A seemingly innocuous House of Delegates bill calling for "A Commission on the Future of Maryland" really is a smoke screen to derail legislation to create a Family Court system, a Circuit Court judge and a state delegate said yesterday.
One provision of House Bill 672, which has many sponsors, requires a study of family-related cases and how to ensure that court-related social services are available.
Because of that bill, the Maryland State Bar Association will not take a position supporting two other bills to create the Family Courts, Anne Arundel Judge James C. Cawood Jr. and Del. Kenneth C. Montague Jr. told a daylong conference at the University of Baltimore Law School on creating a Family Court.
"They'll study the Family Court to death," Judge Cawood said. He said the subject has been studied by two commissions and a committee appointed by Chief Judge Robert C. Murphy of the Court of Appeals.
"I want this court, and I want it now," Judge Cawood declared. "This bill is being misused," he said.
"I have no opposition to studying the judiciary so long as it does not interfere with the Family Court," said Delegate Montague, a Baltimore Democrat. "I regard it [HB672] as a subterfuge for delay."
Kathleen Shemer, executive director of the Women's Law Center, said the center chose Family Court as the theme of the conference because advocates are pushing to win legislative approval this year for a family division in the Circuit Courts with the same importance as civil and criminal divisions.
Legislation passed the House of Delegates unanimously last session but died in committee in the Senate.
The Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee has set a hearing on this year's bill (SB493) for March 1; the House Judiciary Committee will hear its version (HB644) March 2.
Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr. said the situation has become urgent as caseloads increase. Because most functions and resources exist, he said, initial costs of a Family Court would not be exorbitant.
City Circuit Judge Kathleen O'Ferrall Friedman said, "the heart of the bill" is provision of ancillary services so judges can call on social, legal, medical and psychological experts for one-on-one work needed tomake Family Court function.
Among the worst problems in the current system is fragmentation, said Professor Barbara A. Babb of the University of Baltimore law faculty, who moderated the panel discussions. Now, a single family can be involved simultaneously with several judges in three courts -- civil, juvenile and criminal, she said.
Susan C. Elgin, who has a family-law practice in Towson, opened the conference with a family horror story to illustrate the fragmented system.
After a separation, in which the husband was denied unsupervised visitation to the couple's six children because of sex-abuse allegations, he abducted the four oldest children to England. The wife regained custody through British courts.
He followed her to Maryland where he got a court order permitting unsupervised visitation from a judge who knew no details of the case. Fifteen hearings were held by nine judges in three courts before the ninth finally consolidated the cases.
Nationwide, domestic-relations cases account for 35 percent of all cases, while in Maryland they account for more than 50 percent of civil cases.
Family law is almost a calling, according to various panelists and participants, because the cases usually are complex and emotional. Many lawyers and judges don't want to handle them, and complaints of judicial burnout are frequent, panelists said.
Delegate Montague suggested that the reason many judges oppose creating Family Court is fear that they will be assigned to it.
But opposition by judges may be lessening because one goal of the proposed Family Court legislation is to fill the judgeships with people who want that assignment, probably those who had practiced family law as lawyers or specialized in domestic relations as judges, Ms. Babb said.