Society of Just Men
Columbia, South Carolina 29209-1019
Ms. Allison Giles
Chief of Staff
Committee on Ways and Means
U.S. House of Representatives
1102 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
Dear Ms. Giles:
Please accept this correspondence as my submittal for the approaching hearing dealing with Child Support and Fatherhood Proposals.
I am the Founder of the Society of Just Men. Our organization was brought into being because of the rampant fraud, deceit and even criminal conduct found the family courts of this country. Our family court systems are running over with unethical practices by matrimonial lawyers who continue to work for the total destruction of the American marriage and the financial depletion of the assets of any family that finds itself in the clutches of these corrupt judicial systems during great periods of emotional stress.
While the issues in your hearing revolve around child support, there are other issues that go deeper into the problems between fathers and mothers caught-up in the child support system. An observation is that the U.S. Bankruptcy Court is a court of law and equity. It helps individuals, families and businesses in the preservation of their assets and lives. The family courts of the states are also courts of law and equity, and they are charged with helping families with their lives and assets during the same kind of emotional and financial stress as the bankruptcy court. The real problem seems to be that the family courts are designed primarily for lawyers who financially destroy every family in their courts.
In our family courts, the attorneys and their hand-picked judges literally ravage the assets of the American family. They engage in the most heinous legal practices and they use these tools to take all assets away from the father and mother. Then, they ask the court to imprison the father for not paying. Here in South Carolina, matrimonial lawyers flood the courts with unethical types of practice and the judges accept them on the tacit understanding that the more legal pleading, the more hearings, the more wallpaper, the more job security for the jurists. Before you make any critical decisions burdening the fathers of the country any more, we in the SJM feel you should lessen the financial burden on both mother and father by giving them justice in the family courts. There are many practices you should consider. If you take a look at these unethical practices, you will see why many men cannot afford a lawyer for a change in child support amounts. If you examine these unethical practices, you will see why some men are simply beaten down financially and destroyed spiritually. A few are listed as follows:
–This is one of the oldest types of unethical practices by divorce lawyers. Gaming is associated with any kind of effort on the part of the lawyer to create a war-like atmosphere between the parties. To effectively game, you have to have the coopera-of the other attorney. Gaming can mean creating of useless hearings, useless meetings, unnecessary investigations, unnecessary motions, etc. It is associated with Sharp Practice and Wallpapering.
- GAMING.
.–This is a form of fraud upon the court. It is usually associated with making false representations to the opposing attorney and to the court. For example, the gross misrepresentation of the appraisal value of a chattel in a divorce. The withholding of critical evidence from the court is another example of sharp practice.
- SHARP PRACTICE
.–This is very common form of unethical practice here in South Carolina. If the lawyers cannot "control" the case, it could become settled too quickly and they might lose money. One example is where your attorney will call your wife’s attorney and secretly notify him that a private investigator is on the way to gather evidence as to the adultery of his client. After all, if adultery were quickly established, the case would have to be settled and the lawyers would not make any huge fees. This is very common in South Carolina and other states.
- CONTROLLING THE CASE
.–This is the most common type of abuse in the divorce courts. If a client calls his lawyer for a simple question, he gets back a four page letter confirming the telephone conversation. Long and totally unnecessary letters, motions, memoranda and exhibits are sent back and forth between the lawyers to churn the account. If a stock broker engaged in this type of conduct, he would lose his license. The lawyers also create new ways to send wallpaper. For example, when I recently received my daughter’s Visitation schedule for this Summer, it came as a legal document with a "Certificate of Service" attached. This is a legal document used when there is a pending action, one does not attach such documents to ordinary correspondence. Yet, in South Carolina, the lawyers will invent an excuse to create this wallpaper for opposing counsel to read–and they both bill for it. The attorneys will take evidence from the clients’ files and send it back and forth. They will file motions with the court to which are attached meaningless exhibits. This is one of the most heinous practices and it is common in South Carolina. When a lawyer files a simple motion of 2-3 pages, he will attach 40-50 pages of "exhibits." Often they will attach these exhibits in several documents throughout the course of a trial. The recent rage among lawyers is to use the FAX machine for these useless transfers of documents. If you do this in federal court, you risk sanctions by the judge. If you do this in the South Carolina family courts, the judges all feel this gives them job security.
