Senate Urged to Use Legal Services Assistance Fund to Provide Civil Legal Services to Victims of Domestic Violence 2004

January 1, 2004

Author: Anne Erickson| Kristin Brown Lilley

Research indicates that the provision of civil legal services (CLS) to victims of domestic violence is critical – perhaps even essential - to helping women break the cycle of violence that so often jeopardizes their safety and their children's safety. Absent quality legal representation by attorneys who have a clear understanding of domestic violence issues, women who are abused are at risk of further violence, of losing their children in custody cases, and of being unable to obtain key economic resources such as housing and public benefits that are so necessary to starting the process of rebuilding their lives.

In Fall 2003, funding decisions announced by the US Department of Justice resulted in the devastating loss of Legal Assistance to Victims (a component of Violence Against Women Act or VAWA funding) to the majority of civil legal services providers outside of the New York City and Westchester County regions. Upstate, the CLS programs that lost their VAWA funding lost a total of $1,415,465. This has resulted in lay offs and has stunted CLS program's ability to provide the level of assistance they had been able to offer abused women in their communities. As devastating as these funding cuts have been for CLS programs and their employees, it is the women they serve who will suffer the most, as many now have limited or no access to civil legal assistance in cases involving divorce, custody, child support, orders of protection, housing, and public benefits.

While the recent VAWA cuts primarily affected upstate New York, the need for legal services for victims of domestic violence is universal – services in the New York City, Westchester and Long Island regions remain under-funded and unable to meet the needs of victims of domestic violence. The response to this need must be statewide.

It is clear that we must take action to ensure that domestic violence victims in every region of New York are able to access the civil legal services they so desperately need.

Steps toward a solution

The Senate majority has the opportunity to stabilize the availability of funding across the state for civil legal services. By using 50% of the Senate portion of the Legal Services Assistance Fund the Senate could create a program that would establish a steady funding stream for these essential services.

The Legal Services Assistance Fund (the Fund) was created by the Legislature last year to "assist in the provision of and the reimbursement of expenses incurred by local government agencies and not for profit providers or their employees relating to providing criminal or civil legal services." (§98-c of the State Finance Law) The Fund is supported by a portion of the fee paid for criminal history searches and is to be made available through a Memorandum of Understanding between the Governor, the Senate Majority Leader and the Speaker of the Assembly. We urge the Senate majority to use half of their funds to ensure that domestic violence victims have access to the legal assistance they need.

Prepared by: Anne Erickson, Executive Director and Kristin Brown, Director of Legislative Advocacy, for Empire Justice Center, March 30, 2004. For more information you may contact them at 518.462.6831 or aerickson@empirejustice.org, kbrown@empirejustice.org