Hill Women

by Cassie Chambers

  Today, some people get their opioids from “pill mills,” clinics run by doctors who prescribe opiates without a legitimate medical purpose. These doctors profit from illegal prescriptions, often receiving cash payments from patients in return for writing a script. And not uncommonly, people get drugs from a medicine cabinet, either their own or a family member’s. Doctors have prescribed so many opioids over the years that they’re now easy to come by, even without a prescription. Opioids are so plentiful in some areas that they have been detected in the public water supply.

  Evidence-based drug treatment—drug treatment designed around scientific principles—can help people kick their opioid habits. But this type of treatment is hard to find in rural Appalachia. There are fewer qualified physicians in any given community, and it’s harder for residents to get to the physicians who do exist. Even when residents make it to a qualified physician, research suggests the treatment they receive may be less empirically based than treatments in urban centers—and thus likely less effective.

  In 2016, there were almost 1,500 overdose deaths in Kentucky. Of these, 989 were related to opioids. And of the opioid-related deaths, 429 were from prescription opioids; 465 were from synthetic opioids, like fentanyl. The remaining deaths were from heroin, which many addicts turned to after finding they could no longer get opioids. In 2016, Kentucky had the fifth highest rate of deaths from drug overdoses in the nation.

  As a result of the opioid epidemic, the mountains are full of children being raised by their grandmothers. In Kentucky, there are almost 40,000 children currently living with their grandparents, many because their parents are struggling with addiction. The majority—83.2 percent—of these grandparent-caregivers are female, older mountain women who have set their minds to holding their families together.

  I would see this effect on families later, when I began working as a family law attorney in rural Kentucky. Sometimes, I was fighting to keep children away from a drug-addicted parent. At other times, I was arguing that a parent had gotten their addiction under control, and should be allowed to spend more time with their child. Regardless of what side I was on, the courts seemed incapable of adequately addressing the many facets of these families in crisis.

  My client Anne became pregnant during her senior year of high school. She suspected that her boyfriend—the father of her child—may have been using drugs, so she confronted him about it shortly after she found out they were going to have a baby. High and out of control, he became physical, pushing her hard into a wall. She got a protective order, had the child, and didn’t hear from the boyfriend for months.

  Then one day she was served with court papers from that boyfriend, requesting full custody of their son. Anne was determined to keep her child safe, and we fought to limit his time with the child. But the court system, with its presumptions of joint custody and shared parenting time, eventually awarded the father unsupervised, overnight visitation. He claimed he had been clean for almost a year, and he had stayed out of trouble with the law. Anne called me the day before the first visitation crying, genuinely afraid of sending her child into an environment that she felt was unsafe. It’s still the part of my job that I hate the most, telling my clients that they should follow court orders they believe put their child at risk. A few months later the boyfriend was arrested for driving while high, and the court took away his visitation rights.

  I couldn’t wholly help every woman affected by the opioid crisis—and sometimes I couldn’t help at all. One day, a young woman from Eastern Kentucky named Sarah showed up in my office. A child protective services worker had given her my phone number. “She’s doing everything right,” the CPS worker said to me. “She cares so much about her son.” I had told Sarah that I wasn’t accepting new clients at that time—that I had too many other cases. But Sarah showed up at my office anyway, her eyes wide with panic. “They’re trying to take my baby,” she said, immediately becoming teary-eyed.

  Sarah had been in an abusive relationship for the better part of a decade. Her boyfriend used to force her to have sex with men for drugs. When she refused, he beat her. Sarah started off using pain pills, then moved on to heroin.

  Social services got involved after Sarah left her five-year-old child alone for three days while she was using. The state took her son and placed him with her boyfriend’s parents. Sarah hated the thought that the people who had raised the man who raped and beat her were now bringing up her child. She spent the next several years in and out of treatment. A few months ago, just after she got out of rehab again, the grandparents served her with papers. They wanted full custody of her son.

  I didn’t end up taking Sarah’s case. I comforted her as she cried in my office, and I gave her the numbers of some other attorneys to try. I could tell that she loved her son and was determined to do whatever it took to get him back. I wanted to help her, but I didn’t have the space for her case.

  If I’m being honest, I was also grateful I had an excuse not to get involved. Sarah had relapsed several times. She had neglected and endangered her son when she was using. She had been clean only a little over three months. Maybe the grandparents were doing a good job raising the son, maybe they weren’t. Maybe the rehab would stick this time, maybe it wouldn’t. I didn’t know what was the right thing to do. It all seemed so complicated. It still does.

  “Here’s your stack of files.” My supervising attorney pointed at what seemed to me an unusually tall pile of manila folders. “You have a three-hour hearing in Breckenridge County on Thursday.” I felt my heart beat a bit faster at the news of the impending court date. “I can’t go with you, but I’ve printed a cheat sheet of objections for you in case you need it,” she added.

  It was Monday. I had three days until my first major hearing. Somehow a cheat sheet seemed inadequate.

