Helping Katrina

I know that when Hurricane Katrina devastated the New Orleans area this last fall, the desire to help was almost universal. We all saw the effects and shuddered to see the devastated buildings, lives, families. As a first year law student, I felt particularly helpless. Everyone around has done little things to help, but there seemed to be nothing that I, personally, with my mountain of student loans and no legal experience could do to lend a hand.

This semester I started to volunteer with the VLN Family Justice Center Self Help Center. At the center I have been aiding people to work their way through their custody or divorce issues, doing intake and issue evaluation before they see our volunteer lawyer. It has been an incredibly educational experience to work with real, palpable legal problems in a setting where people are truly in need of your assistance. And last month, I finally got my chance to do my part in the wake of Katrina.

A client appeared early morning saying that her husband had taken her children for the weekend and now refused to give them back. They were all refugees of Katrina, and this woman had come to Minnesota because her husband had said he had friends in the area. What he really mean, she later found out, was that he had another lover up here: a lover who soon thereafter filled out divorce papers for him to hand to his wife, leaving her alone in a new state after the greatest natural disaster in the United States. Now her husband claimed that he was going to keep the children and enroll them in the school district where he had moved to.

This woman had come to us, "living by the grace and mercy of God." Everything she owned had been given to her to help her recover from the devastation Katrina left her in. After filling out intake papers with her and summarizing the legal problem for the lawyer, I received a phenomenal lesson in civil procedure. "He handed the papers to you? Well, he cant do that...This hasn't even been signed or filed..." We proceeded to help her fill out the In Forma Pauperis papers so that even if the divorce was painful, she would be spared the extra expenses. And finally, as to the children, the lawyer somehow had the incredible instinct to ask, "Did you have them with him before or after you were married?" Before as it turns out. He proceeds to flip to a Minnesota statute saying that until paternity was established, she had full custody. So... "Call him and tell him that. If that doesn't work, call the police and ask them to enforce this statute."

After spending the morning with us, this charming and gentle woman was going to get her children back. While we couldn't spare her of the impending custody struggle she was going to have, we were able to figure out the short term, and arm her with the ability to take care of herself from that point on. We do that all the time, and while I know that I shouldn't care more about this particular client because she was a Katrina victim, I did. I had finally been able to do something, however small, to help just one person displaced by that horrible event.

I would be willing to bet that most of our clients have had tragedies befall their lives. Perhaps not as renowned as Hurricane Katrina, perhaps more personal in their natures, but our clinic happens to help people when they are fighting for the one thing they have left: their families. To know that we can help, even just a little, these hard working people makes me understand why I have entered into the practice of law.