JUDGE CHRISTINE SILL-ROGERS: No, just me, and the Bible, the statutes that relate to domestic relations laws in our state.

     My name is Chris Sill-Rogers, and I'm assigned to family court in Jackson County. Thanks to you, when you created family court, on August 28th, 1993, you created for me the position that I hold today, and that I hold with pleasure. I will celebrate my fourth anniversary on family court in December of this year.

     I also attended the Association of Family and Conciliation Court's annual meeting in California, in June. It is an organization which was born in the state of California, but which now is international, in scope, and I can't tell you what an exciting experience it was for me as a family court judge to attend a program which was multi-disciplinary. People coming from lots of different perspectives focusing on solving family problems, and a lot of the people who attended that program were people like you. They were legislators and lawmakers from all over the world who are focused on resolving family problems. 150 nations were represented. There were family court judges. There were legislators. There were child psychiatrists and psychologists. There were people who devote all of their professional abilities and resources to providing mediation services for families.

     We looked at Parent Education Programs from all over the world, and when I came back from my first meeting with that group of people, I was energized and proud to be a judge from the state of Missouri, because I'm happy to tell you that in our state, in the circuits where you have created family court, we are cutting edge in providing some services to families. I think our laws, in many respects are excellent, and I think we're at the head of the class in many areas and not behind.

     There is room for improvement. And, I would like to address some of those areas with you, as well, but I will tell you, in my circuit, we already have mandatory parent education whenever a family comes to court for an initial determination of custody or for any changes thereafter in custody and visitation. We have a Parent Education Program that involves parents and children. We have a divorce education program that children attend, as well. When people come back to our court, if they are in conflict again, and they're filing a motion to modify something about their parent-child relationship, we have a new  Parent Education Program that we've added in the last year, which is called Refocus, and it focuses on issues for those people that are different than those who came first into the court. We also have mandatory mediation in my circuit. Early in the process of a dissolution or a custody determination, you have to file a certificate with the court, letting the court know whether or not you are in agreement or in conflict over custody and visitation, and, if you are, you have to attempt, not successfully complete, but attempt to resolve issues in mediation, and we require two hours of attempted mediation.

     The Parent Education Program, for your information, is funded, primarily, by the parties. I think the cost is about $30.00, per family, and it covers the parent and the children who attend. The mediation program, in my circuit, is paid for by the parties, but on a sliding fee scale. So, if you are a poor family, or a family of fairly limited means, you can pay as little as $5.00 to $25.00 for your portion of the two-hour mediation. If you are at the higher end of the income spectrum, you pay a maximum of $75.00, per hour, for the two hours of mediation.

     A mediation list is comprised of people who comply with the Missouri Supreme Court rule on mediation. They are either attorneys who practice in the family law area, who go through the required amount of hourly training to become a mediator, or they are somebody with a post-graduate degree in social work, or psychiatry, or family counseling, and so we have either counselor type mediators or law type mediators.

     I think that our family education program has met with great success. More than 90 percent of the exit interviews that we get from people who attend that program still are complementary and continue even though we doubled the content over the course of the last year, say the only problem that we have with the program is would you please give us more accurate information.

     One of the things that they covered in the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts Conference that I went to this summer, in June, is, how, in parts of the world, including in the United States of America, courts and legislators are working together to give people accurate, free, information, about domestic relations laws. There's a 1-800 line in the state of Arizona. You can call anytime, seven days a week, 24-hours a day, and through touch-tone dialing, you can actually get to the specific question that you want an answer to, and you can get basic, correct, legal information over the telephone. They also provided over the Internet. One of the things that I hope that we will work to do together, as a state, is find a way to give the general public access to accurate information about our family laws, and that's a weakness that our state has that I think we should work together to correct.

     Another area that has been of great concern to me for families who appear before me is, during the pre-trail period, before a custody determination is made, families need to have a free, quick, appropriate, safe and best interest of the child way to establish parent/child contact and pre-trial child support. I know that Representative Dougherty, last year, in one of the bills that he was floating, I thought had an excellent idea when it was suggested by him that at or near the time of filing, that parents who are filing when they know that custody and visitation are going be at issue, up-front will present to the court, "Yes, I acknowledge that the other parent will continue to be the father or mother of my child. Here is the visitation or contact schedule that I recommend to you, Judge, to make sure that our child relationship is preserved with both of us." Putting the focus from the very beginning, and the responsibility from the very beginning, on parents, to make sure that they understand that the court certainly values the continuation of the parent/child relationship with respect to both parents and so should they.