  After finishing my year as a clerk, I received a fellowship to spend two years representing low-income women and kids who had experienced physical violence. Although I’d be based in Louisville, the largest city in the state, I would spend my time practicing in the rural courts nearby. I knew from the past year of working in federal courtrooms that women and children in these parts of Kentucky were struggling. I didn’t have the skills to fix many of the problems they were facing, but I could help families in crisis navigate the legal system. And I could do it for free.

  When I arrived in 2016, Legal Aid did not have a family law attorney dedicated to practicing outside of Louisville. In fact, the organization didn’t accept family law clients outside of Louisville. This meant that individuals in fourteen counties had no options for free family law representation. If someone wanted a family attorney they had to pay for it themselves—regardless of how poor they might be.

  The women I represented didn’t necessarily come from the mountains. That first year of my fellowship I mainly stuck to the rural counties closest to Louisville, which fell just outside of Appalachia proper. But these clients faced many of the same challenges as women in the hills. They were dealing with poverty, a drug epidemic, a lack of access to important resources.

  I thought I knew what to expect from working with these communities. After all, I had practiced in a similar field at Harvard. I had become familiar with the underlying law and the way it played out in the courtroom. I thought surely I was prepared.

  I wasn’t.

  On some days I would spend four or more hours on the road, making my way from one county to the next. I used the time in my car to return phone calls to clients and other attorneys. I carried a mobile printer in the back of my vehicle so I could print documents wherever I happened to be. The printer always broke, though, and I got very good at finding public libraries. I joked with my clients that I was a one-woman traveling law firm.

  Most of my clients were women, and many of them had young children. It was tough for them to find the time and transportation to get to Louisville. So, when I could, I went
to them. I had to get creative with my meeting spaces: I met with clients at Dairy Queens, assorted gas stations, and a Subway restaurant. I would get there early to grab a table in the back so that we could have privacy from the other patrons. I would shoot people a dirty look if they got too close to my “office” space.

  Sometimes I felt lonely traveling the back roads of rural Kentucky by myself. I missed the friendship and support system the Bureau had given me. But the loneliness was a good reminder: I was the only one out here doing this work. It was important that I keep doing it.

  * * *

  —

  I hadn’t been practicing long when Peggy’s file came across my desk. What struck me most about it was the sheer magnitude of her poverty. Her only listed income was less than two hundred dollars a month in food stamps. She didn’t have a job or any money in savings. I wondered how she survived on so little.

  I met Peggy for the first time at a courthouse in a rural county. She was somewhere in her fifties but looked much older. She had long, flowing hair streaked with gray, and thick glasses that sat low on her thin nose. She wore acid-washed jeans and white sneakers, the kind with thick plastic soles.

  She reminded me of Aunt Ruth when she talked. She responded to my questions with the shortest possible answer. I got the sense that she was always in a hurry to get somewhere else, take care of something else. It was as though she always had more pressing concerns on her mind.

  I helped Peggy file for divorce after she discovered that her husband had sexually assaulted a young woman. He had begun acting strangely, and she found a loaded gun under his bed. He bought pigs, and she had heard stories of people feeding bodies to pigs to cover up murders. When she went to the courthouse to take out a protective order against him, she learned about his sexual assault charges. She was afraid of him, and she wanted my help to end her marriage in a way that would keep her safe. She couldn’t afford to pay a lawyer; I agreed to represent her for free.

  One of the first things I did when I got Peggy’s case was ask the court to waive the filing fee for her divorce. Parties who want to get a divorce normally have to pay about a hundred and fifty dollars to help cover administrative costs. Courts must waive this fee, however, if they determine that someone is poor, ensuring that low-income individuals have equal access to the court system.

  It seemed obvious to me that Peggy should qualify for a waiver. The filing fee was almost her entire month’s income. This was a woman who drove a pickup truck from the 1990s and didn’t have cable or Internet. She had never paid anyone to cut her hair. We put together the paperwork, and Peggy signed an affidavit stating that she couldn’t afford the filing fee. I sat back and waited for the good news from the court.

  The court denied Peggy’s request and ordered her to come up with the money to file for divorce. I obviously was surprised, but I was even more surprised by some of the things the court suggested Peggy could do to pay for her divorce. My favorite was the court’s suggestion that she take out a home equity line of credit to pay the filing fee. Peggy couldn’t pay off any line of credit—opening one would put her home at risk.

  Peggy was going to inherit a modest piece of property that was currently tied up in the probate process. The court suggested she just stay married until it was hers, and then she could sell it to pay her filing fee. But Peggy couldn’t sell—she needed to live in the property after she divorced her abusive husband. She didn’t have anywhere else to go. And, more urgently, she didn’t want to wait to get divorced—she felt unsafe every day.

  I went back to court, sure that I would be able to fix the mistake. I was naïve, and I still believed that courts were always in the business of doing justice. The judge denied Peggy’s request for a fee waiver again; he still didn’t believe that she was poor enough to qualify. I went back to court one final time, and the judge smirked at me from the bench. “This sure does matter a lot to you, doesn’t it?” he asked, looking amused.

