 Hi, my name is Sandy Baird I'm an attorney in Burlington and have been an attorney since 1977 which is really like medieval times I guess I became an attorney through clerking for the bar for four years rather than going to law school. At that time I worked at Vermont legal aid and I was the paralegal who was in charge of all the family law problems and there were many. And so tonight we're going to present a talk on the family law court and all of its relevance to all of our lives and with me tonight is Susan Fowler, the ex I guess probate judge of Chittenden County. So she will be talking about the probate court and its relevance to family issues, and I'll be talking about the family court of Chittenden County and it's also its relevance to our, all of our families. And Susan was the probate judge in Chittenden she's a graduate I believe of Vermont law school. She was a prosecutor in Chittenden County as I was but she was after me, and she was also I believe Susan we use the juvenile prosecutor. She's not there right now, but anyway, she'll be, she'll be there. I was also the juvenile prosecutor and the juvenile court is also part of the family court. So we will be talking a little bit about that today. Okay, so with that, I guess. Check, Susan is setting up in a different room where I think she will have better access to this meeting. I'll give a little wrap about the family court, the history of the family court and it does have a history, and then talk a little bit why I think it is essential for everybody to understand what the family court is and what it is not, because most of us, if unfortunately we find ourselves in any court, it will most likely be family court, because family court deals as I said in the intro, with the most private parts of our lives the most intimate part of our lives, our families are sex lives in a lot of ways, our property divisions, our lives as a whole, and of course our death. Susan will I think talk more about the latter part about what happens after you die but also she and the probate court has a has a lot to do with children as well. That's where guardianship and adoption happen right Susan. Right. So Susan I'm going to start with a little wrap about family court. Okay. And then I will and by the way, this is not going to be as the other people's law schools presentations we do not have a PowerPoint. So we really encourage discussion and questions I don't know how many people are out there. But since family law concerns us all I thought that would be a kind of at least a little bit interesting way to go. What is the family court, the family court, as I mentioned deals with the really the private parts of our lives the most intimate parts of our lives. The family court deals with breaking up relationships, raising of children with our sex lives, and what is private about our lives. Unfortunately, family court becomes a part of our lives when all of those relationships break down in some way, other than that. The law says that our family lives is private and should not be in the jurisdiction of the state, unless something goes seriously wrong. And that happens far too often, I believe in our family lives. I don't know what you think Susan what do you think. No, no, no, I mean, things go wrong all the time and we never think they will but they, but they do with regularity and then you find out, find out that you have to learn all about the court system that you didn't really ever want to know about. And you still don't want to know what once you find yourself. No, it's pretty. And I would say that most of the judges, and I and Susan, and everyone would say stay out of court period, if you can do that. Really wouldn't you wouldn't you agree with that. You know, yeah, I would totally agree with that. So I wanted to talk a little bit though about marriage itself and why that is a subject for the family court, as we think about marriage sometimes as a voluntary association between two adults. However, it's not really it is voluntary in general, but it is based on a contract marriage is still a contract between two adults. And those adults can be not just a man and a woman, but also same sex marriage. And let's talk a little bit about the history of marriage which was rooted, of course, in male female marriage and then we will talk a little bit also about same sex marriage. Okay, so what is it a contract about about all of us have been married maybe not but I guess most people get married at one point or another in their lives. And when you enter marriage you are entering a contract. What is the nature of that contract. The nature of the contract is that you will spend the rest of your life with one person that you will be faithful to that person that you will be monogamous. And that you promise all of that till death do you part, and you honor and I guess I took the word to make it sound so good Sandy make it so. Oh, well, but Susan, doesn't it have a okay so I want to ask you a question have you have you officiated it at marriages lately. No, not since I've lost my judge powers, but I did a lot of them when I was a judge. Okay, so is the word in the marriage vows still obey. No. Well, only if you put it in. Put it in. Most people don't put that in some do but most don't. Okay, so the original contract though is that you are going to honor and obey. You marry you were marrying till death do you part and that you are going to be sexually faithful as a promise back. Is that right. What do you think, doesn't that the nature of it. Okay, so that was a contract between two people and the and it gave a certain right stuff people certain obligations that contract in terms of what it did for bothers and men. In particular, was it gave the father the presumption that any child born during the marriage was his child. Okay, without marriage there's no such presumption isn't that true also, judge correct you. Okay, so then the father historically would know who his kids were, at least presumptively, and that those are the children that would inherit his property. That's why it gave him then a certainty that those were his kids because in a marriage there's a presumption that the husband is the father no matter where that husband is he could be off in the service for six years or in prison for six years, which some are, and still if that his wife has a child, it is his child. Okay, so that was crucial in a marriage. In other words, there are ways to deal with that question but it's not quite so simple. When I was first in the law and remember that I became a lawyer a long time ago in 1977. Prior to that I was working as a paralegal ever motley delayed so prior to that, and prior to the 80s. There was, if a woman had a child out of marriage. By the way, what was that called, but if a woman had a kid out of marriage. There was a word for that. What bad luck, bad luck are not bad luck for the woman necessarily