Bridging the Justice Gap in Family Law: Repurposing Federal IV-D Funding to Expand Community-Based Legal and Social Services for Parents

Parents in family court overwhelmingly proceed pro se; however, in child support courtrooms, government attorneys representing the state child support agency frequently play a pivotal role. These attorneys represent the state’s ostensible interests in ensuring that children are financially supported and in preventing welfare dependence; they do not represent individual parents. The outcomes of child support proceedings have profound, long-term constitutional and financial implications for parents, yet litigants rarely understand their rights or the role of the government. Originally, the goal of state child support enforcement efforts was to recapture the costs of welfare expenditures. In 1990, two-thirds of cases involved families receiving public assistance. However, this number has declined dramatically and public assistance cases constitute only fourteen percent of the states’ caseloads. Recognizing that cost recapture is no longer a sustainable mission, the federal program administering the funding of state support agencies has attempted to rebrand the mission to one promoting shared parenting. Although well-intentioned, this shift in mission has led to proposals that would further increase government involvement in private family law matters and threaten due process for parents determining whether and how to share parenting responsibilities. Rather than enlarging the government child support apparatus, it is time to reevaluate the role of the state and devise new mechanisms for ensuring effective family dispute resolution. This article proposes that state child support agencies focus on areas in which the government has a clear state interest and specialized capability, for example, identification of income and assets; collection and distribution of child support payments; and administrative enforcement. Rather than continuing to fund state cadres of child support enforcement attorneys and expand their involvement in private family law disputes, the article suggests that Congress and state legislatures redirect funding to community-based legal and social services organizations that can provide expertise, neutrality, and a range of assistance in custody, parental access, and child support matters involving low-income families

Paved With Good Intentions: Unintended Consequences of Federal Proposals to Integrate Child Support and Parenting Time.

This Article proceeds in three parts to evaluate the merits of integrating custody and visitation determinations in government-initiated child support proceedings. Part I situates the federal parenting time proposals within the doctrines that shape the scope and allocation of parental rights and responsibilities. This part explores parents’ ability to establish custody, visitation, and child support arrangements, both outside of the court system and within the context of domestic relations proceedings. The section goes on to explore the federal and state child support enforcement structure and recent attempts to change the goal of government involvement from recapturing costs to creating opportunities for parents to support and develop relationships with their children. Part II explores the potential benefits of integrating child custody and visitation issues in child support proceedings. The section then analyzes the risks posed by proposals to mandate or incentivize integration as part of the state child support enforcement process. Part II posits that although it is important to offer integrated options to all parents, regardless of income, marital status, or port of entry for court filing, proposals to achieve integration through the state child support enforcement process undermine the fundamental rights of parents and inappropriately enmesh the government in the lives of low income families. Finally, Part III proposes alternative mechanisms for encouraging parental access to children while protecting fundamental constitutional rights and ensuring quality custody and visitation determinations. It suggests that state courts and legislatures should develop integrated options for parents involved in state-initiated and non-state child support matters that: are voluntary; treat both parents as parties; explicitly address custody and visitation rights; incorporate procedural safeguards; offer clear legal information and assistance to ensure informed decision making; and utilize alternative dispute resolution (“ADR”) mechanisms which offer families the opportunity to determine family arrangements in more non-adversarial settings. Although giving parents the option to address custody and visitation in child support cases is a worthy policy and court reform goal, it is not a strategy that necessarily will lead to greater child support compliance. Given the lack of rigorous empirical evidence demonstrating a causal link between visitation and child support compliance, the section ends by recommending that the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement and Congress prioritize and fund policies that directly incentivize financial support of children, including subsidized employment assistance, recognition of in-kind support, and child support assurance programs

Teaching Social Justice Lawyering: Systematically Including Community Legal Education in Law School Clinics

There is a body of literature on clinical legal theory that urges a focus in clinics beyond the single client to an explicit teaching of social justice lawyering. This Article adds to this emerging body of work by discussing the valuable role community legal education plays as a vehicle for teaching skills and values essential to single client representation and social justice lawyering. The Article examines the theoretical underpinnings of clinical legal education, community organizing and community education and how they influenced the authors’ design and implementation of community legal education within their clinics. It then discusses two projects designed to help victims of domestic violence. The first project has been ongoing for several years in a clinic with a long history of incorporating community education into its work. The second project was undertaken for the first time by a clinic teaching community legal education after a long hiatus. Through the discussion of these two projects, the Article evaluates and explains the pedagogical and logistical successes and challenges of incorporating community education into clinical programs and assesses the justice outcomes of their community work, both to the communities served and to their students

The body imperiled: Violence against women in Maria de Zayas\u27s novellas

This comprehensive study of Maria de Zayas y Sotomayor\u27s Novelas amorosas y ejemplares and Desenganos amorosos discusses Zayas\u27s representation of violence against women as it relates both to Golden Age Spain and to the proto-feminist purposes of the texts themselves. Often described as grotesque and sensationalist, these novellas are shown, through a combined theoretical framework of social history and feminism, to constitute a multi-layered critique of the treatment of women in the society which they purport to reflect. The first chapter forges a connection between Zayas\u27s choice of the female body as the site of violation and the use of public torture in early modern Spain. Such an analysis validates Zayas\u27s appropriation of the maimed body as a means through which truth is extracted and displayed. Theories of women\u27s oppression and domestic violence are applied in subsequent chapters to elucidate the similarities between the de facto dynamics of violent relationships and Zayas\u27s representation of this phenomenon as familial and social dysfunction. Chapters Three and Four examine the issues of speech and gendered spaces, revealing that Zayas\u27s female characters are silenced and physically enclosed by their male counterparts. The obsession with enclosure, exposed and criticized throughout the novellas, is cast in terms of the Counter-Reformative preoccupation with containing feminine sexuality. Chapter Five turns to Zayas\u27s strategies to privilege the female perspective and protect the female body. These strategies emerge through a subtext of feminine solidarity, the marginalization of the masculine from the frame tale, and the utopianization of conventual space

Bridging the Justice Gap in Family Law: Repurposing Federal IV-D Funding to Expand Community-Based Legal and Social Services for Parents

Parents in family court overwhelmingly proceed pro se; however, in child support courtrooms, government attorneys representing the state child support agency frequently play a pivotal role. These attorneys represent the state’s ostensible interests in ensuring that children are financially supported and in preventing welfare dependence; they do not represent individual parents. The outcomes of child support proceedings have profound, long-term constitutional and financial implications for parents, yet litigants rarely understand their rights or the role of the government. Originally, the goal of state child support enforcement efforts was to recapture the costs of welfare expenditures. In 1990, two-thirds of cases involved families receiving public assistance. However, this number has declined dramatically and public assistance cases constitute only fourteen percent of the states’ caseloads. Recognizing that cost recapture is no longer a sustainable mission, the federal program administering the funding of state support agencies has attempted to rebrand the mission to one promoting shared parenting. Although well-intentioned, this shift in mission has led to proposals that would further increase government involvement in private family law matters and threaten due process for parents determining whether and how to share parenting responsibilities. Rather than enlarging the government child support apparatus, it is time to reevaluate the role of the state and devise new mechanisms for ensuring effective family dispute resolution. This article proposes that state child support agencies focus on areas in which the government has a clear state interest and specialized capability, for example, identification of income and assets; collection and distribution of child support payments; and administrative enforcement. Rather than continuing to fund state cadres of child support enforcement attorneys and expand their involvement in private family law disputes, the article suggests that Congress and state legislatures redirect funding to community-based legal and social services organizations that can provide expertise, neutrality, and a range of assistance in custody, parental access, and child support matters involving low-income families