citizens want more mediation and civility in family court proceedings

Steve Vogl, a mediator based in Exeter, wants to see New Hampshire’s court system become less intimidating and more accommodating.

“You have to have a conversation with us, you have to listen,” he said. “Bring the judge or master down from the bench, literally.”

Vogl was one of six people who turned out at Portsmouth City Hall on Monday for a public listening session for the New Hampshire Citizen’s Commission on the State Courts. It was the independent commission’s fourth public session since its establishment in April 2005 to commence a “top-to-bottom review” of the state court system, according to co-chairperson Will Abbott. Only five members of the commission, including Abbott, were present. Co-chairperson Kathy Eneguess presided over the meeting.
During the session, Vogl, who described himself as a “child of divorced parents and a divorced parent myself,” wants the state’s family courts to drop the “adversarial” system in which divorce and custody cases are conducted and adopt an approach that relies more on mediation. The current system “causes so much animosity and pain,” he said, and is made even worse by lawyers and court appointed officers who interfere with the family.

“We don’t have to do it this way and we have to have a new vision,” he said.
In a phone interview before the session, Abbott said much of the public comments so far have centered on family court issues.

“This is a huge part of the court system’s docket, so it’s not surprising,” he said. “Family issues tend to be close to the heart and close to the head, and if something doesn’t go the way you want it to go, it tends to be pretty distressing.”

The commission was created last year by state Supreme Court Chief Justice David Broderick to “assess how justice is delivered” from the perspective of average citizens. The 105 members are comprised of lawyers, judges, court employees and private citizens. Abbott, the executive director of the Mount Washington Observatory, said about one-third of the members are involved in some way with the legal system because “for those of us who know very little about law profession or way courts operate, it’s helpful to have judges or attorneys participate in this.” So far, the commission has held public listening sessions in Manchester, Nashua and Concord. Transcripts of the meetings will be made available at www.nhcitcourts.org.

Portsmouth Mayor Evelyn Sirrell was also on hand for the meeting. During her testimony, Sirrell questioned why the state does not have a “good-time” policy for prisoners, which would reduce the amount of time served for prisoners with good behavior. Sirrell’s son, Christopher, is an inmate at the state prison in Concord. Sirrell also addressed how high legal costs often force people to represent themselves. During her son’s case, Sirrell said she had spent much of her savings and retirement fund in order to afford representation for her son. When she could no longer afford to pay for an attorney, “…my son was defending himself in his green prison jumpsuit,” she said. “The system, as far as I’m concerned, is not working.”

This has also been a recurring issue, according to Abbott. Over two-thirds of the cases that come before state courts have at least one of the litigants defending themselves, he said.

“That creates problems,” he said. “(It’s) not that everybody absolutely has to have an attorney, but very few laypeople understand procedures,” he said. Legal costs are “clearly an issue … and there’s no easy remedy for that.”

During his testimony, Michael Brewster, a former “stay-at-home dad” who says his child was taken away from him after his wife divorced him, said the state has “no accountability.”

“They can bring down a family and say anything they wish,” he said. “How many people must this state abuse constantly and there’s nobody to bring these complaints to?”

Much of the afternoon’s testimony came from Michael Geanoulis, a New Castle resident and chairman of the state chapter of the National Congress for Fathers and Children. Geanoulis told commission members “there’s a lack of respect for fatherhood in this country.” He recommends that judges should be educated on “the importance of the family structure” and the court system in general should be aware that fathers are just as important as mothers in a child’s development.

The way child support is collected and disbursed also needs to be reformed, according to Geanoulis. “Mind-boggling” amounts of money are spent to collect child support, he said, usually from fathers who are “average or below-average wage earners.”

The commission will hold public listening sessions through December of this year and will issue a final report in May 2006. Already, though, there are some efforts being made to make the courts “more user friendly,” Abbott said. In Rockingham and Grafton counties, family court cases have been tried in a separate court system, apart from criminal and civil cases, as part of a pilot program to streamline proceedings. According to Abbott, the state plans to have a separate family court operating in each county.

Public response to the commission has been “less than what we expected … (but) it seems to be growing,” Abbott said. The first two meetings attracted between 10 and 15 people he said, and a third meeting in Concord drew about 18 people. Though the low turnouts don’t necessarily mean everyone’s happy with the state of the court system, “you have to somewhat assume they’re relatively satisfied with the way things are going,” Abbott said.