bad luck. Anyway, yes. But there was an even more horrible word for that kid. Remember, you're not, you don't remember the Middle Ages, you guys, the word was bastard. Right. That was the word for a child born out of wedlock, which meant that that child was essentially illegal. It was an illegal child. And illegitimate was another word. Okay, there was no way to deal with that at that time because there was no way scientifically or any other way to identify the father or no DNA test. There was no problem for a lot of children born illegitimate as well and it was a problem of course for the mother. That all changed once we had DNA certainty and that was around the 70s, when now you could, now there's a blood test that can recognize who the father is if they're not married. So that has been more or less corrected but those are the two institutions, which first of all deal with the question of who's the father and what kind of institutions are going to create around around that. All right, so marriage gave fathers rights to kids to they had obligations. The father has to support those kids as does the mother in a traditional marriage though the way it was set up. And that's a long ago. The mother was usually the stay at home mother, and the father was the breadwinner. He, in other words, had rights to the children being the husband, right to the custody of those children, but he also had the obligation to pay child support. And that could be determined then in an unmarried situation. If a woman had a child out of marriage, she could then ask for a DNA test from the father, and she could also get then if it was positive, she could also get child support from him. So those are really being two big kinds of actions in the family court divorce, and also parentage is a lot of other ones too but those are the two that kind of deal with the separation of parties and also who gets to do what needs obliged to do what. Okay, in the same sex marriage. I don't know what happens have you done have you thought about that Susan there's no automatic roles right. I mean there's not anymore either between men and women there aren't anymore in this country between men and women because often women make as much money as the male. And she has to pay child support maybe he could be the stay at home father and caretaker of the kids, however, in same sex marriage that all has to be determined. Usually on who does what, rather than a kind of an automatic gender bias, I would guess right. Have you done anything like you've done some adoptions of that right. I, am I unmuted. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no I've, I've done a lot of same sex adoptions and I've done a fair number of same sex weddings. Yeah, oh okay alright so we're talking about the history of marriage though so traditionally marriages were based more or less on rigid sex roles father breadwinner mother's support that child, and that became more kind of law based once the father became known in paternity actions as well. But the second question that usually the courts deal with in a divorce, not in the same sex or not in a parent ejection is alimony now what is alimony about you all know anything about alimony. Alimony is spousal support for a wife or a husband who has spent their life contributing to the marriage and sort of making the other partner, the other partner kind of wealthy or wealthy or princess. I had a client who is a student, but right now but she had put her husband through medical school, so that the husband has piles of money, she contributed to his doctor's license. So she will most likely be awarded alimony to support her to get herself equal to him in terms of monetary power. Okay so those are the support obligations when you enter a marriage, those are the kind of support obligations that are part of a marriage. Whoever is the stronger party in this country, usually still men have to support a wife through alimony, who has contributed her labor to the marriage, and also to the support of the kids and that's decided in the magistrates court, which is really busy. Don't you think Susan. Terribly. Okay. So there any any thoughts or questions on that. Of course, all that's changed in this country. When same sex marriage came about same sex marriage came about pretty recently when gay people, lesbians and gay men fought for the right to have their marriages recognized in the same way. As a male female marriage and that was granted in the legislature in the 90s and then it was made part of the of the Supreme Court decision in the United States after that right so do you know when that was decided that same sex marriages were legal to the Supreme Court. Shouldn't know that. Okay, but same sex marriages are a little different because children who are part of the same sex marriage. Of course, it's complicated with the situation with gay men. I would guess that most of the most gay men adopt those children's I guess they could use surrogacy to right. I think, I think more and more surrogacy. I mean, what that is what surrogacy, it used to be that if you weren't able to have the child yourself then you adopt it but now actually adoption nationwide is is suffering to the extent that people would prefer to have their own child so they're a biological child so now you can take an egg from an egg donor and sperm from a sperm donor, and if you can't, and they can actually get the embryo and then place that and then you carry the child, or you can have the egg in the sperm in a surrogate parent who will carry the child. It's impossible for same sex couples to get whatever they're missing and have either one of them if it's women carry the child or if it's men they hire a surrogate mother to carry the child and that's becoming increasingly popular. Many little children that could use a home are not being adopted, not blaming not blaming anyone that's just the way it's going that many more people would if they can possibly do it through surrogacy they will rather than adopt. So you think that there is on the on the market so called a lot of kids that are not being adopted. Hundreds of thousands are in foster care at any. The last time I checked it was over 400,000 in the United States and foster care waiting, waiting. Wow. And also many American couples go abroad to get children through adoption. And it fluctuates country by country because it'll be open for a while, and then someone will do bad deeds, and you know, take babies without proper channels from moms, and, and then the country will shut down. So when I was a judge that was about 22 years. For example, Guatemala would be a country where everyone would get these adorable little children from Guatemala, and then they discovered that because it was popular. In Guatemala, we're stealing babies from, you know, poor women, and selling them. And so I'll shut down and then the same thing happened with Romania and it