     When parents can't agree on what the pre-trial contact should be, there ought to be an expedited remedy for them getting in front of a judge to resolve that. In my county, we've done that by local rule, but interestingly enough, it has been very underutilized. I don't see very many requests by lawyers for expedited parent contact pre-trial schedules, and I don't know what the answer to that is. I don't know why.

     But, I do know, that the sooner you make sure that both parents have an ongoing meaningful relationship with the child, you are much more likely to have parents who are willing to pay for the needs of the child, and if you let a long period of time go by, and the parent/child relationship is damaged with one of those parents, and that parent is the one who ends up paying child support, that damage can be irreversible. So, I love the recommendations that Representative Dougherty made last year about making the parents think from the moment they file, and acknowledge this child has two parents. What is your recommendation for making sure that the child has a relationship with both parents?

     This issue is also touched upon by yet another committee that Tom Frawley was responsible for. I'm pretty sure there are at least three of him.

     There was a Supreme Court Task Force, the Gender and Justice Task Force, and a subcommittee underneath that task force looked at family law problems and how the gender implementation task force could make sure that there was fairness to both parents. That committee, and I served on it, was really focused on making sure that dads, who didn't happen to have custody while a petition was pending, would have a meaningful and ongoing relationship with that child, and we even drafted potential contact schedules that we could recommend. Some lawyers were offended by that, and what also entered into the discussion was, well, if you don't want our committee to draft a recommended minimum contact schedule, then how about this? Why don't you ask the Supreme Court to have the Supreme Court Family Law Committee come up with guidelines that recognize the developmental needs of children at different ages, but also ensure that those children from the time the thing is filed have a continuing relationship with both parents.

     Stealing, once again, from Tom Frawley, the local rule that his circuit implemented in July, with regards to enforcement of contact between parents and children, I think is wonderful. I spoke to you last year about the Michigan plan and wish that we had the money to implement a Friend of the Court Plan, as Michigan does, however, Tom is doing it. Tom is almost doing it, and he's doing it at very little expense, and I would submit to you that I think that we could take his local rule and refine it just a little bit, and have an enforcement arm for immediate access and resolution of visitation conflict, without very much expense. By his local rule, a complaining parent comes in and talks to a court employee. We could call that person a compliance clerk. We could call that person the domestic relation specialist. You could look at Chapter 455 where you, many years ago, said that a circuit clerk could assist a citizen in the preparation of the adult abuse petition in how to fill out the forms and what the process would be and protected that clerk by saying that for that clerk to do that was not the practice of law, so we can, through statutes, set up, in each circuit, at least one compliance clerk to handle these families who come in, in conflict.

     One of the ideas that Senator McKenna had last year that does cost people more money, but not very much money, does appeal to me, and that was in the pro se visitation contempt action that we would charge an additional small filing fee. It was his idea to take that money and to put into a central state fund, and that's the part of his idea with which I disagree. I would like to take that money and keep it locally, so that if we need mediation to be paid for, and the parties can't afford it, we could use that money for local services, just as you did when you created family courts in Chapter 487.170, and you set up a fund which is called the Family Services and Justice Fund. I would like for you to let us use that additional filing fee to go into that fund, so that we could pay for mediators in a rural community where you ordinarily don't have the money for it, or where you could actually give the court the authority to, not mandatory, but discretionarily appoint a lawyer to represent the aggrieved parent. Once you've gone through the process of meeting with the compliance clerk, trying to mediate and realizing that one of these parents really has significantly violated a court order, it doesn't seem fair to stick them back out into the court room and say, well, now go do your pro se complaint, because pro se litigants aren't lawyers, and it's very difficult to present a competent contempt action to the court. It's very technical. It's just like charging somebody with a crime, because if we find them in contempt, we can put them in jail. So, I would like to have the discretion to use that money to appoint a lawyer to represent the aggrieved parent, and then at the end of the process, to also assess attorneys' fees against the parent who violated the order, if that's appropriate.

