not only in
litigation, but in children’s lives, as
we consider the strong voice we can
give them in these proceedings.
“it’s
especially important
that we value the
impact we can
have, not only in
litigation but in
children’s
lives”
Co-Parenting
The importance of co-parenting was
emphasized across the conference,
and it was noted that some courts are
Media Technology and Children
One of the most thought-provoking
moments came from an insightful
keynote address by James Steyer,
the CEO and founder of Common
Sense Media, who spoke about the