and Vietnam and it's, it, and then they'll open up they'll get it straightened out and open up again. But it's not as easy to adopt internationally as it once was for those reasons. Don't you tell me once that there are a lot of options of Russian children. There were a lot of options for a Russian children because people favored children that had straight hair and straight hair straight hair they want straight hair and blue eyes, and a lot of the Russian children look like that so they were very very popular in Romania, another place. But what happened in those countries was in anybody who studies children, young children's development. If they're if you're not held, it creates lifelong problems. And so children in Russia and Romania were typically kept in orphanages where they were not touched. And then they were adopted with these beautiful children but they didn't get adopted until they were two or three. So at that time they had something called reactive attachment disorder, which has been studied to death and basically it's extremely difficult to overcome. It got to the point where you could even when they came into court you could tell, because the children sat very stiff and they were rigid with their backs and they didn't, they didn't, you know, cling to their parents. They didn't know who had been held from infancy. So they had a lot of disrupted adoptions from those countries where, after a few years the parents said, Oh, can't do this. I sent them back right back. And there was even one famous case where I put a nine year old on the plane by herself back to Russia, because she didn't want her anymore. And that shut that country down for a while. So the Russians are pretty ticked off about it too as I recall it was right. International. Right. Okay, so the family court then deals with divorce, as I mentioned, remember to that divorce used to be an adversarial procedure and what do I mean by that. It means that you couldn't just walk into court and say I want a divorce and have an agreement that you would get a divorce you had to prove grounds and reasons for it. And some and it was sort of accusatory one person the plaintiff would have to say, This guy did this to me or this woman did this to me. Here's first here. One of the most common grounds was adultery. Still, and you had to to get a divorce on adultery grounds, you had to prove that with witnesses in some way. That seems to have gone away adultery with what I probably is still as a grounds for marriage but people don't usually tend to use it very much. So it was intolerable severity, physical abuse which I will talk about desertion and so forth. The most common ground now is simply that you lived separate and apart for six months with no chance of reconciliation. That is the most common ground so it's almost no fault. However, not quite you have to say that guy lived apart from me from six months, and there is no chance of reconciliation pretty easy, except that I, I trapped Susan's. Anyway, I added a divorce once case where I didn't want that hearing to happen that day. And so I had to quickly find a reason that that hearing divorce hearing would be delayed. I knew that these cut this couple with very young and beautiful. And so I said to the member I want to stall the hearing. So I said to my client was the woman isn't it true that you had sex with your husband last month. Yes, great. So the court wouldn't grant the divorce because they figured well they reconciled you have to testify. There's no chance of reconciliation. Anyway, so hearing got delayed for a while for a while. Anyway, so those that's the most common grounds and usually what happens in a divorce is that the plaintiff remember there's two parties to a divorce is not like you both can get the divorce together. Plaintiff versus to the defendant, two parties, one party has to say no chance of reconciliation, and then the divorce is is granted. In that process though all the other issues have to be solved. Child custody, property divisions, child support, alimony, stocks and bonds, pensions, and all of those property issues have to be solved usually through an agreement, but I'm telling you that those agreements are very difficult because at the time of divorce, and again, I think that judge follow will bear me out people hate each other. And that's maybe going a little too far, but they don't like each other very much. And so reaching an agreement is often painful. Don't you think. Yeah, hours, hours at it. So and that's what that's what divorce is all about and the reason that you have to prove some kind of a ground, like adultery, like intolerable severity is because that is the breach of the origin or like adultery in an adulterator. Remember the contract, you promise to be monogamous. You promise to be faithful. And if you can prove adultery, then you have you can prove it that that person has broken the marital contract contract, and then you are eligible for a divorce. Okay, so go ahead. Who's asked that. I don't understand where when you take wedding vows, they're not like, like when you officiate at a wedding that you can say any, you know, people can say anything they want to each other so where does all of the legal the legal elements of a marriage come in how do you know, you can't say anything. Like I saw a Smothers Brothers movie once and there was a marriage in it and they said, Oh, we'll stay together until it doesn't feel good. That would not be a marriage contract. Right. Right. You do have to make an offer. Will you marry me. Yes, that's offer and acceptance. And when you do you have to make certain promises. Now I don't know you can word it differently. In other words, you have to promise to love, honor, and obey, not obey anymore, but love and honor till death do you part. And to one person. I officiated a wedding last summer and they just, you know, they didn't say any of those things. What did they say that they're not married. They loved each other and, you know, but, but, you know, all the legal things that come with that come with a marriage. Is there like a when you it's like a contract that you're saying you know what it says do you know. But it finds you doesn't it and you find it when do you find out out that you entered into a contract is when you get divorced isn't it. Yeah, I mean, I think it's kind of amazing to think about the fact that there's so many legal things that are implied in a wedding in getting married but we don't know what they are. You don't get what they are. I mean, you know that you're supposed to be monogamous right or not. Well, I mean, nobody a few people are right, but that's the isn't it. Well, I mean all the I mean all the things about alimony and right, I'll support and all those things. You didn't know that when you got married. No. Okay, that I guess to many people it's a surprise right. Right, I mean it's kind of like civics I think people