     So, those, essentially, are the issues with which I'm on fire this morning. If you have any questions about any of my issues, I'll be happy to answer them.

     CASKEY: Any questions?

     DOUGHERTY: Yes, Judge good morning.

     ROGERS: Good morning.

     DOUGHERTY: The mediation program in your particular circuit you had four.....

     ROGERS: We started it in mid-94, I think. We created family court the first week in December of ‘93, and within six months we had a mediation program in place.

     DOUGHERTY: So, you have three, three and a half year's worth.

     ROGERS: Uh huh. And, we have a list which we update, I want to say, monthly, and we probably have about 20 to 40 individuals who are mediators, who, in addition to meeting the Supreme Court's rules, requirements, also go through a training program which is overseen by Donna Devine who supervises our mediation services in our family court.

     DOUGHERTY: How do you define success and what would be your then, if I could ask, what would your success rate? I mean, I'm sure you have people who say, I don't want to talk to that so and so, ever see their face, etc. You get all kinds of people. How  do you determine success and what is your rate there in terms of the mediation program?

     ROGERS: That's hard for me to put a handle on for you, because the people that I see are the ones that didn't succeed. The people that I see are the ones that still are in conflict and need a judicial determination.

     DOUGHERTY: Are the ones who run your program, then, whom they deal with and you don't see, how do you determine success there? Do you have a rate, or.....

     ROGERS: Actually, Professor Kithhardt, who is testifying later in the day, took a sabbatical and has done a study of our mediation results and they're not published and I can't tell you what they are, but I do know that we've asked somebody to measure where we are, to improve our weaknesses, and so, it is something that is being reviewed, but I can't testify to any results because I don't have them.

     DOUGHERTY: Okay. The other question I had surrounded some of the, Judge Frawley's, I think, comments in terms of joint custody. In terms of problem solving, the use of the word, really stressed agreement and how problematic that can be, and that was part and parcel of a big debate this year in terms of whether you used the current statute, whether you changed it to presumed. I think that's the word and making a focus. Do you have any recommendations to us, one way or another on that?

     ROGERS: I don't have any problem in utilizing the joint custody statute as it is currently written. I don't disagree with Judge Frawley, if you want to define more succinctly the definitions under this statute. I would be opposed to setting up a rebuttable legal presumption for anything or a hierarchy of custody assignments, because I think that for me to meet the needs of each family, one family at a time, that it's in the best interest of the family for me to have the broadest reign to determine what is best for them and not have to go through a statute which is up-front result oriented, as I perceive a rebuttable presumption to be.

     I also think it's interesting, one of the things that we did this summer is take a look at the custody laws throughout the entire United States, and there is not a single state in the union that has a rebuttable presumption for any kind of custody arrangement, except for the District of Columbia, which has a rebuttable presumption for joint custody, but they don't say in the statute what they mean by that, but they have a rebuttable legal presumption. They're the only place in the United States that does, and so for us to shift to that and to be very result focused, up front, I think puts us at the back of the pack, and not at the head of the pack. I think we're right in the middle of good custody laws in the state when we compare ourselves to other states.

     And, the other thing that I looked at, that I forgot to mention is, I also looked at, with the help of the Missouri Bar, all of the visitation enforcement statutes throughout the entire country, and if you want some ideas about where could we get money, I love what Teresa Kaiser said, she thought we could have some of their money, whether it be state money or federal money, to offer expedited dispute resolution in visitation and contact disputes. Some states impose a fine, and Judge Frawley said he attempted to do that without success in a case. You could give us the authority to do that in egregious cases, and we could put the fine into this family justice fund so that we could use it for services. Some states impose a bond, so that if visitation has been deprived repeatedly in a family, the judge will actually order the depriving parent to post a bond to guarantee that the next visitation will occur, and if it doesn't occur they will forfeit that bond. That is also money that we could put into this justice fund and use for services and family court.

     And, in another state, also orders a parent who has been wrongfully denying the other parent fair access and meaningful access to the child, to pay for the cost of therapy to remediate that  relationship between the child and the parent who has been deprived of visitation, which is a very healing and nonpunitive focus. What a great idea for a state.

