Penelope Chaffer was fighting for child support for her two children when the COVID-19 pandemic struck in March 2020.
Suddenly, her case was delayed and everything from her court appearances to her legal filings had to be done remotely. Chaffer, a recent immigrant to the U.S. from London, had been leaning on courthouse staff to show her which forms she needed and how to fill them out. Now those people were gone.
One day, she couldn't connect on Zoom for a scheduled child support hearing. Six weeks later, she got a letter from the court saying her case had been dismissed because she’d failed to appear.
“There was no guidance, no opportunity to interact with the court, no way of understanding what your rights are,” she said.
Courthouses across the country shut down at the height of the pandemic, moving all but the most urgent court proceedings online. Even today, most court business in New York City continues to happen remotely. That can leave people like Chaffer, with limited computer and internet access, or just little legal know-how, vulnerable to getting swallowed up by the system. It’s an issue that can affect child custody, visitation and support cases, and even family violence cases.
To tackle the problem, New York City nonprofit Family Legal Care has opened a “tech hub” in Brooklyn to provide people navigating the court system with computers, private internet access, in-person tech support, and a telephone helpline with bilingual legal advice. Family Legal Care is currently the only group that provides legal support for people who represent themselves in New York City Family Court. The organization expanded the program to Queens in September and will open another hub in the Bronx by the end of the year. It’s funded by donations, community-based groups, New York City and New York State.
In Chaffer’s case, staff at Family Legal Care gave her legal advice and helped her fill out and resubmit the documents needed to reopen her case. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for January.
“We’ve learned the hard way that the digital divide is very great among our clients,” said Cathy Cramer, the executive director of Family Legal Care. Cramer said some people may assume that logging onto a virtual hearing or downloading paperwork is manageable, but she said “the family court itself has very limited technology and it really just doesn’t happen.”
“The court system is reliant on documents, how and when they're filed, if they’re in the right order and format, and they don’t make it easy for you if you have no idea how to do that,” said Chaffer.
Family Legal Care’s website guides people to the documents they need by asking a few simple questions. An automated “form-filler” even completes the required forms at the end.
The website offers its information and resources in seven languages, including French, Spanish, Chinese, and Korean. Roughly half of their on-staff attorneys and the majority of their helpline staff are bilingual and can offer advice on cases of parentage, paternity, child support, custody, visitation, and guardianship.
According to a report released in February by a group of local judges, lawyers, and court improvement experts, 80% or more of family court litigants, who are also primarily low-income and people of color, have no representation. The fallout from the pandemic left the already-underfunded and tech-starved family court system unable to respond effectively to litigants' needs, the report said. Cases that were not classified as “emergencies” were almost entirely sidelined, causing harm to thousands of families, the report said.
As case delays snowballed, Family Legal Care officials said demand for their services spiked, with calls to their helpline, legal team, and pro bono consultations all rising dramatically. They hired more staff to keep up with that demand.
“Unless you obviously have the resources to just hire a lawyer, which most people in family court do not have, there is no bridge between walking in the door of an institution and getting into a courtroom without Family Legal Care,” said Ron Richter, a former New York City Family Court judge and Commissioner of New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services.
While other legal service providers may work with family court litigants, they have strict financial limits on who they will represent, and often only work with women, particularly in domestic violence cases. They also generally don’t work on child support cases, which make up 40% of the cases in family court, because people involved in those cases don’t have a legal right to a lawyer unless they are facing imprisonment.
“Having us there as their cheerleaders, their support, their lawyers, who they can always come back to for help, is truly important,” said Cramer. “Because who else are they going to go to?”
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated one source of funding for Family Legal Care. The nonprofit is funded by donations, community-based groups, New York State and New York City.