  It did. If Peggy couldn’t pay the filing fee, she wouldn’t be able to file for divorce. She would be forced to stay married to a man she feared because she didn’t have the financial resources to pay her court fees. This situation ran counter to everything I thought I knew about our justice system.

  After receiving a final denial from that judge, Peggy and I appealed her case to the Kentucky Court of Appeals. As I wrote the appellate brief, I thought about the other women I had met who were in similar situations. I had spoken to several women who had the same trouble filing for divorce because judges would not waive their fees. I felt as though I was fighting not just for Peggy, but for them as well. I imagined the way this case would fling open the doors of the courts, granting access to all the women who had been trapped outside of our justice system.

  We lost the case.

  I could barely bring myself to read the full decision. I took it in one paragraph at a time, pausing every few minutes to let my anger subside. Not only did I feel like I had failed Peggy, but the precedent our case had set would also make it harder for all poor people in Kentucky to access the courts. I had thought I was making things better; instead, I made them worse. An older lawyer told me, “See? This is why it’s dangerous to stick your neck out. The law is a slow and dangerous beast.”

  Peggy took it better than I did. When I called her with the bad news, she simply said, “Oh, well.” I got the feeling that she had never actually believed the court system might rule in her favor. She didn’t think that institutions of power were on her side.

  Peggy eventually came up with a way to pay for her divorce. She rummaged through her garage and found a gun that belonged to her first husband, who had died a few years before. She loved that husband, and she’d wanted to keep the gun to remember him. She ended up selling it to a neighbor at a discount. It didn’t seem fair, this woman with so little being forced to sell one of the few things she had. It didn’t seem fair that the system had abandoned her to figure things out on her own.

  * * *

  —

  I would see these financial barriers to accessing courts in Kentucky play out many times over my two years as a fellow. One of the ways that bothered me the most involved fees for what are called domestic relations commissioners. In some rural courts, judges choose to appoint commissioners to hear family law cases. This isn’t common in urban areas, where there are specialized courts that focus exclusively on family law. But in rural areas, where family courts are not available, judges often appoint commissioners instead of hearing cases themselves.

  The decision to appoint a commissioner isn’t tied to caseload. I know this because I pulled the statistics from the Administrative Office of the Courts. There is no significant correlation between the number of cases a judge has and whether or not they choose to appoint a commissioner. It seems like some judges just prefer to avoid the messiness of family law, and they appoint a commissioner to deal with it instead.

  The problem with these commissioners is the way they are paid—or, more specifically, who they are paid by. Unlike judges, who receive a salary from the state, commissioners are paid based on fees charged to the parties. Parties pay fifteen dollars each time they want to put a motion on a docket—i.e., each time they go to court—and then one dollar per minute for each hearing they schedule. In short, people have to pay the commissioner an hourly rate to hear their case.

  At first it doesn’t seem like a lot—a dollar a minute. It seems even smaller when you hear that parties often split the fee. That means my clients would usually pay thirty dollars an hour, plus the initial fee to put the motion on the docket, to have a hearing before a commissioner.

  But for some women I represented, that thirty dollars might as well have been three hundred dollars, or three thousand. These were women leaving abusive marriages. Sometimes they didn’t have jobs or a prospect of getting a job. They had no way to pay these fees. And these fees aren’t a one-time thing. In conte
sted custody battles, the parties will have several hearings, and each one may last multiple hours. It’s not uncommon for clients to rack up fees in the hundreds of dollars. Commissioners are supposed to waive these fees for low-income clients, but I have never seen one do it.

  My client Patsy left her husband after her daughter from a previous marriage told her that he was molesting her. Patsy’s husband had abused her, but she had stayed with him for the sake of the young son they had together. Learning that he was harming her older daughter was the last straw, though, and Patsy left him and took the children with her. He filed for divorce shortly thereafter.

  Patsy struggled financially. She hadn’t worked outside of the home much during her marriage, mostly because her husband would get jealous anytime she got a job. “You’re running around with other men, aren’t you?” he would ask her. He would text her incessantly when she was out, and question her whenever she got home. By the time Patsy and her husband separated, she hadn’t consistently worked for years. Patsy had large brown eyes that always looked a little bit afraid, and I wondered if it was because of the years of her husband’s scrutiny. Her lips were always pressed together, as if she was biting down on them to keep herself quiet.

  Patsy’s case was complicated, and we went to court for a variety of issues. For the custody hearing alone, Patsy was charged almost one hundred dollars in commissioner fees. I saw her eyes widen with panic when I told her about the fee. She didn’t have the money.

  I got a charity to pay the fee for Patsy’s case that time, but it still impacted her psychologically. Patsy was afraid that her financial situation would limit her access to the courts. She was worried that she couldn’t afford to protect her child. Eventually, we reached an agreement in Patsy’s case, and the court hearings stopped. But Patsy still lives with the anxiety that her ex-husband could drag her back to court and make her pay those exorbitant fees anytime he chooses. In custody disputes, you can never be sure that you’re done until your child turns eighteen and the court loses jurisdiction.