     I do not support further criminalization of family court law. There are children who live in all of those homes and dragging parents off to go to prison, or to go to jail, if we could avoid that at all costs, I hope that we do, because when they get out of jail, they're still going to be parents who are parenting the same child, and it seems to me that we ought to be offering services to families that help them much earlier on in the process learn and continue to learn and reuse good conflict resolution skills. Being ever mindful of our responsibility to the child, to guarantee them from the beginning, a meaningful relationship with both parents, and in egregious cases, I wouldn't bat an eye about changing custody in the appropriate case. If, to the detriment of the child, they're deprived with a meaningful relationship with one of their parents.

     CASKEY: Representative Green.

     GREEN: Time tables. Getting access when you are being violated in your family courts in Clay of Jefferson......

     ROGERS: I'm in Jackson County. I'm in Kansas City.

     GREEN: Jackson County. Okay. What's your time table of getting the parent who has been violated their chance? You're talking about all these methods of mediation and everything, but we still have the problem of timetable, getting access.

     ROGERS: Right, and when you file a motion for contempt, you're not referred right now for mediation services. So, in my circuit, if you have the money to hire a lawyer, more saddened and more to the point is, there are a lot of people whose visitation orders are grossly violated, but I don't see them. They don't come to court, because they don't have the money to hire a lawyer to put the thing in motion. If they do have the money to hire a lawyer to put the thing in motion, then it's a motion for contempt. The motion and the show cause order are brought up to my division the day that they are filed and I sign the show cause order and I sat within 30 days the matter for hearing and then it's sent back down to the sheriff's office for service, and then if there's no service, then it's another 30 days. You can't have a hearing until it's served.

     GREEN: So, we're talking 60 days.

     ROGERS: Well, it depends on how quickly you get service and then how quickly you can get the people in, but you would be amazed, and I think saddened by how few of those motions I see. I know it's out there, but the point is, that there's not any money for those people to come forward, unless they have the money to hire a lawyer. That's why establishing a pro se remedy, but using mediation and, first of all, using just an informal meeting the first time they come in.

     GREEN: I agree. I understand your mediation, and the point bringing forth in your testimony. But, my question, though, is this timetable, still when you have the disagreements continued and the violations exist, we still have a dilemma in this state.

     ROGERS: Then we still - no, you really wouldn't, because by the time you filtered out the people who are going to remain in contempt, no matter what, and you've spent maybe three weeks working with an informal meeting, and then the mediator, you file the motion for contempt. You have serviced. The party is there and participating. So, I suppose you could the hearing within 30 days, and still the problem is, meaningful legal representation for the person who files the motion, because if you send a pro se litigant in there to try to tell the story by themselves, they're not going to get what they want, because the evidence isn't going to be presented to the judge, and he or she isn't going to have the power to take the appropriate action without sufficient information coming forward. That's why we need to have the ability to use funds, if you're going to charge a pro se filing fee, to give these people a lawyer.

     GREEN: Thank you, Senator.

     CASKEY: Representative Ridgeway.

     RIDGEWAY: Thank you, Senator, and Representative, thank you.  Judge Rogers, thank you, first of all, because you've been a tremendous resource, I know, all the way through this, but the question that I have for you that I hear a lot of people express a lot of frustration over is, you go through the process and you've been denied your visitation. Well, frankly, all it takes is one episode of visitation and they purge themselves from that contemp in the view of many judges in the state of Missouri, and I think, probably, properly so, in many instances. The person has gone through that expense, or if we shift the expense over to the court system, there's a huge expense for a person who is manipulating the system to very easily get themselves out of a lot of serious trouble. Do you think that the fining situation or the visitation bond would be any way to remedy this kind of an ongoing type of - it's usually denial of visitation or missing it by several hours, and totally throwing the whole weekend schedule into jeopardy, that sort of thing where it's the meaningful access.

     ROGERS: I think the repeat visitors, through the system, once they've had the best we have to offer, that fine or bond would be an appropriate remedy and the other thing that they do in Michigan, through their Friend of the Court is, that office, when families are in a pattern of repetitiously violating the order, the plan seeks out a lawyer for the aggrieved parent and they file a motion to modify custody. Those are services that they provide to the litigants when they're at the end of the line, and they're in repeating, repeating, repeating, disregarding the court's orders.

