Maryland Legal Aid expands online custody forms interview

Two online tools unveiled by Maryland Legal Aid last year to help a parent seeking custody are now more powerful. Pro se (self-help) litigants can now file answers to complaints, motions for modification of custody and visitation, petitions for contempt, and answers to these types of motions and petitions.

The Child Custody and Visitation Interview is a website that interactively helps clients complete and fill out forms required by the circuit court to begin a custody proceeding—an online “automated custody interview.”

Unveiled last year, now the website is accessible to even more Maryland residents because it contains powerful tools that can by used by both plaintiffs and defendants in custody matters.

“Both parties can file the forms they need to tell the court their side of the story about the custody matter,” said Legal Aid’s Katherine Jones. “The new interactive interview walks the party through the process; answering questions they might have about how to complete the blanks on the forms. Now, no one should feel like the court isn’t listening to them just because they don’t have a lawyer.”

The new interview can be found linked from the Peoples Law Library.

Maryland Legal Aid is among an increasing number of pioneering legal aid organizations, pro bono programs, and courts using online document assembly to increase and improve access to the courts. This growing movement is made possible by the National Document Assembly Project of Pro Bono Net, a nonprofit dedicated to increasing access to justice. The NDAP allows self-represented litigants and pro bono and legal aid attorneys to quickly and easily draft complete legal documents such as requests for orders of protection and answers to eviction complaints, by answering questions via an easy-to-use online interface. This initiative is in use in 26 states and generated 111,000 documents in 2008.

The new online tools were developed by Legal Aid, the Maryland Legal Assistance Network, the Chicago-Kent College of Law Center for Access to Justice & Technology, Capstone Practice Systems, Inc., LexisNexis, and the Legal Services Corporation.

The website can be accessed at http://www.peoples-law.org (in the Family Law section under “Need Help with Maryland Custody Forms?”). A separate advocate-specific website, updated to include the additional forms (as well as the new interview questions needed for those new forms), is available at http://www.mdjustice.org (in the Children and the Law Resource Center; click on New Automated Maryland Custody Forms).

The latest version of Adobe Flash is required to access the Child Custody and Visitation Interview.  Most Maryland public libraries allow printing from public computers for a nominal fee.

For more information, call Katherine J. Jones at 443-604-4729, David Demski at 410-451-2892, or  Joe Surkiewicz 410-951-7683.

Custody web tool gets ink

The new Child Custody and Visitation Interview website, unveiled last week, was the featured in The Daily Record (“Web tool walks users through forms for custody and visitation,” Sept. 30.). “What it does is walk [the user] through a simple set of questions,” Manager of IT Applications Dave Demski. “We have made it about as simple as it can be, but still useful.”

Read the article here.

Legal Aid unveils new automated custody interview for parents seeking custody

Two new online tools developed by Maryland Legal Aid will make access to justice easier for a parent seeking an initial custody order for his or her children and for attorneys seeking to help clients complete court-required forms for filing an initial custody complaint.

The Child Custody and Visitation Interview is a website that interactively helps clients complete and fill out forms required by the circuit court to begin a custody proceeding—an online “automated custody interview.”

“Imagine you are a mother with two young children,” said Katherine Jones, Legal Aid’s assistant director of IT for law practice. “You just left your husband, and moved in with your mother. Your husband is threatening to take the children from you and move to Florida. What do you do?”

Before: If you make it to the courthouse before it closes, the clerk points you to a forms bank to select the forms you need to complete, sign, and return to the clerk—and there are over 30 documents to choose from.

“You take one of each, and realize that it is going to take a long time to complete all of the forms, writing the same information over and over again on each form,” Jones said. “And do you really need all of those forms? And what do they mean?”

After: With the new, easy-to-use online tool (which can be accessed from any computer connected to the Internet and a printer), access to justice is easier for this client, as well as anyone else seeking an initial custody order.

“When a client clicks on the link, an ‘avatar’ of a woman standing on a road leading to a courthouse invites the client to begin the process of seeking custody, visitation, or child support,” Jones said. “Links, denoted by bold orange type, or buttons offering additional information, answer questions a client might have about legal terms, or about what information is being requested as the client proceeds through the interview.”

Because the client is asked a series of questions about the facts of the case, she should be prepared with the full names, addresses, and birthdates of all possible parties to a case, as well as detailed information about her own financial situation before she accesses the website.

“However, if a client completes the interview, answering all of the questions asked, at the end of the interview the client has the option to preview, and then print, the court forms the program has chosen for them based on the information provided,” Jones said. “The client can then sign and take these court-approved forms to the clerk’s office to file to begin her custody case.”

The new website for advocates, Automated Documents Online, allows an attorney to conduct a full interview with any client seeking custody.

The website prompts the attorney to ask for specific information, but allows the attorney to formulate and provide whatever advice or information the client requests as the interview progresses. As specific information is provided on the website, it chooses which documents the client needs to file, and uses the information supplied to fill in the spaces on the appropriate court form.

When the attorney has asked all of the questions from the website interview, the attorney can print out the documents to review with the client, have the client sign the forms where necessary, and send the client with the forms to the clerk’s office to file the forms and begin the court case.

The new online tools were developed by Legal Aid, the Maryland Legal Assistance Network, the Chicago-Kent College of Law Center for Access to Justice & Technology, Capstone Practice Systems, Inc., and the Legal Services Corp. The two websites can be accessed at the Peoples Law Library (in the Family Law section under “Need Help with Maryland Custody Forms?”). The advocate specific site is available at MDJustice.org (in the Children and the Law Resource Center; click on New Automated Maryland Custody Forms).

The latest version of Adobe Flash is required to access the Child Custody and Visitation Interview. Most Maryland public libraries allow printing from public computers for a nominal fee.

For more information, call Katherine J. Jones at 443-604-4729; David Demski at 410-451-2892; or Joe Surkiewicz 410-951-7683.

Legal Aid helps students enroll in Cecil Co. schools

The problem: For two years, the Northeastern Maryland office (in Bel Air, covering Harford and Cecil counties) has had clients calling because the frontline personnel at Cecil County public schools continue to tell grandmothers (or other relatives) that they must have custody of the child in order to enroll the child in the grandmother’s school district.

The solution: Assistant Director of Advocacy Jessica Rae did extensive research on the kinship care requirement for each county and distributed it to 13 Legal Aid offices around the state. “Armed with that information and the necessary one-page form, I have advised people that the school is wrong,” said Northeastern Maryland office chief attorney Jeanette Cole. “When I have given them the correct information and sent them back to the school, they have always successfully enrolled the child.”

Yet in spite of this the procedure was continuing in some of the schools. In an effort to try to bring this to the attention of the Cecil County Board of Education, Rae drafted a very complete letter (with a footnote, no less) explaining the kinship care requirements.

“It was a great letter,” Cole said. “I sent it to the acting superintendent of schools and he forwarded it to the appropriate associate superintendent who immediately called me. We had a great discussion.” The associate superintendent thanked Cole for the letter and emphasized that they try to be sure that the front desk employees are not giving incorrect information, but it is hard to check on each one. She said that the letter had given her an opportunity to remind supervisors of the kinship care requirements. She also asked that if the Northeastern Maryland office finds any other people who have been told that they have to get custody, to identify the school and call the her immediately–and it will be corrected.

“She was very appreciative of our input and emphasized that I should call her at any time with questions or concerns for students of Cecil County Public Schools,” Cole said. “Thanks to the letter Jess drafted, I believe we helped others from going through the hassle of filing for custody when a one-page notarized statement does the trick!”