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Family Court: Back to the future?
NWI Times
Dec 15, 1996
http://www.nwitimes.com/uncategorized/family-court-back-to-the-future/article_124bfbee-bec1-5a2a-bd3a-21de01d92835.html
VALPARAISO - It was 6 a.m. on a Sunday in April 1995. Roused from her sleep, Susan Finley heard knocking on her door.
When she opened the door, Finley was so shocked she can't remember today how many police officers came to take away her children, ages 5 and 7.
"They handed me some sort of court order to relinquish my children to them and take them to my ex-in-laws," Finley said.
Finley had not been charged with abuse or neglect.
Court documents show Finley lost custody because she kept her two sick children home instead of sending them off with their father for his weekend visitation.
With the couple disagreeing about the seriousness of the children's illness, their father, Scott Finley of South Haven, contacted the children's guardian ad litem, Beatrice Lightfoot of Burns Harbor.
According to court records, on the Monday after the scheduled visitation, Lightfoot reported to Porter Superior Court Judge Thomas Webber that Susan Finley was not complying with court orders regarding counseling, visitation and communication with the guardian ad litem.
Webber's court order removing the children was filed in court on a Wednesday without a hearing. Police took the children on Sunday.
Finley today believes the more personal, supportive system offered by family court advocates would have prevented police coming to her door.
State Sen. William Alexa, D-Valparaiso, said he will sponsor a bill to establish three family courts at state expense.
Should the bill pass the legislature, each county's judiciary will have the opportunity to apply for state funds to establish a unified family court system.
Alexa said he believes Porter County to be a good candidate for the project because it is on the cusp of being a medium-sized county. The other two candidates must be rural or urban in demographics.
Unlike Porter County, whose only consolidation of family issues is to assign dissolutions to two magistrates, Lake County already has established a domestic relations bureau, the first step in developing a family court, according to Alexa.
The Family Court movement
The complicated lives of splintering families and the impact on communities have launched the legal community on a search for alternatives.
State Supreme Court Chief Justice Randall Shepard has proposed the General Assembly consider a pilot program to explore whether a family court structure can better provide the relief families increasingly are seeking through the courts.
"Among the objectives of the family court movement is to try to get dysfunctional families in front of the same judge," Shepard continued.
What attorneys and judges tell Shepard is that today it is "quite ordinary to be in divorce court, juvenile court and criminal court," all at the same time.
"Back in the old days," Shepard said, "a single judge (handled all those issues), so it didn't really matter if a family came in again and again because there was only one judge and he knew the story so the court could do an effective job."
There is no true unified family court system in existence in Indiana, although some counties have some aspects of a family court system in place, according to state Court Administrator Bruce Kotzan.
Alexa said the family court concept is less adversarial.
"In an adversarial system, you have a winner and a loser. That's not the way it's supposed to work in a domestic relations situation," Alexa said.
The idea is not without its detractors.
Opponents question whether one judge can be sufficiently neutral in dealing with an individual when they "know too much" about the family.
"Family members fear you might be prejudiced," Miami Circuit Court Judge Bruce Embrey said.
Then and now
Somehow the children were restored to Susan Finley two months after they were taken away, she said. She never questioned it. "I was just so grateful to get them back."
Finley said she would support a family court setting, but Scott Finley said he was "very satisfied" with the system as it.
Scott Finley questioned judges' impartiality in a family court system. If he had had other pending cases against him, he doesn't think one judge could separate the issues fairly.
But like Susan Finley, Kimberly Cole of Chesterton supports the idea of a more personalized court system.
In January, Cole's 2-year-old son was taken from her by police. She and her husband, Todd Cole, were in the midst of a bitter divorce when police handed her a copy of a handwritten order granting her husband custody of the boy on the grounds he was a fit father.
Cole, who is still seeking to regain custody, says she was unaware at the time that her divorce had been granted while her attorney was out of the country.
"If the judge knows the family and sees all the struggles, I think they could analyze the situation a whole lot better," Cole said.
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