     RIDGEWAY: Is it your opinion that we're just not seeing the change in custody for ignoring court orders because the parties right now can't afford to bring them forward, or.....

     ROGERS: Actually, let's not discount, too, that there are some people out there where it's working.

     RIDGEWAY: Right.

     ROGERS: Some families have custody orders that they do follow and they are working, and they're not perfect parents either, but they seem to have learned a workable conflict resolution in their family system, so we need to teach that skill up front, and, yes, I do think there are a significant number of people who are denied visitation. Another weakness that I think I talked to you about last or the year before, in 452.400 was the statute, I just happen to have it right here if I can flip to that quickly. The statute talked about not being deprived of reasonable visitation unless you would be an emotional or physical danger to the child, and the statute doesn't require the court - it says the court may, but it doesn't require the court to set forth what the minimum reasonable visitation would be and therein lies - those are the most damaged people, because if you, and here's how that happens. A great majority of the domestic relations cases that are filed end up being a default. In other words, one parent files for a divorce, and the other parent gets served, and never files an answer and never shows up, never comes to a hearing, and so the parent that files, their lawyer drafts the order, and the only evidence before the court is, that side of the story, and if judges go about their business and enter these orders that only say, X parent gets custody, Y parent gets reasonable visitation, but it's not set forth, that's automatically giving one parent the power to control the entire parent/child relationship, and that's not right. That statute should require that in every case, a minimum contact schedule be ordered, something for families to fall back on, because you know what will happen? If a dad is living under one of those decrees and he's never permitted to have a reasonable relationship with his child, but he comes to the pro se compliance clerk, and says, I need a motion for contempt, because my former wife doesn't let me see our children. There's nothing specified in the order, and so to find somebody in contempt, you need specific violation of a specific plan.

     RIDGEWAY: Just one follow-up question. You may not be the right person to answer this, but do you know if we have any statistics in the state of Missouri that tells us how many of these contempt actions are brought, per year, and out of those, how many change of custodies are granted on the basis of denial of custody? Do we have that kind of statistics?

     ROGERS: No. And, I don't know if they're kept circuit-by-circuit.

     RIDGEWAY: Who would I go to ask?

     ROGERS: I can ask my court administrator if she keeps those records in our court, but state court - well, the Supreme Court is now monitoring disposition rates for all matters that the court handles whether they're family, criminal, or civil, but I don't know if they break them down by cause of action, but the Supreme Court, through the office of state court's administrator, does keep track of how many cases are filed, and how are we doing, and our timely disposition of those cases, but whether or not they break them down by, this was a motion to modify custody, this was an original custody determination, this was a contempt action, I don't know.

     RIDGEWAY: Okay, thank you.

     BENTLEY: I have a question.

     CASKEY: Representative Dougherty had a question.

     BENTLEY: Oh, I'm sorry.

     DOUGHERTY: You first, go ahead.

     BENTLEY: Two quick questions. No one has addressed two problems I hear about. One is a complaint that the child support payments are not being spent appropriately on the children, that they're going for the lifestyle of the parent, and the children are really being ignored or damaged by the way the complaintor feels the money is being spent. And, second, is the question of when a parent has a right to move away with the children, and how far?

     ROGERS: One of the other individuals who is going to testify today is going to cover the relocation issue. There is a national relocation model statute, and I would rather give her the time to discuss that than to take up that issue. I do think that under current case law, in the state of Missouri, the court does have the authority to hear evidence and to take action which the court believes to be in the best interest of the child. There are four factors set forth by appellate court opinions, and so, I'll say that.

     With regards to the justification of how you spend your money on your kids, I don't know how we'll ever solve that crisis, because the person who pays, always thinks that it's way too much, and the family that's getting it, always thinks that it's way too little. There is a provision, I think, in the statute, to ask for an accounting, but sometimes I think if the complaining parent would go to the store and find out that a box of cereal cost four or five bucks now and a jug of milk is almost three bucks, and dinner at McDonald's for a kid, as you know, five or six bucks. I really don't think that our guidelines in the state of Missouri, as to child support are excessive. I think we're kind of in the middle and maybe a little bit closer to the bottom than we are overcharging our parents who pay child support.