don't know those things when they get married. By the way, what's the consent okay so Susan this is a contract question. What's the consideration for them for the marital contract can't hear you. You're out you're muted. I think it's those promises basically to. I think it's same sex marriage and all that. By the way, that consideration is a kind of complicated. I mean, every contact, every contract has something to bind it together. In other words, usually it's money, correct. Like when you go to the store you say I want to or let's say a rental agency for a car. Say I want that car that the agency says, okay you can have it but what do you, what do you have to then do to cement the contract you have to pay a pile of money, right. In a marriage you have to do something to make that contract real. In other words, you have to give up something in order to get that contract in place. What is it. And without that you do not have a marriage. You know what it is Susan do you know what it is. It's sex. Yeah, it's sex. If some if these two people get married. They're expecting sex and either the man or woman says, nah, I don't feel like it. That's not then the marriage is not consummated. Right, then you can get an annulment, then you can get an annulment. Correct, I just did an annulment Susan. Do you get, do you understand that. Yeah, I do. I'm just, you know, it's like when you sign a contract with a contractor, or to buy something. You have a piece of paper that tells you all of the things that you're obligated to. And that doesn't happen in America. It does know in other countries actually. Okay, but I'll tell you what you do have to get in order to get marriage what what do you have to have in order to get married. A license, a license. Correct, you have to go to the state and get a license. Why is that you suppose Susan, and that makes it legal. So they can track where you got married so that if you say later that I'm married and I'm married they can prove that you are by your license being recorded in the town clerk's office. So the license gets recorded. I'm not, I think it's because the state, ultimately, as I mentioned before the state takes jurisdiction over marriage. I think in order to protect the vulnerable that are in the marriage, usually women, especially in other countries and children, so that that subjects you to the jurisdiction of the state that's what I would guess right. I have, I have an office right now at the Association of Americans living in Vermont. I see there a lot of marriages that are not legal. And why is that because they didn't get married by an agent of the state. They got married in maybe a foreign country by a holy man, an Imam or something like that, that is not legal in this country, you have to have kind of the blessings of the state in some way. Even if you get married in a church with a priest or minister that they are also agents of the state at that time, right, or justice of the peace that when you're justice of the peace is that right. And I filled out that form to be an efficient for one day. Yeah, but you had to fill out a form correct. Oh yeah, oh definitely yeah. And you had to submit it where to the Secretary of State, and you are not a justice of the peace. No, no. Wow. Anybody can do it for a day. Okay, so there's a minister for the day then. Yeah, okay, all right. Anyway, so there's those. So there's a lot of problems in the people that are coming here. A lot of family problems unsolvable in our courts. Also, in many ways. Okay, so all of those problem all of those factors have to go in with the settlement of the divorce. Property, children, custody, support, and alimony, all of that has to be solved before you get a divorce. Yeah, Susan. And your legal rights and responsibilities to you gotta. Sorry. Why don't you say about that because that's now called legal rights and responsibilities. Well, it's just that they sort of bifurcated it between just to who has physical custody and the children who makes the legal decision such as where do they go to and what church do they go to if they go to a church at all. And your life can really become a living hell if you have physical custody but not legal custody because spouse controls what you can do with the children from afar. So the battle over who has legal custody is equally as significant as who has physical custody. And that's a great visitation to the presumption in the court right now as I see it about custody is that both parents should share time with the kids both. I'm not certain that's such a great idea but that's what the court would like. Right. Okay, Jane, did you either say something. No, no, no, the only question, the only question I had was about about medical tests required if you for other. I'm required with required for marriage so that like, so that you don't have a have an RH factor baby for example, or. No they don't require that anymore. They require blood tests for syphilis, but I don't recall that anymore. Right. I guess when you would be pregnant maybe you would you would have that test but it's I think is voluntary. Okay, any other thoughts about okay so how is custody then decided how is custody decided. I didn't have any ideas about that. The way that custody is decided it seems to me is whomever has had primary care and then the primary parent in a case. Right. And that still is usually a mother that usually has the primary care of children. Still in general are still the person that goes out and works and the mother usually is a is a person who has primary care and if the child is doing well and it's a contested custody fight, the mother in general will get custody. However, the court presumes that joint custody is the best. You also think that's true Susan that the court presumes that more and more. And I thought that was a presumption that they thought it was the best. I don't agree with it, but I think that is what I don't agree with it either. Yeah, but it happens. And they try to get as close to 5050 as possible. And that involves, I think that the biggest problem I see with that is that means that you're in a lot of ways if you have joint custody, you're going to stay married until those children are 18. You can't move you have to stay close to each other. If you're going to really stay have custody 5050 present time. And it is really, really hard to reverse that presumption of 5050, even if it takes hours to have a custody fight anyway. Okay, is there any questions about that. Okay, so that's really shocking. Oh, it was me, Jane. I was just like, what is joint custody, joint custody mean, do you specify, do you specify what each couple will do for the child. I mean, like, I mean, and I mean, how do you do, I mean, I have what, what, what, um, yeah, what. I mean, is this best about how much time each, do you have the same, the same number. I mean that they, the child spend exactly as much time