In Pro Per

By Roderic Duncan
     
      A Judge's Advice: Stay Out of Court
      Most lawyers think that being appointed as a judge is a ticket to at least 20 years in one of the best jobs they can imagine. I subscribe to that theory. There was never a time when I didn't look forward to my day on the bench. The pay eventually became decent, the hours good, and the job presented a very rewarding opportunity to do the right thing for people enmeshed in a controversy they couldn't resolve on their own.
      For many judges, there are also some negatives: a few friends, uncomfortable with the change in status, drift away. Also, the camaraderie among the judges on many courts is poor. And for me, it wasn't pleasant to be the subject of what turned out to be a phantom election-recall campaign by a Buick dealer who was unhappy with my ruling on his child-custody matter.
      But another negative side to judging became apparent to me recently after Nolo, the self-help law publisher in Berkeley, asked me to write a book for consumers on divorce?a subject I dealt with daily, by choice, for 10 of my 20 years on the court and often after that in retirement.
      It quickly became clear to me that to be honest with readers, the first chapter would have to be devoted to knocking the very family court system in which I had worked happily for years. My basic advice to divorcing couples would be: Stay out of divorce court if you can.
      There are a number of reasons I came to embrace this view.
      First, divorce court costs too much money. Few contested divorces are resolved with less than $5,000 in attorneys fees. In one case I handled, attorneys fees for a spouse attempting to hide assets topped a million dollars. In quite a few cases, the fees topped $100,000.
      Also, jammed dockets subject the parties to unacceptable delays. Contested cases are rarely tried within a year. One case in which I had more than 30 hearings in my last two years before retirement is still being actively litigated twelve years later.
      And, of course, divorce court promotes antagonism that often causes the participants to engage in some pretty outlandish behavior. In one case over which I presided, a father who was ordered to turn over to the mother a baby he held in his arms attempted to avoid my order by tossing the infant to a friend waiting in the back of the courtroom.
      Those are the obvious drawbacks. A more subtle one is that divorce court often subjects the parties to decisions made by a judge who is uninterested in family law and unhappy about not having enough seniority to avoid being stuck there. Because of the vagaries of the political process, very few lawyers familiar with family law are appointed as superior court judges?about one for every eight deputy district attorneys.
      A standard recently adopted by the Judicial Council states that presiding judges should assign judges to serve on an assignment for a minimum of three years and should "motivate and educate other judges regarding the significance of family court." But opinions vary on how effective this directive will be.
      In reality, few family-law judges in the state stick with the assignment more than a year or two. The post is not a popular one because of the complexity of the issues presented and the wearying parade of couples in angst.
      Although educational programs are already available for new judges, the state standards suggest a new family-law judge should take a basic family-law class within three months of beginning the assignment. However, the California Judges Association successfully fought to prevent this provision from becoming mandatory.
      All of this reflection convinced me to recommend that my readers do everything they can to avoid family court, try to solve their dispute out of court, and then present an agreement to a judge to be rubber-stamped. That way, it won't be important whether the judge loves or hates being in family court?or even knows the difference between a QDRO and a TRO.
      Still, somehow, cataloging the inadequacies of divorce court leaves me with the rather sad feeling of disloyalty to an old friend-one that often gave me a warm glow as I drove home after a day spent trying to help people straighten out their lives from the bench.
     
      Roderic Duncan (rduncan77@comcast.net) was appointed to the California Municipal Court in 1975 and elected to the state superior court bench in 1987, where he served until retiring in 1995. He is the author of A Judge's Guide to Divorce: Uncommon Advice from the Bench (Nolo, 2007).
     

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