Let's Get Honest! Absolutely Uncommon Analysis of Family & Conciliation Courts' Operations, Practices, & History

My regular email is definitely blocked from commenting. This gets old — but here’s the content:

Only 40+ comments?  That seems unnaturally low. It has taken me this WEEK to even be able to access the comments fields; my device  has been going bonkers; I contacted the head of this forum about it (and was given the brush-off), and believe that I’m probably not the only person around experiencing sudden and strange “technical problems” while trying to participate in this discussion.    We know who we network with; this is a live issue for both mothers and fathers.  This is a  one-shot at commenting; it it doesn’t go through, back to work and back to blogging separately.

Hi.  I’m one of those California parents (mother) that allegedly didn’t go get information on the AFCC, or connect the dots. My children have now aged out, one has been well rewarded for staying alienated, the other pulled something like an Alanna Krause, only as a young adult, and has recently made contact from a safer state, literally; she had to sacrifice college. I am left to still fight the people who did this, and to, literally if necessary, dis-assemble any system which dared to do this to my children (and my work life) and is doing it to so many.

In about the past 10-12 years of this, the prominent leaders of prominent nonprofits who are all concerned about children, or stopping violence against women, or about custody going to batterers, or about (yada, yada) have proved almost immune to conversations like this exact one here. Better people than I have attempted to get through to them. I finally deduced that the “deaf, dumb, and blind” aspect comes from these groups wanting to be seen as caring about kids — but not relinquish their status in life (social position), or (if the shoe fits) nonprofit salary, plus travel perks for the conference circuit. While I can’t stop them, one thing I CAN do is post the tax returns of some of these groups, and show how they are doing this on the public dole, or through whose private funding. An entirely different viewpoint on the field of “fix the courts.”

I am both disappointed and angry with these groups, but had to face the fact that I (not they) was the one who didn’t figure out that, when business is business — it’s the business aspect we should be looking at. Nonprofits cease to exist if the problems they were formed to address are actually solved. Hence the natural tendency is to silence the most direct solutions, and come up with creatively stupid ones to prolong it. Of course, not with their own personal money — or kids — at risk.
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Because what we study is multi-state, I’ve somehow spent a lot of time involved in Connecticut-based cases, and organizations.

It’s interesting and illuminating to just look at the nonprofits doing business with the courts…. (and make sure they’re legit)..

For example, when you see a Children’s Law Center (notice affiliations of the Executive Director) http://www.clcct.org/ed it often may have a connection to the AFCC and/or the Colorado-based NACC which helps put more GALs in kids’ lives, and oversee the trainings, of course.  Then just look ’em up.  The Children’s Law Center I see registered in Connecticut in 1993 as a nonprofit.
OK, so it has a tax return, right?  EIN#06-1381700.  I can look this up and at a glance see that while many parents are losing housing, income, children — this nonprofit designed to help poor people is steadily increasing its assets, and revenue.  Looking at a tax return tells us where it comes from:  Contrib & grants, Program Service Rev (services provided for pay — sometimes maybe government funded), investment income (who has that any more, individually?), and a substantial category “other.”).  Then, as a nonprofit, they get to spend this on:  Salaries and Expenses.  ($594K on legal services attorney/caseworker, almost no details given). Officers: “List available on request” — Why wouldn’t they just include the llist? However, the Exec Director gets $86K, not bad..

This particular organization started when a little girl was shot and killed by her father DURING A SUPERVISED VISITATION in 1993! The decision was not made to question whether supervised visitation should’ve been taking place in that case, but rather to add an attorney for the child (especially a concept from “NACC”).

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