with that. That's what I'm saying that that that's what happens a lot is that it's really pretty much 5050 and, and by the way the person who's supposed to pay child support also if he or she has that child 50% of the time. They get a child support credit also right. So the non custodial parent often asks for 5050 so they don't have to pay as much child support. And you're right Jane it means 5050 in general. And that causes a lot of problems, a lot of problems with with working out a schedule like person lives in St. Albans versus Burlington where are you going to drop off the kid what school are they going to go to, because joint custody also requires agreements. And if you don't like each other so much you're getting the divorce. How are you going to work out those kinds of agreements until the child is 18. I don't think people in general like each other that much when they get divorced right for those of you above and married. Well, except, except when both parents turn out to be gay like like like a friend of my brothers and they turn out to be turned turn very amicable divorce and they and they live right near each other and the kids have got the best of both worlds. I know but that means they're going to have to live with each other near each other. Yeah, yeah, that's, that's, that's, I mean, you know, I mean men and women can get along male and female parents to can get along fine and many do. And women of divorce in general, they don't feel great about each other and and this isn't the thing I always caution anybody I deal with is look at you better agree to this because it's going to be very difficult to change any of it. Until this kid is 18. That's a long time. So this is laughing. Why are you laughing. Just. Why are you describing it makes me laugh. Why. It's just true it's very true. And you knock your head out, you know that you, if you're a lawyer, and they charge a lot of money. As many you maybe know I don't charge a lot of money but most most lawyers charge a whole lot of money and it's hours and hours of working out these agreements and then afterwards if you go back to your lawyer because you don't like the agreement, and it's more hours more court time. Yeah, I think so. Oh, all right. Okay, so anyway. Anyway, does anybody have any questions and about divorce or parentage is pretty much the same thing except a parentage action again determines who's the father, and then what kind of obligations that father is going to have. But that father doesn't have any obligations around alimony and no right to your property either a simple question and apparent ejection. Who's the father, who's going to have custody and parental contact and then child support, and those take forever to because many men of course say I'm not the father in the first place and then you have to have a blood test about it. I'm quoting one that I'm involved in now that was. Oh my God this father was anyway he was hotly denying it. And it went on and on for hours about, you know what, what was your sex, what did you say I was painful. And of course the present court is all on the phone. Right. So, okay, the other thing that I wanted to mention was that prior to what I first became a lawyer there was no such thing as a civil way to get a restraining order for instance, if you are the victim of abuse and again I have to be a difficult gender, usually the victim of abuse is a female and the abuser is the male. If that was happening in your home, it happened to my home actually all the time. You could not get a restraining order there was no such thing as getting in the family court, some kind of an order that your abuser had to stay away, you had to call the police. Believe me, the police never wants to come to that situation. As a kind of a tangent one of the reasons that I feel rather differently than most people do about defunding the police is that there are so many cases of domestic violence in our community right now. I don't want a woman to be stuck calling a social worker in that situation, because the only, the only, you know, the only person that could possibly deal with that situation as an ongoing situation is the police officer, who would come into your house and take the abuser out of your house social worker can't do that. So, when I was a person attorney here legal, there was no kind of civil court which dealt with it the only way to deal with it was calling the police. Now you can actually call a judge in the middle of the night and I hope it's not Susan, but you can call a judge in the middle of the night and say look at this guy this man usually is hurting me and I want an immediate restraining order, and the court can issue that ex party, other words by the testimony of the victim alone, and they can get restraining orders that way. But when I was first in the law that was not possible, and you had to call the police, and the, and that's the most dangerous time for a police officer by the way very dangerous for a police officer to go into a home where there's abuse, because the cars are hot they might have a gun they might have weapons, and so the police were often very reluctant to intervene in that case. And the third thing before I turn this over to Susan less Susan you there even think about the things is the juvenile court now what is the juvenile court does everybody know what that is. No, Beth. Jane. I mean, I hope juvenile court has jurisdiction. As I recall in three areas one, if a child commits a criminal act. It's called a delinquency. Second, if the parents have neglected the children and the state intervenes and has to take the children out of the house, for some reason. And the third if the child is being abused by the parents. And again, the state has the right to intervene and get that child out of the house. And there used to be a category called unmanageable, and those were kids for runaways in that in those instances, if there's a report or a neighbor relative. The report goes to DCF the Department of Children and Families, and they can get into your house and take your kid away. Very controversial, usually. I admire those social workers. But no kid that I've ever seen wants to leave their home. And so usually it's really can be a disaster. Right. In juvenile court is confidential. None of the other courts in the family court are confidential juvenile court is. So it really is that the state is in your life as when you're in juvenile court as parents. I'm saying this because in our in our situation right now in the United States. There's been an epidemic of drug abuse that parents often lose their kids to DCF. And it is a shame it's really difficult to get kids back. And it's tragic to me when that happens, because above all kids want to be with their parents for whatever reason they want to be with their parents, and they grow up feeling. It's a terrible tragedy to the part of the parent to who feels like an absolute failure if they lose their kids. Anyway, so those are the elements of the family court, really of the of people who are in general alive and kicking and Susan as a probate judge dealt with all kinds of issues of death, and other issues too but maybe in the probate court. Maybe you could comment on some of that Susan. So most people don't ever think of the probate court until somebody dies and they have to go to the public corporate they actually it does cover quite a few things. The main thing that people go to probate court for it is when somebody dies so if you have, if you die and you have a will or if you die, if you die, you may not die, Sandy, but the rest of us probably will. You have to go if you own any property at the time of your death, and you don't have it protected from through a trust, you have to go to the probate court to open in the state so that the property gets directed in the manner in which you want to where you want to go as you set forth in your will and if you don't have a will then the state decides where your property goes, and the court's job is to make sure that it goes where the state says it should go. So that's, that's the main thing people think of when they think of the probate court but in addition to that they do a lot of other things that are very much personal to people's families. And I was surprised when I started there how much a percentage of the court's time is taken up in family court type of activities. So in addition to the estates there's trust trust we won't really deal with here because it's really just a way people protect assets, and it's not really relevant to the family court stuff too much. But the other thing that the court does a lot of his guardianships, and there's we had a generally in Chittenden County about 850 open at any given time. That's quite a few guardianships, and explain why people have. So there's different kinds of guardianships there's adult guardianships and then there's minor guardianships, and within the minor guardianships there's emergency guardianships and non emergency guardianships. And within the adult guardianships there's voluntary and involuntary guardianships. So I'm just going to run through them very quickly. An adult guardianship would be if somebody like your mother gets becomes diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and can no longer pay her own bills and she starts spending money on turtles and buys thousands of them in the house is full. You know that kind of thing you're spending all their money on crazy stuff. Kids get worried because they see their inheritance going down the drain, and they rushed to court to file a guardianship for the mother, so that they can control her assets and she no longer has control of them. So if mother consented to that and said yes, I'm wrong about the turtles and I want someone to control me. I can get a voluntary guardianship which is very streamlined procedure. So she comes to court and she says yes I'm out of control with the turtles, I want my daughter to control my money. And, and then I would appoint the daughter as a voluntary guardian. The beauty of the voluntary guardian is that the person who asked for it, which is the mother can terminate it just as easily as it started so that's a nice kind of guardianship you think you're going to have a problem and it turns out you don't. Then you can just come to the court and say I don't want it anymore and it ends. An involuntary guardianship is when the daughter for example says mother you have a turtle problem mother says no I don't. And the daughter goes to court and files petition to appoint a guardian on mother's behalf over her objection. And in that case we point an attorney for the mother. And then we get an evaluation by an independent psychiatrist or psychologist, and then we have a hearing to determine whether she meets a legal criteria for guardian. If a guardian is appointed, the person under guardianship cannot simply terminate it had they have to prove that they no longer need a guardianship so it can be a very much. I mean, it can be a very good thing but it's also very right for the abuse of many many hearings where people are misbehaving with the guardianships and using money in inappropriate ways and then you have to remove the guardian. So that's that's adult guardianships minor guardianships happen when a parent can't take care of a child, for example, for whatever reasons oftentimes it's drug abuse, but they don't want the state to come in and swipe their child away. They have the wherewithal to say look I'm a drug addict, and I can't take care of my child but I don't want them to go in the DCF custody. So I'm going to point my brother as the guardian, and then they would appoint they would file a petition to appoint a guardian for their child, and then they would come in and those we set up lots and lots of those hundreds every year, voluntarily. Sometimes parents move to Florida just be typical parents move to Florida it's warm it's sunny, the schools are terrible. They get down there and the kids are all in gangs and I had several every single year of parents sending their kids back from Florida to live with an under uncle because they wanted them in the Vermont school district. Parents stay there on the sunny beach but let's send the kid home. So those, those are very, very typical as well. And they couldn't be very one problem with them. Very much like family court in a custody matter is they often are set up voluntarily so if I'm a drug addict, just for an example, and I can't take care of my child, I might name my friend, or my brother or my mother to be the guardian. And then six months later I've done my rehab I want my child back, and I come to court and say I want the guardianship to end. And the person who's the guardian says well no I don't think so, because you're still a drug addict you're still fill in the blank. And they're very, very emotional. It's extremely difficult because it's pitting family, it's usually a family member who is the guardian, and it's pitting siblings against one another parents against children. They're very difficult hearings. And if it works if you have someone good it does keep the child out of the state system and the state out of your family. And unless someone abuses the child, while in guardianship, the state would not become involved at all. It's just a family matter and many, many, many of them work very smoothly. So there's that, then there's adoptions the public court does all the adoptions, and they are not only just in Chittenden County, for example, but if any place where an adoption agency has an office they can file for adoption. So, adoptions for the one, for example the one family center which does a phenomenally good job. They have offices all over the state, but because they have an office in Chittenden, and if they didn't happen to like, I was doing a lot of same sex adoptions before they were popular, so to speak. And so they were bringing all of them to me from all around the state. So you can file an adoption in Chittenden County if you go through an agency that has an office here. Sometimes you have to file where you live, whatever county you live in. And in some counties, they didn't agree with the same sex statute, when it came through, and they just weren't doing it. And so they were just kind of piling in the Chittenden which was fine. In conjunction with those adoptions we, the court would do termination of parental rights. It's complicated, right? Because it's complicated. Yeah, because to get a kid adopted, you do have to terminate the biological. Right, you cannot, one parent cannot relinquish a child for adoption. So if, if a mother would say, I'm relinquishing my child for adoption, she has to either get the father to consent, or the court has to terminate his parental rights. And those, again, can be very acrimonious hearings because you notice them, some fathers really don't care and they just don't show up, and then their rights are terminated. But many, many do care and want to parent their children, and they don't want the child given up for adoption. And so you end up with a hearing because it's usually the mom saying I'd rather give the child for adoption than have you, jerk, raise the child. And then the hearing against the father, jerk, against the mother who doesn't want, and so those were always additional hearings as well. And so, and then we did a lot of incidental things that you wouldn't think about, you have to come to the court for what you do. If you want to change your name, for example, you come to the probate court. If your certificate is incorrect, or you change your gender, you come to the probate court. So can you do that? Can you change your birth record based on sex? You can. You can. You can. But that all happened in the last few years. And again, those are all, you know, the law changes, and then people and courts are slow to adapt to it. And so some courts would just make it difficult for people to do that kind of stuff. And so they would tend to want to gravitate towards where the court made it easier to do what legally they're entitled to do. But some courts just were so difficult that people either give up or move to a place where they could do it more easily. So those things all come to the court. And we also authorized people you can do was a Beth was talking about being made efficient for a day to do, to do a marriage. That's a fairly new thing. But you always could do in a marriage if you were an out of state mister. And then you would have to file a petition with the probate court to appoint you in Vermont to perform the marriage. And your, your, your certification that you were some sort of priest or efficient. And those were kind of funny sometimes because they were clearly like right off the internet. You know, they're like a cracker jacks box priest for a day, and they would send it in and then then we would appoint them for the day to marry the poor schools. But it was a marriage, I hope, wasn't it. Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, we did it. And a lot of other things that are too boring to talk about. Those are the big things. Okay, any questions. No. Okay, so I did I did have another some other thoughts about this because this community is now I'm glad of it to a refugee community and immigrant community. And as some of you know I have my office at the Association of Africans living in Vermont and those people there, both Jacob and Tato do enormous work for the refugee and the immigrant community. And sometimes I'm privileged enough to work with them with those immigrants and refugees on their family problems. I don't know what kinds of cultures those people come from and also how they do, or they don't adapt and what kinds of problems that they're going to have in this country. And I've seen vast differences in culture which leads them into the family court. There's again as I mentioned before, many kind of informal marriages that are that take place. Among many of the people I see another I don't mean informal exactly I mean the marriages that are not recognized here in this country. I was married in a Kenyan refugee camp by a Muslim Imam, but no marriage certificate no marriage license. How do I deal then with a divorce in that situation. How do I deal with who should have custody of the children in that situation. The other practice I've seen to some extent is also multiple wives in general that there is still the idea in many societies of polygamy that a man, a man, not women I mean I don't know any women who would want a lot of husbands maybe I'm wrong about that but it doesn't seem like they usually do, but that men often in other cultures do often have more than one way. And sometimes the men here do think that that's the law here and that they're allowed to have more than one wife at the same time and that of course is a crime that's called bigamy. And so, but it's very tricky. So that's a problem I see how to deal with that. The other problem I see is that immigrants and refugees are often moving around a great deal. So a mother gets custody of five kids comes to me and tries to get child support from a husband and I say where's your husband well I don't know he moved back to Africa he moved back to Nepal. I don't know where he is. That is a continuing problem in this community because what's happening is that we have mothers in commute in this community. They don't even speak English. They might have five seven kids and no way to get any kind of support and because they don't know English. They also don't have many skills that are marketable. I think it's a real community problem that we have to pay attention to that that many of these mothers find themselves really in poverty and very little is is being done to help them. And so I see in a lot of communities and also our own community, lots of physical abuse. Right so and that's very difficult to deal with. Anyway, so I don't know what else Susan. You're smiling. You're muted. I'm smiling because I'm smiling because I did Patricia crackers adoption and she just put that up there so that always makes me. Yeah, that's nice. That's always a happy thing. Yes. Sorry, I digress. Okay, but you're saying also the Lund home is very active in in options right. Lund home is phenomenal. They're very very good in everything. That's where our daughter was born. They just are very caring conscientious competent capable people. They took over, for an example, in the family court, family court also terminates parental rights as you know, no, I didn't really know that much. They do their termination parental rights in the future. Do they do it in the juvenile court. Yes. Yes, they do. And but what was happening in the 90s was well before the 90s