Poverty Lawyer Damages More Children

Opinion
Poverty Lawyer Damages More Children

By Atty. J. Edward Pawlick
December 2001

Make the Father Penniless

If David Luisi paid the full amount of his support order, he would have roughly $75 to $100 a week for living expenses from his salary as a U.S. postal worker. He is required to pay $450 a week to his former wife and will do so for the next ten years, according to the new order.

But there is a federal law which limits how much money can be garnished from a federal salary. If he doesn’t have enough overtime to cover the order, he will be falling into arrears already.

His attorney, Dan Henderson, told MassNews, “The judge’s order was extremely destructive and punitive. The court has already destroyed the Luisi children and now it is trying to destroy David Luisi.”

The father is now over $30,000 in debt for legal fees and related expenses. All of the mother’s legal expenses were free.

The mother testified she had $7,000 in the bank although she had stated in court documents she was penniless. She is also driving a brand-new car.

Every time someone is treated unfairly in a courtroom, there seems to be a “poverty lawyer” lurking somewhere in the background.

These Luisi children are just another example. They are being torn from their father by a poverty lawyer.

Just imagine you are Judge Stahlin and a lawyer approaches the bench and says, “Good morning, your Honor. I am attorney Ruth Diaz from the Hale and Dorr Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School. I represent Carrie Luisi.”

In the first place, you know that this is someone with the imprimatur of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts (your boss) because those judges are the ones who decide that this group receives state money. Plus it’s someone from Harvard Law School (which can make you famous). And it’s someone who comes with the blessing of Hale and Dorr, one of the most august law firms in the state.

What judge could hold against her?

The Luisi family noticed that the judge’s order mirrored the final arguments and recommendations submitted by Ruth Diaz and the other poverty lawyers. They wondered what took so long for the judge to issue his decision because it appeared as though he rubber-stamped what Diaz told him to write.

The Luisi family was flabbergasted to read in the judge’s decision that Ms. Luisi “overcame her depression,” and as a parent was “able to give her children the safe, consistent care they require. This includes her sensitivity to their special needs, and her cooperation with their teachers and other care givers to meet the children’s needs.”

Judge Stahlin continued, “Mr. Luisi, in contrast, since the divorce, put what the court can only assume were his own emotional and ego needs ahead of those of his children by failing to visit or seek visitation with them for a full year. It is in the best interests of the children to be in the custody of the parent who is not only able to meet their needs, but who will continue to put the children’s needs ahead of her own regardless of adversities that may be encountered as the children grow up.”

An astonished David Luisi told MassNews it was DSS and the mother who went to a judge without his knowledge in 1999 and halted his visitation after they realized he was cleared of the abuse charge and was about to try to get his kids back. And now, said David, the judge holds it against him that he didn’t visit the kids during those months before the trial. He explained that if he sought supervised visitation, he risked having to attend the EMERGE program as a condition, and that would have torpedoed his chances at trial because you are required to “confess” that you are an abuser in order to complete the program.