Innovations in Family Courts
The Domestic Relations Division of the Cook County Court is carefully examining ways to make some significant changes which will improve the level of service for everyone needing to establish parentage of a child, get child support for a child or come to a shared agreement for parenting. Chicago Appleseed has been involved in the task force and we’ve been truly impressed with the ideas for innovations being discussed. CAFFJ, with pro bono partners Baker & McKenzie, have contributed research into California’s Family Law Facilitator Offices to the process.
Last week, the New York Times reported on another innovation in California’s family courts: the court assisted “one-day” divorce. The program—piloted in Sacramento and San Diego counties—uses an online screening system and a case coordinator to guide unrepresented persons through the divorce process. Although it’s referred to as a “one-day” divorce, litigants must have filed their divorce petitions, effected service and fulfilled the waiting period before working with the case coordinator. At that point, the case coordinator ensures that litigants prepare the correct forms and have necessary documentation before going into the courtroom. However, the online screening and case coordinator ensure that people participating in the program will leave court the same with a complete judgment, conserving judicial resources and improving the process for litigants. As with other court-based assistance programs in California’s family law courts, the coordinator does not offer strategic advice and does not represent the litigant. The assistance requires specific legal knowledge and the coordinator is an expert in the law, but her job is not to represent the particular interest of the individual litigant. Rather, the coordinator helps demystify the process and works to make certain that court filings reach the judge in a way that allows the court to act upon them appropriately.
This saves litigants from making repeated unproductive trips to the courthouse, improves the flow of cases through the courtroom, and free the judges to concentrate on complicated matters before them. Because approximately three-fourths of litigants in California’s family courts do not have attorneys, simple intervention by court-based assistance programs can have a profound effect.
Clearly, this is a program that will benefit only specific litigants in the family courts: divorcing couples with few assets or divorcing couples who are already agreed on parenting issues. Nonetheless, court-based programs where lawyers assist unrepresented litigants with forms and documentation offers a clear benefit to the courts and to the people in need of the court.
As Cook County continues to improve its Domestic Relations Division, we hope it can implement appropriate court-based services for families.