- WALLPAPERING
.–This is a common abuse in South Carolina and other states. The matrimonial lawyers will make a motion under just about any pretense. When they make a motion for a continuance based on their personal problems, the clients must pay for the time and expense.
- EXCESSIVE MOTIONS
.–One of the most horrendous breaches of ethics I discovered in the South Carolina family courts is the ongoing conflict of interest situations between the lawyer, lawyers acting as guardians, lawyers acting as mediators, and judges. In my own divorce, I discovered that my lawyer, my wife’s lawyer, my children’s guardian were all members of the same church. Furthermore, the guardian ad litem for my children was not only a good friend of my wife’s lawyer, but was–in fact–almost like a sister to him. They had an extremely close relationship. And, the other serious problem is that these lawyers, guardians and mediators will all have pending cases with each other. This is especially true in small communities. As many of my friends and members have often said, "They’re all in cahoots!"And its true. They all are members of the Family Law Sections of the bar associations. They are a cartel, a gang, a bunch of hoodlums who need to be reformed if not eliminated. Many of the judges have very close relationships with the lawyers, guardians and mediators. And, the women guardians always give the kids to the mother.
- CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
.–As a retired member of the South Carolina Bar Association, one of the most depressing things I have discovered is how often lawyers have their clients come into family court under a cloud of perjury. Since the lawyer is usually the one who helps fabricate the perjury, the lawyer is guilty of subordination of perjury. For example, in my own divorce my wife failed to inform the court that she has $6,000.00 in a slush fund with her lawyer, and she further failed to reveal $4,200.00 month in salary. The court, based on her sworn affidavit that she was penniless and only had $600.00 to her name, and that she needed attorneys suit fees, gave her $2,500.00 per month temporary support and order that I advance $7,000 to her lawyer for suit fees. You can see this gave her lawyer $13,000 in funds with which he could operate and my lawyer only $7,000.00. But the important part of this illustration is when I refused to pay the amounts based on her fraud and deceit, the court threatened to hold me in contempt of court for non-compliance with his order. This is in the face of the fact that I filed a timely motion for reconsideration based on fraud and perjury. What I am saying is this: in South Carolina men are treated with great prejudice. We still have a statute on the books that states "The woman is the favored suitor." To take the case further, when I filed a complaint with the S.C. Bar Association about the fraud and perjury, the S.C. Attorney General dismissed my complaint against the lawyers and prosecuted me for the filing of a "non-meritorious complaint." The members of the Bar reviewing the case dismissed the case against me as non-meritorious. This effectively quashed both complaints. Such is justice in South Carolina as to men seeking equity in child support and divorces.
- PERJURY AND SUBORDINATION OF PERJURY
.–In South Carolina, the general rule of law is that the man is totally at fault, totally liable, that he should be made to pay all child support, and that the woman is still the "favored suitor." When a woman is able to work and contribute to the support of children, the courts very rarely hold her feet to the fire.
- CHILD SUPPORT
.–In South Carolina, the judges now use a computer software system designed by a divorce lawyer with an undergraduate degree in human behavior. He did this with the assistance of a local CPA. Neither of them is an economist. We have never had a team of economists look at the issue of child support and the true and hard costs of raising a child. Nor has anyone ever looked at contributions the women could make if given the chance or order by the court to do so. The MAN always pays, the Man always is threatened with contempt, and the MAN is always the parent who serves time in jail.
- HEARSAY AS TO AMOUNTS OF CHILD SUPPORT
I can go on and on with examples, but that would make me look like a wallpapering divorce lawyer. I have offered you the above problems to show you that you need to deal with these matters before you start imposing any unrealistic laws on the fathers of this country.
At this time in our history, a poor man cannot afford a lawyer to make a slight modification in his child support payments. There is no means other than to be forced to go to an unethical and sleazy matrimonial lawyer for relief. Our poor people have been raked over the coals of the camp fires of these lawyers and it has to come to a halt. The Society of Just Men is proposing one possible solution:
CREATION OF A DOMESTIC RELATIONS AGENCY.
