Hon. Leigh Saufley
Chief Justice
Maine Supreme Court
Dear Chief Justice Sauflley,
I am responding to the request from the Judicial Branch for comments from the public on the proposed “new” Rules for Guardians ad litem. In my opinion, they are badly off the mark, if their aim is to help the majority of those public consumers, who might use them to understand how GAL’s function and how to make a complaint about a GAL’s defective performance. Perhaps unintentionally, they seem to distort the aims of the Maine legislature and the Governor who created the law in 2013. The Dutremble law was aimed at clarifying GAL functioning with appropriate boundaries and protecting consumers of Guardian ad litem services from abuse by GAL practitioners. The proposed “new” Rules, as I read them, shift aim and focus of the 2013 Dutremble law, and, by proposed regulation seem designed to defend and protect GALs, as members of “the legal guild”. Self-represented consumers of service are out of the picture altogether.
The proposed “new” Rules are lengthy (77 pages), often ambiguous and subject to many escape clauses. There are many statements in the Rules that are followed by exceptions to the rule. This oppositional duality throughout the Rules neutralizes and confuses the intent, meaning and strength of the initial rule, and it probably reflects the anxiety of “stake holders” on the working committee, who created the document. They may not want to be hampered or hemmed in by any Rules.
The section dealing with consumer complaints (see page 35 RULE 9. Guardian ad litem Review Board Complaint System) about GAL services is written in complex legal language, full of references to other laws, unfamiliar to the general public. It prescribes a labyrinthine, multi layered procedure for making a complaint. Even relatively trivial, minor complaints must follow this protocol. As I read it and imagined using it myself in a ‘pro se’ effort, I felt shut out and stymied. The complaint procedure is written by lawyers for lawyers. It also proposes that all consumer complaints be managed by the lawyers'’ “guild”, the Overseers of the Bar, considered a formidable entity by most of the public. The complaint procedure is an airtight, legalistic, time-consuming, intimidating piece of work that virtually no untrained, unrepresented “consumer” will be able to use to complain about service. Preventing complaints from self-represented members of the public appears to be its purpose. Kill all public complaints with legalistic complexity. "Pro se" be damned, is the message I read!
The most troubling problem is represented by the authorship of the proposal “new” Rules for GALs. It appears to be the work of a “Stakeholder’s committee”, almost exclusively members of the powerful “divorce industry”. The authors show no consideration for how a ‘pro se’ (self represented person) is supposed to use the arcane, complaint “tool”. As you reported to me earlier this year, a startling 74% of family court users are ‘pro se’. It is being proposed by “stockholders”, who authored it, that this 74% majority be given a complex, “legal tool” that they will be unable to use in making a complaint about GAL service. The Rules, as a tool, by their complexity, would exclude the majority of public users from making a complaint on their own. Shouldn’t ‘pro se’ persons also be considered significant “stakeholders”? Their stakes are their children, their time and their life savings; not professional financial advantage. Their kids are priceless to them (and to all of us) and represent future, valuable human resources for Maine. Why are ‘pro se’ stakeholders denied a seat at the table that would reflect their proportional, numerical dominance in courts? It might be viewed as an exclusionary problem of vast proportions that needs correction in the interest of public fairness, and in the interests of reality. It is an awkward commentary on family courts in a democratic society.
We need to understand the present reality that Family courts at this time are no longer the exclusively purview of an elite, professional group of the legal profession when 74% of users are self-represented non-lawyers! It is time for everyone to awaken to these startling facts and address the major, unstoppable systems change that is going on right now!
It also should be noted that the public complaint protocol is the only “quality assurance” mechanism for the public governing the actions of Guardians ad litem. Without supervision, with just 18 hours of “education”, with quasi judicial immunity, with no meaningful “oversight”, a complaint from a consumer is the only way to request major or minor “corrective action” for a malfunctioning GAL. If this procedure is so complex as to be unusable by non-lawyers, GALs are essentially in a position of being granted secular infallibility by the Judicial Branch. One has to ask rhetorically: “Don’t GALs ever need some form of correction; are they always “perfect?” Can’t one find a more responsible way to correct and improve their function?
My opinion is that the Judicial Branch needs to go back to the drawing board and begin again in writing new Rules for GALs. It needs to include proportionally the biggest group of players in family courts, the 74% ‘pro se’ users, on any planning committee addressing “officers of the court”. It needs to approach the whole issue of GAL management in a much less defensive, overprotective manner. It needs to listen to and care about the systemic changes catalyzed by amazing numbers of ‘pro se’ representatives. The present document is “tone deaf” to ‘pro se’. Is this its aim, or is it impossible for the Judicial Branch to escape the political influence and power of the divorce bar?
