In June, after a long dispute, a judge decided that Bobby Spurlock and Zandrea Johnson should share custody of their daughter. Then came Hurricane Katrina. Spurlock, whose home in Jefferson Parish was undamaged in the storm, remained in Louisiana. Johnson, whose home in eastern New Orleans was destroyed, evacuated, with the child, to Memphis. Now Johnson plans to stay in Memphis indefinitely, and an already unpleasant clash over the best interest of a 6-year-old girl is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon.
The storm and the flooding that came with it uprooted families, leaving them in staggering states of stress and uncertainty. For some families, already torn apart by separation and divorce, the fallout has been especially damaging, producing painful new battles over child custody and visitation, financial support and division of assets.
"How can things change from joint custody to relocation in a couple of months?" asked Spurlock, a 37-year-old sales manager for a car dealership. "I am not trying to take her from her mom, but I want equal time with my daughter."
After the damaged Orleans Parish Civil District Court set up operations near Baton Rouge in October, custody and support cases began to mount. Since January, when the court returned to New Orleans, judges and lawyers say they have seen scores of family disputes related to the storm. Other parishes have experienced similar surges. "Families that were operating on an emotional string, well, that string has broken," said Paulette Irons, a district court judge. "All that's left is dissension. It will be a busy summer, I can tell you."
Although some broken families have just been struggling for a new sense of stability, others have used the storm to try to beat the legal system, Irons said. She said she had seen noncustodial parents who had spirited away their children without notice, custodial parents who had moved without good cause, and parents who had tried to avoid payments of child support. Some cases involve demands by parents for the return of children who were taken to other cities, and others are requests from relocated parents to stay temporarily in a new place with their children or to move permanently. In some cases, both parents have relocated.
Jeffrey Harris, a disabled ship worker who moved to Arlington, Texas, after the hurricane, is using a legal aid service to try to arrange visits with his 5-year-old son, whom his wife took to Alabama. The couple's divorce proceedings were interrupted by the hurricane, and Harris' lawyer is now in Atlanta. "All I want is to have my divorce final and get to see my son, and it ain't happening," said Harris, 36. "I am on a fixed income. I just can't get over there to see him. I don't know what to do."
There have been so many cases like Harris' in Texas that the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers sponsored a Webcast with the Texas Bar Association last month on family law issues related to Hurricane Katrina. Louisiana has strict guidelines governing requests for relocation in settled custody cases. They include prior written notice to the remaining parent of the intent to move, and a waiting period during which the remaining parent can file an objection.
But the guidelines do not address emergency upheavals, like those caused by Hurricane Katrina, which leave judges the messy task of determining when a required evacuation becomes a voluntary relocation and -- when children are involved -- who can stay where and for how long. "It's hard to make these decisions," Irons said. "On the one hand, you want people to come back, but you don't want them to have to come back to squalor. It's just case by case."
Some lawyers are pushing for legislation that would add guidelines relating to emergency evacuations into the state's relocation statute. In the meantime, some warring spouses are taking their own precautions. Judge Manny Fernandez, a chief judge in St. Bernard Parish, said he heard a case recently in which the parents specified in their custody agreement how the children should be relocated in the event of an evacuation. "I was in practice for 34 years before becoming a judge, and I've never seen anything like that," he said. "Everything has changed now."
From the New York Times via the San Francisco Chronicle.
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