Center for Family Justice
Centerfor Family Justice
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Working to preserve the right to parent for single-parent and blended families involved with the family court system
 
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 Next monthly meeting:
2:00 pm -3:00 pm, Saturday, October 4, 2008. Location: Cumberland Presbyterian Church at the corner of Academy and Moon. Park in the back (south side), we are in the Adult Education wing, just inside the door (Rm 403).
Topic: No speaker this month, just a business meeting
Is The New Mexico Supreme Court Fixing the Problems?
Given the breadth, depth, and severity of the problems evidenced on this web site and throughout New Mexico, who is "minding the store", so to speak, and taking care of the unlawful, harmful, and systematic practices that tear families apart and deplete their resources, while enriching members of the cottage industry? This section covers what offices and persons have been approached or have knowledge of specific problems and what, if anything, each office/person is doing to correct them.
Twenty years ago, an organization similar to the Center for Family Justice, Parents Against Domestic Court Abuse, exposed systematic wrongdoing in the Bernalillo Family Court and associated cottage industry that was harming families. They approached all three branches of government, legislative, judicial, and executive, and demanded action. As a result, then-Chief Justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court Tony Scarborough commissioned a group to investigate the allegations regarding the Bernalillo Family Court and formally report back to him. On August 29, 1988, James T. Paulantis and his committee issued their report, now known as the Paulantis report, with significant findings and recommendations. We provide herein a brief summary of the report:
  • comments were made about the increasingly crowded Bernalillo County Family Court docket, and that the docket could be cleared if "it were not for the reopening of cases and continuing jurisdiction in all cases where children were involved."
  • the Court relied too heavily on the custody evaluation which was expensive and was not always tempered with other, conflicting evidence; the Court should exercise closer control to eliminate the impression that the evaluator, social worker, etc. is making the decisions
  • many meetings and hearings were not of record and all such matters should be of record
  • the committee in numerous cases was disturbed by the reports of attorney's fees in domestic relations cases
  • many reopen/rehearing issues were frivolous
  • it was taking an inordinate amount of time from the time a case was filed until all issues were concluded, and the longer the time taken, the more expensive the case
  • a time limit should be set on final judgment of all issues; the report stated, "In domestic relations cases a speedy resolution is necessary because of the emotional traumatic nature of such cases." [sic]
  • in some cases there were several or numerous attorneys representing one or more litigants (i.e., through withdrawal and substitution)
  • New Mexico Rule 1-011 [regarding fraud on the part of attorneys to the Court and in pleadings] deviates from Federal case law and should be modified to more closely conform to the Federal case law in order to make attorneys more responsible to the courts
As a result of this report, likely paid for by New Mexico tax dollars, to our knowledge the following actions were taken: ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! In other words, the Courts have known of these problems, which have simply become an order of magnitude worse over the last two decades; families continue to be abused by the court system, both family and children's Courts, and no action has been taken to alleviate the problem. If you read this account and can point us to any action, however small, that addressed any of these issues at all, we will be happy to revise our account.
last updated on October 7, 2007
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