We sincerely hope this document can be rewritten in tune with current realities, and with participation of those who are major users of the GAL system. Would it help the Judicial Branch to overcome the powerful, internal, self-serving, lobbying politics of the “divorce industry Bar”, if there were to be grass roots legislation empowering ‘pro se’ representatives on JB committees and throughout the family court system?
Your 74% ‘pro se’ statistic is a powerful number that cries for legal fairness and appropriate democratic empowerment!
Sincerely,
Jerome A Collins, MD
Kennebunkport, Maine
For further information on the Family Court and divorce industry crisis please email at MeGALalert@gmail.com or find us on Facebook.
For further reading:
2014-05-28 PROPOSAL FOR AN AUDIT OF ‘PRO SE’ REPRESENTATION IN MAINE FAMILY COURTS
2014-03-18 Maine Voices: We must work together to ensure justice truly is for all in Maine - a response
Showing posts with label Dutremble. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dutremble. Show all posts
Monday, September 1, 2014
Friday, May 31, 2013
LD 47 - An Open Letter to President of the Maine Senate Justin Alfond
The following is a letter that was sent to Senator Justin Alfond asking for the reasons for tabling a bill that parents and the Judicial Branch do not want:
Subject: LD 47: Please, "kill" it!
AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OF THE MAINE SENATE, JUSTIN ALFOND
President of the Maine Senate
Justin Alfond
Dear Senator Alfond,
Re LD 47 a bill to extend the Parent Coordinator program.
I am writing to add my name to the growing list of Maine people, who are distressed by the current turn of events surrounding LD 47. The bill seeks to extend the parent coordinator law until 2016, pending further “study”. It adds budget for a “supervisor”, and it seeks to determine if the program “has benefit”. We ask, “benefit for whom and judged by whom?” Are we talking about obvious “benefits” for Parent coordinators and lawyers, or “benefits” for the opposing public? To loosely paraphrase an expression from recent years, is it about protecting the famous 1% or the 99%?.
What is perplexing to growing numbers of the public is why this bill was tabled in the Senate- as we understand it from several sources, on orders from you through the caucus (on a motion from Senator Valentino). From whence comes the groundswell to save this bill? it is widely said that the groundswell for saving LD 47 comes from Rep Terry Hayes, a Guardian ad litem/Parental Coordinator herself, and Reps DeChant and Moonen, who were the minority opposing the majority vote to kill LD 47 in the Judiciary Committee. It is also said that there is a group of Portland lawyers, who have a financial and professional interest in saving the bill. It is last ditch lobbying by special interests for their personal “income preservation”.
Our question as observers is whether lobbying will prevail over the classical legislative process, which has voiced an opinion quite contrary to the “special interests”. We also can’t avoid the impression that by tabling a vote on LD 47, you are backing those with a “special interest” in it. We are also concerned that the proposed amendment to LD 47 is so shamefully bogus as to insult the intelligence of both the legislature and the public.
As we understand the amendment to LD 47, it proposes a supervisor (or coordinator) to have n unspecified role doing unspecified things with Parent Coordinators for a period until 2016. As you may be aware there are no job descriptions for the proposed supervisors or for their putative supervisees, nor are there any existing rules or standard for supervisor or Parent Coordinator supervisee, so supervision become a very mystical thing. What would the supervisor do in actual supervision without the guidelines of a job description or rules and standards? Furthermore, for whom would the supervisor of Parent Coordinators work (organizational chain of command)? How would “due process” issues be protected in district court cases? And ... finally, is the Judicial Branch asking for “Coordinators of Parent Coordinators? Have Rep Terry Hayes and the Portland lawyers usurped Mary Ann Lynches role? We have heard further rumors that LD 47 might be embedded in LD 872, Senator Dutremble’s bill. It would be shameful to do this. It would be like grafting an invasive cancer into a healthy body!
Even a superficial analysis of the amendment to LD 47 raises the suspicion that it is so badly conceived, from any functional point of view, that is seems to be a ruse on the part of Guardian ad litem/Parental Coordinator, Rep Hayes to extend the life of a bill that appeared to be going down to a well-deserved legislative death. Rep Hayes has a long experience in the Maine legislature, which makes us wonder whether this bill is offered by her friends in gratitude for her public service and to protect her financially in her old age?
