Legal News

Right to counsel in child support cases?

By Glen Ashman

In child support case, justices appear reluctant to extend Sixth Amendment rights

A former solicitor general and a former Supreme Court clerk vigorously sparred before the justices on Wednesday over whether indigent persons have a constitutional right to counsel if they face jail for failing to pay child support. A number of justices appeared resistant to extending the Sixth Amendment right to civil contempt proceedings, which would be a significant step towards the "civil Gideon" sought by the American Bar Association and other organizations. Gideon v. Wainwright was the landmark 1963 decision holding that indigent defendants have a right to counsel in state criminal trials. "I just have the sense that there are thousands of these hearings around the country, and they're very important to ensuring child support, and in many cases where counsel are now waived or not present, the noncompliant parent is going to ask for counsel and that we're going to change the entire landscape of domestic relations proceedings," Justice Anthony Kennedy told former solicitor general Seth Waxman of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr during arguments in Turner v. Rogers.
Waxman represented Michael Turner, a South Carolina father who first spent six months and later, 12 months in jail after being held in contempt of a court order to pay back child support. He did not have a lawyer at the contempt proceedings.

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Full post as published by It's (Barely) Legal on March 24, 2011 (boomark / email).