A Chaotic System

After decades of trying to keep pace with social change, some legal experts believe that family law in California is close to chaos.

“The current system is a mess,” said Kevin Duffy, a San Francisco-based family law specialist.

Lobbied heavily by men’s and women’s rights activists, state legislators have over the past several years been passing about 15 laws each session regulating divorce, custody, child support and domestic violence, said Donald B. King, a California appellate court judge.

King said even legislators can’t explain some laws they pass--such as the one that employs an algebraic formula to calculate child support. “The only one who understood it was a staff member of the author who went on to family practice. Now there’s no one on the staff or legislature who understands it.”

Family law has become so sophisticated and mercurial that Dee Samuels, a Bay Area family law attorney for 18 years, said she must read a legal newspaper with family law appellate court decisions daily just to keep up. “At least several times a week there’s a new case,” she said.

King said trying to meet the complex requirements can cost an average couple at least $25,000. Courtrooms have become jammed with people wanting to represent themselves to save money.

Once couples become legal adversaries, King said, disputes often take on a life of their own. Fighting couples can exhaust funds that could have paid for their children’s college education. They haggle in court over standard custody and support issues, or over the new, evolving issues such as whether the custodial parent can move away or whether career mothers should have sole custody.

Both emotionally and financially, “In all too many cases, people are worse off after they go through the court system and get a divorce than before they entered it,” King said.

California law requires all divorcing couples to file a court order. Each year 170,000 cases are filed.

Ron Supancic, a Woodland Hills family law specialist, said litigants are as guilty as the bench and the bar in perpetuating the problems. “The public comes in saying, ‘I want the biggest barracuda I can find. Are you going to kill the other side?’ ”

In an effort to win, King said, each side often brings in several psychological experts who often amount to no more than “hired guns.”

One proposed measure, based on King’s ideas, would create a three-tier family court system based on the dollar value of the case. Attorneys would be banned from cases under $50,000. Their role would be minimal in the next level, and those cases with more than $200,000 in value would be carried on with only a few streamlining revisions. Neutral experts would be required.

The measure would also establish programs in each county to help people who want to represent themselves. Critics claim the bill takes away a person’s right to legal representation.

King said the bill, SB 389, is likely to return for consideration next year.