Panel hears horror stories of devastation

Sandy Thompson

Thursday, March 12, 1998 | 10:32 a.m.

One woman says she spent $160,000 in attorney's fees fighting for her children in Family Court. Another woman's bill was $30,000. A third, who had no children, was billed $50,000 for her divorce case.

The handful of people who testified at Wednesday's hearing of the legislative subcommittee on Family Court spoke the emotional and financial devastation they've experienced, and pleaded with the subcommittee for help.

One woman, whose story had appeared in the SUN, told the subcommittee she was put in jail for trying to get her son to a therapist, and she has been bombarded with legal motions. She cannot afford an attorney. She said the court has taken everything from her -- her child and all but $1.56 of her paycheck.

"I don't think the testimony gets any worse than that," said Assemblywoman Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, subcommittee chairwoman.

An Air Force master sergeant, who had been married for 20 years and has four children, said he did not want a divorce, and his family "didn't get a chance to stay together." His two older children chose to live with him; the younger two were ordered by the court to live with his ex-wife. Yet he still must pay child support, and now is in bankruptcy because he can't pay the support and his debts. He has been forced to move out of his four-bedroom home on base.

Another man testified he has been in the court system for two years and is still waiting for an evidentiary hearing.

"You have a car here that's not running and you're changing the windshield wipers and polishing it," he said of Family Court.

"The judges hears an interpretive case (from the Family Mediation and Assessment Center reports) and not what you have to say, which is a violation of due process."

He said the FMAC report contains secret testimony so you don't know what's said about you and you can't confront it.

Buckley said the court has admitted in previous hearings that FMAC reports are poor because of the overwhelming caseloads. FMAC will be one of the topics of the subcommittee's next hearing April 16.

One woman said she hasn't seen her 11-year-old daughter in more than a year because she took her to Sunrise Children's Hospital, which she said found evidence of sexual abuse by the child's father. The judge wouldn't listen, and discredited the woman for "parental alienation." If she has contact with the child, the judge has threatened to put her in jail.

She said she is financially devastated, and that the court even awarded her ex-husband money she put away for college for her 16-year-old daughter, who lives with her.

A woman who moved to Las Vegas in 1995 to be near her children who lived with her ex-husband, now shares custody. But she says a Clark County Family Court judge ordered her to pay $10,000 in back child support -- which an Oregon judge said she didn't have to pay -- to her ex-husband. She has spent $30,000 in legal fees and is now "devastated, wiped out."

"He has $1.2 million in assets and I owe him $10,000," she said.

Her case is before the Nevada Supreme Court.