A year ago, legal help was hard to come by for Gloucester residents with little money. Hiring an experienced lawyer was out of the question. Lawyers willing to work for free were hard to find. And the only free legal service in town had closed the year before.
The situation was, as one local non-profit worker called it, devastating.
"It may be hard for middle-class people who have the ability to pay for legal services to understand this, but people with limited means have a right to divorce," said Peter Anastas, director of advocacy for Action Inc.
But Anastas and other non-profit workers said they have solved that problem. Plans for a free legal service have taken shape over the past year, and counseling for residents with low-to-moderate incomes is now available.
"Somebody comes in and they have a problem they think is insolvable," Anastas said. "How are they going to get out of an abusive relationship? How are they going to get support for their children? How can they get on with their lives? What we see is an enormous weight lifted."
The organization, the Family Law Assistance Project, combines workers at Action, Lynn-based Neighborhood Legal Services and a handful of volunteers, along with money from the city and the federally funded AmeriCore*VISTA program.
While confidentiality agreements would not allow program managers to say who has been served, the assistance project has run around five divorce clinics since last spring, where volunteer attorneys have advised around 12 residents on their divorces.
At least one clinic ran far longer than the expected two hours, with clients talking about their lives and gathering information to help them move on.
"They are an asset to the community because they afford some people to get a divorce that doesn't cost them anything at all," Program Planner Chanda Millett said. "It's also empowering for participants to realize they can represent themselves and bring closure to situations on their own."
But perhaps the biggest piece of the project has recently fallen into place with the addition of a full-time lawyer.
While the clinics could serve only clients with simple, non-contested divorces, 28-year-old Northeastern Law School graduate Jeanne Brennan has signed on for the next year to handle more complicated issues, such as contested divorces and domestic violence cases.
"It's looked upon more as a volunteer position," Brennan said. "I've always enjoyed more public sector work as opposed to private sector work. I feel like I'm accomplishing more, making more of a difference. Stuff that is more motivated by money is not what I am interested in."
In less than two months in Gloucester, Brennan has already served more than 20 clients on a range of issues.
"Most of the people are more advice assistance: custody questions, visitation questions, just looking for basic information on divorce," she said. "They are just looking for information because they don't know about the court system."
Soon, assistance-project managers expect her to begin representing clients in court in cases involving divorce, custody, child support, visitation and paternity.
"There is no one in Gloucester doing what she is doing, certainly not for low-income people," Millett said. "She's really going about it the right way -- proceeding carefully and defining what kind of cases she can handle so we don't get overwhelmed."
Among Brennan's first clients was a woman referred by the Gloucester-based service Help for Abused Women and their Children (HAWC).
"One of the big problems survivors of domestic violence face is, when there is court-mandated visitation with the abuser, it can sometimes be an abusive situation when children are exchanged," said HAWC Program Director Nicole Richon-Schoel. "This particular woman wanted some advice on how to deal with the issues in a more just way."
While Richon-Schoel is not sure how the situation turned out, she was happy to have somewhere to send people. The closest service offering similar help is in Lynn.
"People don't want to go to Lynn," she said. "That's like going to Egypt."
Brennan's term is set to end in November, and AmeriCore*VISTA support will run out in three years, making another of Brennan's jobs to find permanent funding for the position. That, she said, will be her biggest challenge.
"Given everything else I will be doing, it'll take a large chunk of time," said Brennan, "We're still in the beginning stages on that."
City Grants Administrator Sarah Buck, who helped secure funding for the program with money from a federal block grant, has yet to check in to see how the program is working. However, she offered praise for the mission.
"I think it serves a real community need," she said. "It's not something where you would be assigned a public defender, but you would need someone who could guide you into reasonable arrangements."
To learn more about the program, call Action
Inc. at 978-282-1000.
Daniel Listwa Photo