Oh, I suppose I have to update now...
I went to court today.
OK, explanation: for my internship at Voices against Violence, I went to sit in on the Lawyer for a Day program at the Marlboro District Court. Basically, the program is that there are a bunch of attorneys who volunteer their time, and Thursday mornings (at this courthouse, anyway) they come in 9-12 and give free legal advice to whoever needs it. Where Voices comes in is that they send an advocate, usually a bilingual one (there are lots of Brazilian Portuegese-speakers in the area) and whenever there's a case dealing with divorce or custody or child support or really anything that they deal with at all, the advocate asks if there's any domestic violence involved and gives them a card with the hotline number and a pamphlet and stuff like that. It started out fairly interesting... There were three cases; one needed advice on what to bring to her next court date where she's trying to get her ex to pay the child support he owes her, as well as his share of the medical bills for their special-needs son. For the next, her ex is voluntarily paying her $700/month in child support, but she's worried that he might stop, so she's considering filing to get court-ordered child support, but she wanted to know if she might get less that way. The lawyer told her she should go through the Department of Revenue so they can check out what he's making, and that if her estimates are correct the payments should go up to like $1000/month, so she should file.. but her first step is to go to the DOR. Interesting.
Then the third case was what looked like a fairly amicable divorce--the two of them came in together and seemed to have everything agreed upon already. Except, the lawyer can only talk to one of them, since technically they're going to court *against* each other, not *together* to get a divorce. Which is kind of odd. But then, we basically just sat there while the lawyer filled out a bunch of paperwork for the guy (he sent his wife out of the room), and then she explained it to him briefly. What really sucks is that now this lawyer is technically on "his side" and can't even tell the wife that she needs to read the paperwork she's agreeing to! She can't get legal advice from this lawyer at all. She can come back next week and if there's a different lawyer doing the program then, then she can ask for advice... but she probably won't. Oh well--It did look like they were getting along fairly well, and they'd agreed on everything already (unless he'd made all the decisions and she'd just sort of let him... but it seemed fair).
Meh. And now I'm at work, and kind of bored. And then I'm going to go home and take a nap, and have dinner, and go dancing. If I can make myself move at all. I'm still exhausted...
OK, explanation: for my internship at Voices against Violence, I went to sit in on the Lawyer for a Day program at the Marlboro District Court. Basically, the program is that there are a bunch of attorneys who volunteer their time, and Thursday mornings (at this courthouse, anyway) they come in 9-12 and give free legal advice to whoever needs it. Where Voices comes in is that they send an advocate, usually a bilingual one (there are lots of Brazilian Portuegese-speakers in the area) and whenever there's a case dealing with divorce or custody or child support or really anything that they deal with at all, the advocate asks if there's any domestic violence involved and gives them a card with the hotline number and a pamphlet and stuff like that. It started out fairly interesting... There were three cases; one needed advice on what to bring to her next court date where she's trying to get her ex to pay the child support he owes her, as well as his share of the medical bills for their special-needs son. For the next, her ex is voluntarily paying her $700/month in child support, but she's worried that he might stop, so she's considering filing to get court-ordered child support, but she wanted to know if she might get less that way. The lawyer told her she should go through the Department of Revenue so they can check out what he's making, and that if her estimates are correct the payments should go up to like $1000/month, so she should file.. but her first step is to go to the DOR. Interesting.
Then the third case was what looked like a fairly amicable divorce--the two of them came in together and seemed to have everything agreed upon already. Except, the lawyer can only talk to one of them, since technically they're going to court *against* each other, not *together* to get a divorce. Which is kind of odd. But then, we basically just sat there while the lawyer filled out a bunch of paperwork for the guy (he sent his wife out of the room), and then she explained it to him briefly. What really sucks is that now this lawyer is technically on "his side" and can't even tell the wife that she needs to read the paperwork she's agreeing to! She can't get legal advice from this lawyer at all. She can come back next week and if there's a different lawyer doing the program then, then she can ask for advice... but she probably won't. Oh well--It did look like they were getting along fairly well, and they'd agreed on everything already (unless he'd made all the decisions and she'd just sort of let him... but it seemed fair).
Meh. And now I'm at work, and kind of bored. And then I'm going to go home and take a nap, and have dinner, and go dancing. If I can make myself move at all. I'm still exhausted...