This agency would work at the county, bi-county or tri-county level depending on population needs. It would be staffed by trained human services people such as psychologists, social workers, law enforcement officers, marital counselors and debt counselors. It would help our poor people so much. Instead of paying incompetent and unethical lawyers $300.00 to ravage their assets, they would pay a nominal fee for assistance. The agency could be self-supporting and it could also receive grants and gifts. Its prime duties would be:
(1) preservation of the children’s marriage;
(2) preservation of the family’s assets;
(3) preservation of the relationship between the father and mother,
(4) giving medical and psychological assistance (when it is evident mental illnesses, e.g., borderline personalities, postpartum depression, anxiety, alcohol and drug abuse, are present. If I never do anything else in my lifetime, I feel my idea for this agency will be worth a lifetime of effort in bringing in into fruition. This is a noble cause and it is one we all should pursue. This domestic relations agency would be the answer to many problems we currently have with giving help to poor people in the throes of divorce or child custody situations.)
And, if the agency could not handle any narrow question, the parents would have the right to pursue the issues with a lawyer before a family court judge–but with narrowly confined issues and at minimal expense. The agency would have the power to grant divorces under a judge’s signature, and it would have the power to grant child custody and support. It would also handle all child support payments. Joint custody would always be granted except in the most extraordinary circumstances. Liberal visitation would be required even when a parent moved out-of-state. And the moving parents would be held to high degrees of financial liability as to the creation of a separation of father, mother and children for frivolous reasons. Electronic communication would be encourage, especially by telephone and email and video communication by computer on the Internet.
Recently, a secretary with very limited means asked me for a recommendation as to a divorce lawyer. I sent her to a woman lawyer whom I had discovered is a member of the National Organization of Women. I had hoped this member of the Family Law Section of the South Carolina Bar Association would help her with her rather simple divorce and custody action and at a reasonable cost. The final bill for attorneys fees was $20,000.00. Not only am I shocked, but I am hurt that this N.O.W. lawyer allowed this to happen. I certainly will never refer a case to her again. So much for ethics between women lawyers and their women clients in South Carolina.
One local law firm acquired a $100,000.00 home as the total and final divorce settlement for a woman in this state. The lawyers’ bill was $140,000.00. The S.C. Supreme Court called the amount excessive but did nothing to the lawyers. The same firm represented a woman who suddenly died leaving two babies without a mother. The lawyers sued the babies for their legal fees. The S.C. Supreme Court called their conduct "egregious," but did nothing to discipline the lawyers. This is the problem: corruption from the highest court in each state, corruption in the offices of the attorney generals, and corruption in the leadership of the bar associations. All of this has been done over the years with the blessings and financial aid of our U.S. Congress.
The DOMESTIC RELATIONS AGENCY is my invention, but it could also be a tremendous gift of Congress to the American people. It could be overseen by a federal agency that could control funding and self-funding throughout the states and territories. Such an agency would open a new frontier of marital relations, equity in child support and enforcement, and in preserving our citizens’ marriages, assets, and their emotional and spiritual well-being–and without lawyer involvement at the lower levels. Most importantly, it could be an agency which would recognize and uphold the idea that it’s the childrens’ marriage too, not the lawyers’ marriage to be plundered viz-a-viz crime, fraud and deceit.
My remarks are never addressed towards the honest and ethical members of the bar associations and judiciaries. There are many lawyers and judges who feel just as I do about the fraud and crime in our family courts, and the need to do something about this organized mob of hooligans in black robes and pinstriped suits. They ravage our men and women and children as "matrimonial" lawyers in their "family" courts. It must stop! And, Congress should stop send any kind of financial aid to them.
In conclusion, I do not feel you can accomplish anything until such time as you deal with the above abuses in our courts. After all, do any of you want to add fuel to this fire of crime, fraud, deceit, perjury, subordination of perjury, misrepresentation and corruption? Can any of you truthfully state that you want to ignore the above abuses and simply work around them and add more to the burden of fathers in this country? Do you want to further burden our fathers with any kind of law in such a corrupt system?
In you are interested, you can learn more about the Society of Just Men at our new website: http://socjustmen.tripod.com. We are Christian men who are family-oriented men who fight for a better domestic relations system in our states. We not only seek to help our men, but we also seek to help our women, our children and grandchildren.
Respectfully submitted,
William Whitley Hodges, J.D.
Founder and Chairman