Family-friendly court part of national trend
Building provides homier environment for parents, kids fighting legal battles
SAN JOSE — Judge Julia Alloggiamento was already disgusted by the lousy condition of the Terraine Courthouse, where abused and neglected children
Family Justice Center Cost: $208 million Features: Free day care center, private lactation room, self-help center for participants who represent themselves waiting for their cases to be heard were forced to mingle in cramped hallways with inmates and drug addicts.
But the final straw came when a rat crawled out of the toilet in her chambers and gnawed through a plastic peanut butter jar.
“It really was part of my awful experience there, not an urban legend,” Alloggiamento
said, citing other problems like inadequate security.
Last month, Terraine and five other rundown courthouses were replaced by the new $208 million Family Justice Center courthouse — one of only a few in the nation devoted solely to cases involving families and children. The new building is part of a national trend of providing a homier environment for people seeking to mend lives unraveled by divorce, addiction or mental illness.
“The center should be a model for the rest of the country,” said Barbara Babb, an associate law professor at the University of Baltimore and editor-inchief of the Family Law Review.
The difference is obvious to visitors. A 30-foot-tall covered walkway supported by Grecian-style columns and inlaid with wood leads into a light-flooded grand atrium that resembles a museum foyer.
To the right is the gleaming white Family Tree Cafe, with huge windows that frame vibrant green bamboo and a graceful Japanese maple, where the menu includes peanut butter and jelly or banana sandwiches for kids.
Free day care center
There’s a free day care center, a private lactation room and a self-help center for the 80 percent of family court participants who represent themselves and do not have lawyers. Curved alcoves made of warm mahogany brown veneer provide privacy for attorneys and clients to meet before heading into one of the building’s 20 courtrooms. And an outdoor terrace straight out of a Manhattan cocktail party scene offers a place to lunch with a view of the downtown skyline.
Even the elevators are atypical for a government building. A taped announcer with a smooth voice tells stressed-out families and agitated mental health court defendants whether the car is going up or down, and what floor it has reached. For those who prefer to walk, there’s a grand curved staircase up to the second floor.
Visitors say the eightstory building at First and St. James streets succeeds in providing a more welcoming environment for traumatized kids in foster care and parents quarreling over custody or struggling with mental health problems. At the same time, it imparts a sense of awe sorely lacking in previous leased facilities like the dreary former bank dubbed “the dungeon.”
“Going to Terraine, it kind of made you feel like you’re nobody,” said Deborah Crede, who had a case recently in mental health court in the new building. “This is way cleaner and nicer.”
To be sure, having a case in family court is still no picnic. Judges preside over the full range of family law matters, which make up about 6 percent of the annual court filings in the county, including divorce, custody, visitation, child support, alimony, property division, domestic violence, and child abuse and neglect.
“You could be in a palace with lights and dancing girls, and it still would be terrible,” said Gilroy resident Jess Rodriguez, who gained full custody of his two children after he and his wife separated and was back in court recently to fine-tune the arrangement.
But Ciera Hernandez said the wide, well-lit hallways there are a much better place to wait with her 10-month-old son for her boyfriend to get out of drug court than Terraine ever was.
“It was really dirty,” she said. “I’d never let Ryder crawl down the hall there.”
Historically, family courts have been the stepchild of the court system nationwide with some of the worst courthouses in the system, including old office buildings, said Ron Younkins, New York state’s executive director of the Office of Court Administration.
But as attitudes in the past 25 years changed toward victims of domestic violence and juvenile offenders, advocates began to press with some success for better facilities, including in New York state, Younkins said.
Bear sculptures
In Florida, for example, the $110 million MiamiDade Children’s Courthouse includes a family of bear sculptures, some peeking out of windows and around columns. Other courts throughout the country have added amenities, including children’s waiting rooms.
But not everyone is a fan of the trend, including some of the local court clerks who were on strike earlier this summer for higher wages. They contended that the new courthouse with ornamental stone cladding imported from Italy was just another Taj Mahal by an administration that could afford to pay them more. But since the strike settled last month and the courthouse opened six weeks ago, some staffers who work in the building say it is an improvement.
Court officials continue to defend the long-planned project, saying the state paid the bulk of the cost and that it replaces leased buildings, saving hundreds of millions of dollars over the 100-year life of the building, they said.
But Santa Clara County Superior Court is now facing a $5 million deficit. As revenue from fees paid by the public plummeted, the state wound up seizing its reserves and the Judicial Council last year drastically revised its statewide funding formula to help needier counties. Now, the court is struggling to fully fund the building’s $5 million a year in debt service through about 2039 and may have to turn to the council for help.
However, 17 courthouse construction projects in California were put on hold in late August because of a lack of state funding, including another family courthouse in Riverside County now housed in a facility so small that visitors have to line up outside in summer temperatures that can exceed 110 degrees.
Court officials here are grateful for the new facility. Family court used to be among the least desirable of assignments, in part because of the facilities.
“Now,” said Judge Brian Walsh, a key player in the effort to secure state funding, “there’s a line of judges waiting to get into family.”