Legislators, advocates and even New York’s top judge all agree that the state’s family courts are overburdened and under-resourced.
What they can’t seem to agree on is how much money is necessary to fix the courts’ myriad issues.
Advocates say that a key area of reform is to boost the number and cap the cases of family court attorneys, which they estimate would require about $60 million more per year in funding. Last year, the Office of Court Administration successfully procured an additional $20 million for these lawyers in the state budget, but not enough to set a limit on the caseload per lawyer.
A coalition of family court legal service providers will be pushing for the policy change in the lead-up to next year’s state budget.
“This is about us being able to adequately serve our clients and adequately staff the additional court rooms that are being created,” said Liberty Aldrich, the executive director of The Children’s Law Center and a member of the coalition.
New York State Family Courts are responsible for deciding nearly all legal matters involving children and families, ranging from child abuse and neglect to child custody and visitation, to name a few. Despite the vital and personal nature of family court, it contends with a legacy of delays, untenable caseloads and a legacy of dysfunction, according to a litany of reports produced by government and legal organizations over the past few years.
Advocates say that a fundamental change to the court has to start with the caseloads and working conditions of the Attorneys for the Child — often referred to by their acronym AFCs — who handle cases on behalf of children. AFCs can be in charge of representing up to 150 children simultaneously under state court guidelines, which often translates to an even higher number of cases, considering each child often has several case dockets or court proceedings.
The National Association of Counsel for Children recommends that family court attorneys who work on cases of abuse or neglect should represent no more than 40 to 60 individual clients at a time.
The governor and court administrators have made strides to reform family court, but have so far stopped short of addressing the state’s cap. Over the summer Gov. Hochul signed a bill into law that added 16 family and civil court judgeships in New York City to address the backlog of cases. The influx of judges will help resolve trial cases, so that they’re not in limbo for months.
“It does nothing to free up the availability of other counsel who are required to move family court cases forward,” said Aldrich.
Judge Rowan Wilson, Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals, New York’s top court, shared a sentiment about the need for more and better compensated AFCs in his state of the judiciary this year.
“Those resources will not make a difference unless legal service providers are funded at levels that allow them to attract and retain lawyers to handle matters in family court,” he said.
The $192 million that the Office of Court Administration secured for AFC representation in this year’s budget represents a $20 million increase that will go to both legal service providers like Legal Aid and private attorneys who take assigned cases in family court.
OCA has the jurisdiction to redraft the rules of the Chief Administrator of the Court, which dictate the caseload caps, but as Aldrich herself conceded, it wouldn’t work to do so without the proper funding “because it would just restrict the number of children who get access to counsel without a related increase in the number of attorneys available to accept assignment.”
OCA did not provide comment on the coalition’s push to change the rule.
The legal services providers have proposed an interim standard that would limit AFCs to 75 dockets rather than pegging the cap to the number of children. The plan they’re pushing would also set a clear course for further caseload reductions in the next two fiscal years.
The coalition has emphasized the issues in the Family Court system as a glaring example of racial inequity. In New York City, where about 60% of kids are Black and Latino, they account for almost 90% of children in the child welfare system, according to the coalition’s report.
“Child clients are vulnerable,” Aldrich said. “They’re otherwise unrepresented in the courtroom. They are subject to decisions that fundamentally impact their life and life trajectory and wellbeing and safety. And to imagine that those decisions would be made without input from those children, the very people who are the critical subject of almost every family court proceeding, is unimaginable.”
