Pubdate: Tue, 15 Oct 2002
Source: Courier-Journal, The (KY)
Copyright: 2002 The Courier-Journal
Contact:  http://www.courier-journal.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/97
Author: Andrew Wolfson

$1.2 MILLION GRANT BOLSTERS FAMILY DRUG COURT

The 32-year-old mother of two was so addicted to drugs that Kentucky's 
Child Protective Services had taken her two sons away.

''I didn't know how to be a parent,'' the woman said.

Thanks to a pilot Jefferson County Family Drug Court program, which 
combines counseling, parenting classes, and drug and alcohol treatment, the 
woman, identified only as Angela, was reunited this summer with her boys, 
ages 7 and 10.

''It taught me to grow up and the value of life,'' she said yesterday. ''I 
have good friends, including two judges.''

Those judges -- District Court's Henry Weber and Family Court's Eleanore 
Garber -- together with County Attorney Irv Maze, yesterday announced a 
$1.2 million federal grant that will allow the drug court program -- 
Kentucky's first -- to become fully operational.

During a briefing yesterday in the Judicial Center, Kentucky Supreme Court 
Chief Justice Joseph E. Lambert also announced that starting in January, 
all custody, visitation and divorce matters in Jefferson and the other 25 
counties with family courts will be handled by elected judges -- rather 
than domestic relations commissioners.

To handle the extra workload in Jefferson, Family Court will get another 
judge, its 10th, Lambert said, and a retired judge will return to work 
about half time.

Family Drug Court

Jefferson County will get $400,000 annually for three years -- 10 percent 
of the more than $10 million that the U.S. Department of Health and Human 
Services is dividing nationally among 28 drug-treatment courts.

Seven women have gone through Jefferson County's pilot Family Drug Court 
program, and two have been reunited with their children, which is the goal, 
Weber said.

The program is a spinoff of the county's Drug Courts, which Weber launched 
in 1993 and which the National Association of Drug Court Professionals 
earlier this year honored as a national model for its success in 
rehabilitating substance abusers and finding alternatives to prison.

With the threat of jail hanging over them and encouragement of judges and 
other professionals, nonviolent drug offenders spend at least one year 
undergoing drug testing, counseling, therapy and job training. Nearly 300 
drug abusers had graduated from the program -- and had their charges 
dropped -- when it was recognized in February.

Family Drug Court is part of Family Court. But even if the constitutional 
amendment on the Nov. 5 ballot to preserve and extend Family Court fails, 
the pilot Family Drug Court program would continue and the federal grant 
would not be endangered, Weber said.

The grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration 
will allow Family Drug Court to hire two clinicians and a case worker, and 
to pay for transportation and child-care costs.

Angela, who spoke at the news conference, said she has been drug-free for 
14 months and talks with her family for the first time in three years.

Domestic relations

In Kentucky, some domestic cases have been handled by divorce relations 
commissioners -- a group of part-time, volunteer attorneys.

The General Assembly voted this year to do away with commissioners in 
counties with Family Courts because of concerns that some of the most 
important decisions in the lives of litigants were being made by nonelected 
lawyers.

That was especially true outside Jefferson County, where commissioners have 
been allowed to rule on the division of marital assets and permanent 
custody of children. A commissioner's recommendation to a judge could be 
appealed, but the party has had to pay for a transcript and for his or her 
lawyer to argue the case again.

In Jefferson County, by local rule, commissioners have been limited to 
making preliminary decisions on temporary support and maintenance, and 
hearing post-divorce motions on changes in child support and termination of 
maintenance.

Lambert praised the work of commissioners in the county but said their 
elimination will bring Family Court closer to its ideal of matching each 
family with one judge, who hears all their issues.

Family Court handles some matters previously heard in Circuit Court, such 
as divorce, child custody, support, visitation, alimony, adoption and 
termination of parental rights, and some cases from District Court, such as 
domestic-violence and emergencyprotective orders, child abuse and neglect, 
and juvenile-status offenses such as truancy.

But the matter could be moot unless voters on Nov. 5 approve the Family 
Court constitutional amendment. Lambert, who has campaigned statewide for 
the amendment, has said he would dismantle the programs across the state 
unless the statute is approved.

The Kentucky Supreme Court in 1994 held that Family Court was 
constitutional -- but only because it was set up on a temporary basis. 
Jefferson County adopted the state's first Family Court in 1991 when 
then-Chief Justice Robert Stephens appointed several district and circuit 
judges to it.

Lambert said yesterday that to pick up the additional workload from the 
commissioners, District Judge Kathleen Voor Montano will move to Family 
Court next month and retired Family Court Judge Mary Corey will return to 
work 120 hours a year.

Jefferson County's five divorce relations commissioners work part-time on 
contracts that provide a starting pay of $175 a day.

''We don't do it for the money, we do it because we love the work,'' said 
David J. Thompson Jr., who has served as a commissioner for nearly five years.

Thompson agrees that commissioners ''dilute the Family Court ideal.'' But 
he said he doesn't think the addition of 1 1/2 judges will be enough to 
cover the extra workload for Family Court judges, who also have to hear 
cases on domestic-violence orders, dependency and neglect of children, and 
contested paternity.

Family Court Judge Patty Walker FitzGerald said the changes may speed up 
divorce litigation.

''It may give us a chance to resolve cases a little sooner because a lot of 
times, the preliminary motions heard now by commissioners are the same 
matters you hear at trial,'' she said.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens