Free for all

goodforgov — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 02:25:49 +0000

     I hate fee waivers. No, that’s not accurate. What I hate is how my courthouse (yes, I claim ownership, given the amount of time I’ve spent romping around the place) handles fee waivers. You see, the legislature, in its infinite wisdom, decided once upon a time to make a law authorizing folks with legal needs (warning: term used loosely) to come in and ask for their case to be free. The types of things that you can get for free are usually limited to family law cases and include free case filing or pleading filing, free marshal services (usually around $50 to $100), free parenting education or similar classes (usually ordered in divorce or custody cases) and even a free lawyer (but only for the alleged father in a paternity suit or for someone being charged with contempt of court – this is very clearly marked, but the moron customers always ask if they can have a free lawyer for their divorce case). Family law cases, by the way, include divorces, custody or visitation cases, paternity applications and child support enforcement cases.
     Now, don’t get me wrong, the concept of a fee waiver is a good one. There are a lot of poor people around here, and they have legal needs, too. If you’re making 7 bucks an hour and supporting four kids (by different fathers, of course), I can see how the cost of a few hundred dollars in a divorce or custody case can be pretty onerous. What really bugs me, though, is that the legislature didn’t put a clause in the bill that would require some form of proof of the applicant’s income and expenses. This means that, when folks come in and fill out the fee waiver form, they need only to write all zeros in the boxes for their assets and income (which they do all the time) and to just write any numbers in the boxes for their liabilities and expenses.
     It would be entirely within the judges’ discretion to ask for some proof. They do not do so, however. The court accepts whatever is written as true, because of the sacred honesty oath taken by applicants when they submit their fee waiver. I suppose that the argument against requiring proof is that it’d require too much effort for the state to investigate every claim for a fee waiver. I don’t think that’d be the case, though. We wouldn’t even have to look closely at every single claim or do any extensive investigating into whether or not the paperwork is accurate. Just requiring something more puts the burden on the applicants to produce evidence and makes the whole process seem more serious. It would also discourage the outrageously blatant lying that we have going on here. But no, we ask for nothing of the sort. Long story short, there’s no actual proof required to get some free legal services. The customers know this and pass along the information to all of their friends – free divorces for everyone!
     This bugs me for two reasons, in addition to my feeling that, in general, it’s bullshit that you can get free stuff, unchecked, by lying. First, when people fill out the form honestly, as they sometimes do, they take the chance that the judge reading it will deny it. Unbeknownst to most folks, the judges usually make the decision by comparing the numbers that the customers provide to the numbers on the chart listing poverty rates by family size. The occasional honest person gets screwed for their honesty, as they might fall just above the poverty line. Had they lied, like most people do, they would have gotten the fee waiver granted. That just doesn’t seem right to me. Now, I’m certainly not advocating that more people get their fee waivers granted. I want the exact opposite. I want a more equal denial of fee waiver applications, unless the applicants are truly needy and are able to provide the appropriate accompanying documentation.
     What also sucks is that sometimes the judges don’t bother to look at the poverty chart and they just grant fee waiver applications if the applicant writes that her expenses are more than her income. This has lead to numerous situations where someone who actually makes more money than I do gets labeled as indigent (a finding that is legally required in order to grant the fee waiver) and has legal services provided because she isn’t good with money. I don’t think that I’m indigent, and it bothers me to think that, legally, I could get a judge to say that I am. I’m broke, not poor. There’s a difference. I’m only broke because I’m temporarily (I’m confident that, eventually, I’ll have a real job) underpaid. Based on the folks that I’ve seen around here, actual poor people are poor, not because they don’t have money, but because they don’t spend it well (food and rent, THEN expensive cell phones, designer clothes, shiny rims and bizarre fingernails). For crying out loud, if money’s tight, try going to Goodwill and shopping at Walmart and the bag-your-own grocery stores like I do. I assure you, if you’re smart about your money, you’ll have enough to pay for your case.

Good Enough for Government

Free for all