Hennepin County Family Court

Family Justice is a misnomer. This institution should be completely defunded if not overhauled from the ground up.

I am a father that was deprived 3 years of my childrens life and counting to this day because i am a father it does not matter when their was no proof or evidence of me as an unfit parent. The court system i ran to in need of help has failed me!!

I went this morning to obtain a copy of my court order and also to finish up paperwork with the child support office. I was anticipating a long morning waiting but I was extremely surprised. We walked in right after 8am and waited 15-20 minutes for my turn. After I received my copies, I went to the child support office down the hall and spent a total of 10 minutes in there. I completed everything within an hour. I'm very pleased with how easy and quick it was. The personnel were also very nice and helpful.

I didn’t find any justice at the Hennepin County Family Justice Center. What I encountered was a system that was put in place to strip me of my parental rights based purely on the economic power of one party over the other. The cruelest irony of the FJS is that Minnesota claims to be a “no-fault” state in matters of divorce and parenting, but then utilizes a legal system that is adversarial by nature- the attorneys are trained to find fault, place blame, and create a winner and a loser. My now ex-wife is a physician from a moderately wealthy family, and I was a newly -graduated graphic designer struggling to find meaningful employment during the economic downturn that began in 2008. Even now that I am gainfully employed with prospects for the future, she still earns five times what I do.nnThe court ignored the massive disparity in our incomes and somehow assumed that because I could not afford an attorney, I did not want one, despite my pleas to the contrary. I was told that the $9 hourly I was making at Target was too much for help from legal aid, so I couldn’t go that route. Minnesota is supposed to have laws in place to protect people of modest means from those with vast economic power, but I saw no such protection- it was never addressed.nnThe judge (called a ‘referee,’ in some perverse turn of phrase- referees are supposed to protect both parties) sat on high and observed as my ex-wife and her attorney humiliated and emasculated me on the record, berating me for my inability to find employment, and then for not earning a salary that met their expectations. When all that is required in a no-fault system is for one party to unilaterally declare the marriage over, what purpose is there for trying to destroy the other person?nnTo that end, there were the accusations: I encountered a flood of complaints that sent me reeling, and appeared to be fabricated for the sole purpose of tainting the court’s opinion of me without asking for any proof, and ignoring any evidence to the contrary, or the shifts in my ex-wife’s narrative. Among them included threats of suicide (first alone then in front of our children), then threats of homicide, presumable because I owned several firearms that were secured in a locker. Substance abuse, physical abuse, instigating fights with strangers in public- all without so much as a 911 call as evidence. And when I underwent a battery of psychological and substance abuse testing that refuted her accusations, there was no acknowledgement of the facts, or questions as to why these accusations were made. A mediator we used told me that the judges would rather let an innocent person fall through the cracks than get it wrong, and she said it like it was okay. How is that justice?nnThe closest I got to justice was the Social Early Neutral Evaluation (SENE) that my ex-wife demanded we take part in. We were interviewed together by the two-person team, and they asked her flat out if any abuse occurred. My ex-wife admitted that it did not with a simple “no.” The evaluators saw no reason that I should not have joint legal and physical custody, but the catch with the SENE is that it’s confidential and non-binding. All she had to do was refuse to respond to the recommendations and she would not be held to them, and she would not be held to account for falsely accusing me of abuse.nnWhen it came time to determine custody and child support, the court naturally came down on her side. I was granted every other weekend (or “nothing” for the purposes of child support), and ordered to pay what is currently around 36% of my salary to her, despite my pleas for more time, despite the fact that she earns many times what I do (and has since remarried to a psychiatrist), and despite the fact that $900 per month would go a long way towards me being able to build a life for my children on my own terms. Soon after the child support payments started, she bought a brand new Mercedes. Justice.nnIf you do not have the means to afford a $300/hour lawyer to work for you, you will like likely not find justice here either.

I used the legal services provided by HCFS to review my divorce paperwork before filing. The lawyer I worked with was very thorough. She gets 5 stars. She took her time to review all of my pages to ensure no information was missing or incorrect.