The 公益性服务 Effect: Mother Endures Through Two-Fold Battle
“我正在经历地狱,玛雅说。,* who had spent six years living with her son’s father in a tumultuous relationship. It was a cycle of domestic violence—a cycle that was not broken until 2008.
Around New Year’s Day 2008, the two were on a street in downtown Washington, D.C. They began arguing and Maya’s then-boyfriend shoved her to the ground in front of a witness. 她知道她必须离开. After separating, Maya began legal proceedings to gain custody of their young son.
“He threatened that he was going to take my son away from me,她回忆道。, a very real possibility considering he was a prominent person in D.C.’s law enforcement community. “I realized that I cannot do this by myself. 我需要一个人.”
But like many Washington metropolitan area residents, she was struggling financially and could not afford to hire an attorney. The 家庭 Court Self-Help Center at the D.C. Superior Court referred Maya to the D.C. 澳博app协会公益项目’s 宣传 & 正义的诊所.
贫困:一个日益严重的问题
在1993年 & 正义的诊所—then called the Law Firm Clinic—opened just as demand for pro bono legal services was growing in the city. 当时, most of the larger Washington law firms were not involved in individual pro bono poverty law cases. Aiming to meet the needs of the community, the D.C. 澳博app协会公益项目 created an extensive plan to engage these firms and show them that, 的支持下, their attorneys could be powerful advocates for people living in poverty.
Since its inception 17 years ago, the 宣传 & 正义的诊所 has grown tremendously, partnering with nearly 40 firms and federal government agencies. Over the past few years, the 宣传 & 正义的诊所’s mission has become even more significant as D.C. residents struggle with unprecedented levels of unemployment and poverty. D.C. Department of Employment Services reports that in September 2010, the city’s overall jobless rate was 9.8 percent, slightly higher than the national average of 9.6%. In neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River, the unemployment rate is near an astounding 30 percent. The poverty levels are even more staggering—one in five D.C. residents lives below the poverty line, according to numbers released by the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute in April 2010.
With a soaring number of poor residents in need of legal services, the clinic provided representation to 30 percent more clients during its last fiscal year (July 2009 to June 2010), underscoring the need for more pro bono attorneys.
漫漫长路
During one of the 21 sessions held each year at the clinic, 海蒂一. 索伦森, of counsel at Foley & Lardner LLP, was reading through files prescreened by the D.C. 澳博app协会公益项目. “I looked at Maya’s file and said, ‘This is the case I want to take,’” 索伦森 says. Within a week of Maya’s initial contact with the clinic, she had a meeting scheduled with 索伦森 at Foley’s offices.
“福利 & Lardner has developed this incredible level of family law expertise,马克·赫尔佐格说, associate director of the D.C. 澳博app协会公益项目. “When the firm joined the 宣传 & 1996年司法诊所, it had very little experience representing pro bono clients with contested custody matters. But the need was great and continues to be. The firm’s approach to these cases, led by partner Melinda F. 莱维特, 是,, 是的, they can be messy—families tend to be—but that’s why it’s so important to have lawyers involved.”
After the first meeting, 索伦森 thought she knew where the case was going. “当时, I thought this would be relatively simple to settle. We’ve got two parents who have been involved in the child’s life,她回忆道。. “Even with the domestic violence, we should be able to come up with something that would work for this family.她错了.
索伦森 and Maya met with Maya’s ex-boyfriend and his attorney a month later to discuss a settlement. They reached an agreement where Maya would have their son 60 percent of the time. Five minutes after her ex-boyfriend walked out the door, Maya received a call from him on her cell phone. “I’m not going to agree to that, you know,” he told her.
“We had to start gearing up for an evidentiary hearing,” 索伦森 says. The next year-and-a-half was filled with status hearings and settlement discussions. 大约在2009年夏天, the two parties were able to reach a shared custody arrangement, but the roadblocks continued. Her ex-boyfriend would not comply with a requirement to provide financial documentation to determine child support. He also hid income from a rental property he owned in an attempt to avoid higher support payments.
Maya and 索伦森 forged a strong bond during the long process. While working on the custody case, Maya had to testify about the domestic violence she faced at her ex-boyfriend’s termination hearing from his law enforcement job. In the back sat 索伦森, who was present simply to provide moral support. “She supported me even though she didn’t need to be there because that was another case,” Maya says. “她一直在我身边.”
在他被解雇之后, Maya’s ex-boyfriend continued to be difficult, unwilling to cooperate to update child support when he found another job. He also routinely picked up his son late from school and was an absentee father. “I tried to do the best for my son. We decided to share custody, but it didn’t work out,” Maya says. “My son was going through a lot of stuff emotionally.” Her son was experiencing significant adjustment issues.
The last straw came when Maya’s ex-boyfriend refused to pick up their son from school the day before Thanksgiving in 2009. 当学校打来电话的时候, 他告诉他们, ‘Oh, no, 今天我心情不好,’ when in fact he always had Wednesdays,索伦森回忆道. “When that happened, we were able to go to court. . . . We had already been explaining to the judge all the problems that had been occurring with the shared-custody arrangement we had agreed to.”
The judge granted Maya temporary full custody until the actual hearing in six months. 索伦森 and Maya, with the help of Foley attorneys Jackie Acosta and Joyce E. Gresko, continued building the case, talking on the phone, and meeting at Maya’s house.
What seemed like a fairly cut-and-dried case nearly two years earlier had proven to be long and trying, with 索伦森 devoting more hours than a typical divorce with huge property assets. But the hours put in were worth it: in June 2010, the judge awarded Maya full legal and physical custody of her son.
“他们做得很好. 我觉得我赢了. I got back my peace of mind,” Maya says. “There’s a child happy living with his mom, and there’s a mom that’s happy with her child.”
*名称改变了
作者:泰国披乐
From 华盛顿澳博app, January 2011
达维.C. 酒吧 staff writer Thai Phi Le at (电子邮件保护).