but I came in in 95. And they were literally hundreds of kids whose the rights have been terminated, but then they never got it together to file a petition for adoption that the court has the court had to do it. And, and, and they never got the paperwork together to file in the public court, so the kids were never adopted. But they weren't adopted, and I started doing these adoptions, and the parents would literally be sobbing, and I would think we were having this wonderful happy day and they would be sobbing, because they said we waited five years for this to happen we never thought it would happen. I contacted the Supreme Court, and I forgot the wonderful Jim Morris, when he was up in the situation, and he got in touch with the London home London home got a contract with the family court, and we did 281 adoptions in one year. The London home, they cleaned up the docket over the course of about three years, and now there's no lapse at all they just goes right to London London doesn't. I mean you said that surrogacy was replacing adoption. Yes, it is in many cases because people who can't have children biologically for one reason or another now have other options whatever piece is missing they can get someplace else. It didn't used to be that way was it, you know, people don't always adopt just because they're saints and they want to help a child, they adapt for reasons like I adopted, because I wanted to have kids and I couldn't. So I adopted, but many people who can't have kids biologically would prefer not to adopt so if there's a way that they can still have their own egg or sperm or both, and have somebody else carry the child. Great, let's do that. I guess it's very expensive right. Very expensive. And what if the surrogate mother, what if the surrogate mother there's a whole line of cases I believe in the 80s maybe about what happens if the surrogate mother says I'm not going to give up this child. Oh yeah, it's a big deal. It's a big deal and very, very iron clad but you know local lawyer that I gave my adoption practice to gave it up and became a surrogate attorney because there's so much more money in it. Right, but I mean what kind of rights then does the surrogate mother have very few it's not a great deal and she has to sign an iron clad contract saying that no matter what it's not her child and, and you can even get a birth certificate now before the child is born. Name biological birth certificate, you can get a birth certificate well it's not to the child's form but you can get the order beforehand, because genetically, the person carrying the child is not the biological parent under the law, because it's not her egg and so the egg and the sperm are from someone else. So, those someone else's are shown on the birth certificate, instead of the, it used to be the mom and then they had to go through this process of changing it and the, and the biological parents didn't like that they wanted their name on it from the outset. So there was a lot of litigation around it and they ended up being able to do that. Wow. So the surrogate mom really really it's not a great deal for her unless you like being pregnant. Well, maybe. I know but I remember, I remember really a series of cases called member of the baby M case where what where the biological mother, not the egg mother but the surrogate refused to give up. And so and the court decided in that case it was a New Jersey case that you that the contract itself was against public policy and could not force and the mother got to keep the kid. The surrogate mother. Yeah. Yeah. And then and then since then they've gone through all kinds of massinations to make sure those contracts are hard for the surrogate mom. I think it'd be very very difficult for the surrogate mom to get the child now. Right. Also, the one thing I guess I wanted to, unless any questions again from Patricia Crocker. Anyway, anybody. The one thing I wanted to mention and it's kind of painful to even talk about is the situation in the courts right now, especially in the, well I don't know in the family court but I don't do much in other courts is that during the pandemic the court system shut down pretty much. And during that period of time, you couldn't you have a jury trial is my understanding right Susan, or any kind of hearings in person none, none in person. And at the same time that that happened, the court also went to an entirely electronic system so that anytime a lawyer has to file anytime you request a hearing, you have to use a very difficult cumbersome electronic system. The court is really gone, pretty much digital hasn't it. And it is very, very difficult, particularly for poor people to manage that to me. I mean during the time that I was at legal aid and later, there was a whole promise that the courts would be equally accessible, or you know justice for all. It's become very, very difficult and I wanted to sort of kind of end on that note I have no idea what we're going to do about it but it seems to me that lawyers are fighting with that system every day. But anyway, what do you think Susan. No. I mean, I, I think it's a denial of access to justice because if you can't access the. I have a mentor through mercy connections mentee through mercy connections who can't file a guardianship form because she can't use the electronic system. And they're going to be told even in the state right not even in the state and they told her they were going to terminate her guardianship that she worked so hard to get. She can't electronically file this stuff was just have a computer she can't use it she can barely read. I mean, it seems egregiously wrong that you could do that to someone. And I'm not sure why it isn't being challenged. I don't either I don't get it. And it's also expensive in a way it follows with everything else that's happening with our society is everything is becoming digital. It seems to me a very difficult almost inhuman world and I don't understand why that has happened either, but it has. All right, well anyway, any final thoughts from anybody. Okay, well I'm sure the family court will always be open to discussion because it affects everybody's life so anyway, I can tell you Susan's phone number. If you have any questions so I'm happy to talk to anybody. I don't charge for that. And please give me a call do not stumble into court, uneducated about what you're getting into. Okay. And so my cell phone is 802-355-4968 and call me anytime and I mean it. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Sandy. You do a great job. Thank you everybody. You can give him my number two if you want. No, you give it I don't feel comfortable giving up my my numbers 802-238-3778 but I don't, I don't practice in the courts anymore I work for companies so I can't go to court so I got to call Sandy and tell her to help you. Well, okay, that's great. Have a good night everybody. See ya. Thank you.