3 min read
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Just now
What if America truly cared about women and children?
The very first thing that would be true is that no child in America would go hungry.
But American children are neither fed nor safe.
What if a woman could walk into a police station and talk with an advocate and receive immediate safety and security? The advocate would ensure transport to a shelter, but it wouldn’t stop there. The advocate follows the woman to a special family court that doesn’t require attorneys? The advocate could represent her with the full knowledge of her situation. These family courts would be designed for families, not for attorneys.
What if access to our court system wasn’t guarded by attorneys who wouldn’t act without a ten thousand dollar retainer?
What if women had access to the court system and were able to collect child support, no matter what?
Since we know that at least 60% of the population live from paycheck to paycheck, we also know that 60% of women cannot access our court system and therefore are denied justice. Single parents are denied justice because they cannot pay for representation in our own cruelly designed system!
We cannot continue that reality and shouldn’t in fact have that reality. We must put more thought into how women and children access legal systems that are designed to safeguard them.
This is the other part of the equation that Professor Galloway talks about, when lamenting what we are doing to our children, the female perspective, which is that women don’t have access to a court system that is guarded by $500 an hour attorneys. Women cannot afford to access this system. Because women can’t access courts they are not fairly paid child support. They lose marital assets because they want to protect themselves and their children. We need a dedicated space that allows women access to the legal system that doesn’t steal their children’s financial future.
We deny justice to women and children when we don’t build a means for them to gain safety and security in the legal system. Why do so many women suffer without child support? Why do so many families splinter because of the crushing need for justice?
I don’t know when it became okay to leave helpless women and children to their own devices, but this society has done this.
We don’t come back from this injustice until we make it free and easy for women to have access to the family court room. We have to make it possible for them to get child support and a fair split of marital assets with a positive planning system for the future.