The problems of Parent Coordinators are - if possible - even worse that the Guardian ad litem scandal. Like Guardians ad litem, they have no supervision, no oversight, operate virtually ‘ad lib’ for a year with no fee cap, generating huge fees that impoverish the parties. There are no rules and regulations, no standards. It is a gold mine for the Parent Coordinator - no wonder they are fighting vigorously to preserve this lush source of income. In our opinion it is a license to plunder.
LD 47 and its amendment ought to be “killed” asap! Please, use your leadership to do so. We join other members of the public with the hope that people can count on you to protect them from "special interest" abuse.
Sincerely,
Jerome A Collins, MD
Kennebunkport, Maine
To view the original bill LD47 sponsored by Representative Terry Hayes (Guardian ad litem). The Amendment to LD47.
Subject: LD 47: Please, "kill" it!
AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OF THE MAINE SENATE, JUSTIN ALFOND
President of the Maine Senate
Justin Alfond
Dear Senator Alfond,
Re LD 47 a bill to extend the Parent Coordinator program.
I am writing to add my name to the growing list of Maine people, who are distressed by the current turn of events surrounding LD 47. The bill seeks to extend the parent coordinator law until 2016, pending further “study”. It adds budget for a “supervisor”, and it seeks to determine if the program “has benefit”. We ask, “benefit for whom and judged by whom?” Are we talking about obvious “benefits” for Parent coordinators and lawyers, or “benefits” for the opposing public? To loosely paraphrase an expression from recent years, is it about protecting the famous 1% or the 99%?.
What is perplexing to growing numbers of the public is why this bill was tabled in the Senate- as we understand it from several sources, on orders from you through the caucus (on a motion from Senator Valentino). From whence comes the groundswell to save this bill? it is widely said that the groundswell for saving LD 47 comes from Rep Terry Hayes, a Guardian ad litem/Parental Coordinator herself, and Reps DeChant and Moonen, who were the minority opposing the majority vote to kill LD 47 in the Judiciary Committee. It is also said that there is a group of Portland lawyers, who have a financial and professional interest in saving the bill. It is last ditch lobbying by special interests for their personal “income preservation”.
Our question as observers is whether lobbying will prevail over the classical legislative process, which has voiced an opinion quite contrary to the “special interests”. We also can’t avoid the impression that by tabling a vote on LD 47, you are backing those with a “special interest” in it. We are also concerned that the proposed amendment to LD 47 is so shamefully bogus as to insult the intelligence of both the legislature and the public.
As we understand the amendment to LD 47, it proposes a supervisor (or coordinator) to have n unspecified role doing unspecified things with Parent Coordinators for a period until 2016. As you may be aware there are no job descriptions for the proposed supervisors or for their putative supervisees, nor are there any existing rules or standard for supervisor or Parent Coordinator supervisee, so supervision become a very mystical thing. What would the supervisor do in actual supervision without the guidelines of a job description or rules and standards? Furthermore, for whom would the supervisor of Parent Coordinators work (organizational chain of command)? How would “due process” issues be protected in district court cases? And ... finally, is the Judicial Branch asking for “Coordinators of Parent Coordinators? Have Rep Terry Hayes and the Portland lawyers usurped Mary Ann Lynches role? We have heard further rumors that LD 47 might be embedded in LD 872, Senator Dutremble’s bill. It would be shameful to do this. It would be like grafting an invasive cancer into a healthy body!
Even a superficial analysis of the amendment to LD 47 raises the suspicion that it is so badly conceived, from any functional point of view, that is seems to be a ruse on the part of Guardian ad litem/Parental Coordinator, Rep Hayes to extend the life of a bill that appeared to be going down to a well-deserved legislative death. Rep Hayes has a long experience in the Maine legislature, which makes us wonder whether this bill is offered by her friends in gratitude for her public service and to protect her financially in her old age?
The problems of Parent Coordinators are - if possible - even worse that the Guardian ad litem scandal. Like Guardians ad litem, they have no supervision, no oversight, operate virtually ‘ad lib’ for a year with no fee cap, generating huge fees that impoverish the parties. There are no rules and regulations, no standards. It is a gold mine for the Parent Coordinator - no wonder they are fighting vigorously to preserve this lush source of income. In our opinion it is a license to plunder.
LD 47 and its amendment ought to be “killed” asap! Please, use your leadership to do so. We join other members of the public with the hope that people can count on you to protect them from "special interest" abuse.
Sincerely,
Jerome A Collins, MD
Kennebunkport, Maine
To view the original bill LD47 sponsored by Representative Terry Hayes (Guardian ad litem). The Amendment to LD47.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)