Shared parenting, whether a good idea or not, would cost family law attorneys and their assignees – GALs, therapists, custody evaluators, visitation supervisors and their ilk – a lot of money.
On the other hand, if a real estate lawyer was elected to the part time position of representative to CT house, what better way to help his people – attorneys and real estate brokers – than to make it a darn sight easier to force people to sell their homes when they run out of ready cash to pay family law attorneys? Bizarre, you say?
He Don’t Serve You. He Don’t Serve Me. He Serves the Man Behind the Tree.
Here is an email thread from two insiders. It provides a whiff of the political odor, which occasionally wafts from behind closed doors in the merged CT judiciary and legislative branches.
The email thread
By M.
For shared parenting to come to CT, a big political obstacle would have to be overcome.
Last time I looked, CT Superior Court Judge Bozzuto does not want it, so the Republicans who protect her won’t go for it unless there is a huge incentive for them.
As for the Democrats, they appear to be the main protectors of the crooks who control the family courts (why would a Republican lawyer complain about the Family Court lawyer clique if the Democrats didn’t control it), so they won’t be looking for shared parenting either.
The 25 legislators who signed the Shared Parenting letter are not lawyers or Family Court insiders, so they can sign the letter without fear of reprisals. Unless something has changed, which I doubt, I don’t believe there is sufficient political incentive in the CT General Assembly for shared parenting regardless of the online chatter, so it’s just background noise and not pertinent to the argument here in CT.
If you want to spend your time productively, pay attention to the sleazy self interests in the judiciary committee.
Jason Douchette, a Democrat, who represents Manchester and Glastonbury in the Connecticut House of Representatives [District 13], is also a real estate lawyer. Doucette appears to have shown his true colors this past legislative session. He put forth an ugly bill with illegal language that will make it easier to take homes from people in family court proceedings.
Fortunately, Martin R. Libbin. Deputy Director, Legal Services, for CT Judicial Branch, brought to the attention of the judiciary committee some questionable legality issues with Douchette’s proposed bill, and the Judiciary Committee cleaned it up.
However, the bill still makes it very easy to take homes from people in family court. I fear that in a few years, more people will lose their homes in family court than before, because it will be easier to do so.
As a real estate lawyer, I can only imagine how much money Doucettte will make off this bill when it becomes law.
By P
M’s comments are dead on and the unfortunate reality in this state.
Vote no to Judge Emons billboard
I remain amazed that no one cared about former judge Jane Emons sailing out of the Judicial Committee by a 30-3 vote. Or what happened during the judicial nomination of Andrew McDonald – which exposed how the Democrats and Republican Judicial Committee members were playing the game of “we’ll support your horribly unqualified and connected candidate if you support ours.”
Your comments about Doucette are interesting, and I would love to bring this to the attention of the weekly newspaper, The Glastonbury Citizen.
I met with Douchette and CT Assemblymember Jill Barry, who represents Glastonberry shortly after he was elected. Douchette looked like a deer in the headlights when I explained how lights were being shined onto all the dysfunction and corruption.
Like former State Senator Steve Cassano, Douchette hid from me when he saw me at the legislative office building.
In a recent situation, a judge suggested bankruptcy as a way to allow a father to ‘keep’ the house.
Apparently federal law changed, and the Homestead provision of new bankruptcy laws makes it much more difficult to take a home if you file for bankruptcy.
If Doucette’s bill makes it easier for family law attorneys to take their clients’ homes in ‘family’ court, it may have the domino effect of increasing bankruptcies to protect them. Which will impact banks doing business in our state.
I remain convinced that the only way we will see change in this state is a federal lawsuit citing violations of fundamental rights and federal law filed by five men and five women.
And bringing to the attention of non-attorney members of the legislature what all this crap is costing our state and it’s taxpayers. One such rep agreed that JUD was a waste of time (apart for people like State Senator Gary Winfield), and the way to get the Judiciary’s attention is through appropriations and cutting their funding.
The last time they did this, the Judiciary cut marshals and administrative staff instead of judges – pissing off the unions. It was to the point that some marshals who got laid off threatened to tell all if they could testify anonymously.
We also now have Frank Report and a notable investigative news organization filing FOIA requests against the judiciary looking for data.