     BENTLEY: Okay. Thank you.

     DOUGHERTY: Judge, two questions. Backing upon on your schedule, I remember you mentioning this about two years ago, as I recall, and I have stuck in my mind, presumptive schedule which is probably the wrong word to use, but the minimum contact schedule, that's been floated around for a little while. Would the Supreme's be the ones devising this set of guidelines?

     ROGERS: You could, by statute, and it would probably be a good resolution of it. You could, by statute, direct the Supreme Court, through its Family Court Committee, to come up with minimum, pre-trial contact, taking into consideration the developmental needs of children and we could ask the court to include on our committee that would come up with those guidelines. Mental health professionals and educational professionals who deal with children and who could tell us at what ages, what contact schedule would be best.

     DOUGHERTY: Do other states do this? Have you come across that?

     ROGERS: I can't answer that question. I didn't look at that issue when we looked at the custody laws across the country.

     DOUGHERTY: The only reason I asked that, it was floated a few times and some people said, well, why if I work on the evening shift, or if I work the midnight shift, how can somebody have a contact......

     ROGERS: Right, but you know how we fix that? We fix it with your idea, which is, if you want an individualized plan, when the people come in and file, then they tell us what their work schedule is. They tell us what their - one of the things we could require them to do is tell us prior to this divorce being filed, what was your day-to-day contact schedule with your child, and we could try to normalize that while the matter was pending.

     DOUGHERTY: One last, on education, the one that really threw  the debate going around our committee, as I recall, was this whole area of continuing child support past high school. We all know what the statute, I think, is currently in terms of college, but, boy, that really got the debate moving, let's put it that way. What's going on in terms of the courts out there and what is some of the current thinking on child support past high school?

     ROGERS: One of the things that you did that I really liked, was to give some guidance to the court about how to emancipate a child or if they're attending school after high school, because we were suffering under the burden of these families coming in where a kid would be taking one or two of hours of basket weaving and getting an F, but technically they were still a student, so the paying parent had to keep paying, and we know that was grossly unfair, but under the statute we didn't have a definition of what is a student, so we were reluctant to emancipate kids. What you didn't say now that a child has to take a minimum of 12 hours, per semester, and if you consider kids who may have some disabilities or may come from a family where both of their parents are poor, and who, therefore, has to, in addition to the child support being paid, also has to work half-time, and maybe almost full-time, in order to pay for the college cost. I think 12-hours was a little bit high and I wish that you would consider setting that at nine hours a semester instead of that 12. I loved what you did about making the child responsible for sharing with both parents what courses they're taking, and their grades. It would infuriate me, as a parent, and I am one, to pay child support to somebody who was continuing on to be eligible from my dollars, as a student, but have no input on how were they doing, what were they taking, what school did they choose? What an injustice to the paying parent. So, I love that you did that.

     One of the things that you did that I have no idea how Child Support Enforcement is addressing this issue is, when you said that a parent could pay certain college expenses in lieu of child support, and as a credit towards their child support. I have no idea how that's going to work because usually we make parents pay child support by a wage assignment and through the court administrator's office, as a trustee, so that we can protect that paying parent, and have a provable record of their payment, and now, I'm thinking, what in the world are we going to do? Are we going to have them pay the college tuition to the court administrator's office, and then the court administrator is going to go make that payment? How will we do that? And, what kind of notice requirements should we have built into that statute, when we decided that you might be able to pay tuition in lieu of child support? How is the other parent supposed to know that? Are you going to get caught up in a child support enforcement battle because your lawyer told you you now have the right to do this, but, the other side didn't get any notice of it. So, the fine tuning of that, we really need, I think, to take a further look at that this year and not necessarily set it aside, but fine tune it so that it works within our child support enforcement system, and the court, in enforcing its own orders, with respect to the college in lieu of child support dollars.

     CASKEY: Thank you, very much, Judge.

     ROGERS: You're welcome.

     CASKEY: Let me make an announcement. We have set up in hearing rooms 2 and 3, on the first floor of the Senate hearing rooms, a luncheon for our invited guests, plus the committee, so, we're ready to now break for the noon hour. We will resume hearings at 1:30.