IV-D

These past two semesters I’ve had the privilege of being involved in the Law School’s civil practice clinic. As part of that I became a Certified Legal Intern which means that I can be an attorney as long as I have a supervising attorney signing his or her name to everything saying it’s legit. As part of that class we get to go to Court IV-D at the city county building once a week. It’s the court that deals with child support issues. It’s a pretty interesting place, with a lot of interesting characters.

I planned to pack this post with a lot of pictures, but today at IV-D was a lot more stressful than I thought it would be. The normal judge wasn’t there so that threw Whitney (i.e. my supervising attorney) and me off. The judge ran a tight ship. The littlest whisper or drinking of water from the peanut gallery got a response. She was grilling the prosecutor. By the time our case got called we were expecting the worse. Luckily all the parties involved in our case were reasonable and we were able to work out a solution that got my client’s child support lowered by $74 a week, which is very substantial given his limited ability to work right now. Whitney and I were happy to get out of there. We celebrated with Starbucks. Don’t worry, I just had hot chocolate.

Going to IV-D has been an interesting experience because it’s great that I’ve been able to help some people get their child support modified who really weren’t able to pay the amount they were ordered to. It was also a good experience being in front of a judge. If you had picture, you would see that you stand like a foot from the judge when you are talking. It’s been great to help people navigate our complicated legal system.