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Family Law Legal Assistance

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America Family Law Center’s mission is to help children by helping their parents and caregivers resolve family situations.   America Family Law Center provides legal services through its Assisted Pro Se service program, which is available to paid or comped clients in good standing. America Family Law Center is the #1 Assisted Pro Se service for family law matters. America Family Law Center is recognized as the leading, most advanced, and premier provider of Assisted Pro Se services. Understanding how to navigate a divorce, child custody, child visitation, child support, and parental rights can be overwhelming – we are here to help.

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America Family Law Center is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit charitable organization whose mission is rooted in the belief that children should have loving relationships with parents or caregivers.  Loving relationships between children and parents can continue after divorce or separation.  When children are parented safely and lovingly by both parents or caregivers, not only does the child benefit, but our society and communities will also be better off.

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When America Family Law Center launched, it modeled its Assisted Pro Se service using the same guiding principles fundamental to the American Bar Association (ABA) Standard for the Provision of Civil Legal Aid. America Family Law Center tracks closely with the ABA on limited-scope representation (see ABA Standard 3.4), legal advice (see ABA Standard 3.4-1 & 3.4-2), and assistance to pro se or self-represented litigants (see ABA Standard 3.5) in family law matters and incorporates this with the effective use of technology (see ABA Standard 2.10). America Family Law Center exceeds the best practices recommended by the Texas Access to Justice Commission in its paper on the Best Practices in Assisted Pro Se Models for the Unrepresented.

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The Texas Access to Justice Commission (TAJC) defines Assisted Pro Se as “helping self-represented litigants help themselves with limited assistance from lawyers.” America Family Law Center is recognized as the most prominent and premier provider of Assisted Pro Se services for family law matters.

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Below is the Legal Services Matrix, illustrating how America Family Law Center’s Assisted Pro Se service is positioned in the legal services industry.

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* TAJF’s 2023 financial income eligibility guidelines for the use of grant funds

** 2023 study conducted by the Texas Access to Justice Commission

*** TAJF’s 2023 list of recipients of public grant funds

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The State of Texas so strongly promotes and encourages Assisted Pro Se services that it awards millions of dollars of publicly-funded grants. The Texas Access to Justice Commission went so far as to create a Self-Represented Litigants Committee (“SRL Committee”) and also a subcommittee focused on helping providers with Assisted Pro Se service programs. The Texas Law Help website promotes both free and low-cost Assisted Pro Se services. Both the Supreme Court of Texas (SCOT), through the Texas Access to Justice Foundation (TAGF), and the Office of the Attorney General of Texas provide grant funding for many Assisted Pro Se service programs, such as the Texas Advocacy Project, Dallas Volunteer Attorneys Program, Texas Legal Services Center, Volunteer Legal Services of Central Texas, Boat People SOS, Disability Rights Texas, Houston Volunteer Lawyers, all three major Texas legal aids, legal hotlines, and legal clinics.

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Through its Assisted Pro Se services, America Family Law Center strives to help resolve as many situations as possible collaboratively, without litigation or court involvement.  With the help of America Family Law Center’s Assisted Pro Se services, most legal cases are worked outside the courtroom and resolved without a contested trial. America Family Law Center operates as a direct-payer model service, allowing it to be far more efficient and deliver greater value to the client than services based on a third-party-payer model. Please click here to visit our Services page and read more about our Assisted Pro Se services.

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America Family Law Center has served clients for well over a decade with its Assisted Pro Se service, with clients residing in all 50 states. Leveraging advanced technology, America Family Law Center can provide services to people virtually, regardless of location, from the comfort and privacy of their homes via their phones. America Family Law Center’s Assisted Pro Se services are provided entirely by phone, text, or online, not in person, so you can collaborate with AFLC from the comfort of your home. Trekking to the courthouse or law library to use a public computer kiosk that may or may not be available or working is unnecessary and wasteful and has been outdated for many years. Services that are nothing more than telephone hotlines are also antiquated and often put to shame by Siri, Google, and Alexa.

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America Family Law Center encourages those who qualify for and are granted access to free legal assistance to take advantage of that free assistance. America Family Law Center encourages those who have the money to hire a full-service attorney in a traditional manner to do so. America Family Law Center is here to assist those pro se and self-represented litigants with family law cases who do not get free legal aid and cannot afford to pay a traditional full-service attorney thousands of dollars – those in the Justice Gap.

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Justice Gap - America Family Law Center

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The Legal Services Affordability Scale is illustrated above. In Texas, with rare exceptions, legal aid laws prohibit using legal aid funds to assist people above 125% of the poverty level.  Furthermore, according to LSC’s Justice Gap report, only about 8% of those eligible for legal aid get their needs served by legal aid; the remaining go Unserved.

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The Legal Services Affordability Scale shows two areas of people who cannot hire a traditional attorney and cannot get the legal help they need: (1) Unserved – people who qualify for legal aid but do not get served by legal aid, and (2) Justice Gap – people who don’t qualify for legal aid but can’t afford an attorney. The definition of the Justice Gap can vary; at times, it includes the Unserved, and others do not (as in the diagram above).

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Some states allow legal aid to serve people above 125% of the poverty level, up to 200% or beyond. Unfortunately, this only moves up the Legal Aid Eligibility Line, reclassifying people from the Justice Gap to the Unserved. It doesn’t help more people.

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According to Texas Access to Justice Foundation Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, approximately 5 million adults in Texas are eligible for legal aid, with about 90% of the civil legal needs of those people going Unserved. Approximately 8 million Texans are in the Justice Gap. Based on US Census data, Texas has a population of about 31 million, with a poverty rate of 13.9%. According to The Justice Gap report by the Legal Services Corporation (LSC), approximately 35 million adults in the US live below 125% of the poverty level. A study by Bankrate “found that 59% of Americans don’t have enough savings to cover an unexpected $1,000 emergency expense.” We use that as a guide to approximate how many people cannot afford to hire a traditional attorney and are in the Justice Gap.

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For many years, Texas, like many other states, has tried to expand legal services to help those in the Justice Gap. In 2015, the Texas Supreme Court issued order 15-9233, creating a Commission to Expand Civil Legal Services, commonly called the Justice Gap Commission. The Justice Gap Commission is “charged to explore means to bring more affordable legal services to small businesses and people who cannot qualify for legal aid.” The Justice Gap Commission released its first report on December 6, 2016, titled Report of the Texas Commission to Expand Civil Legal Services. To build on this December 2016 report by the Texas Commission to Expand Civil Legal Services, in October 2022, the Supreme Court of Texas asked the Texas Access to Justice Commission (TAJC) to conduct a study and report on some specific ideas about how to assist people in the Justice Gap, but for this study, it defined the Justice Gap to include the Unserved. The Texas Access to Justice Commission formed a Texas Access to Legal Services Working Group to work on the request. It released its report on December 5, 2023, titled Report and Recommendations of the Texas Access to Legal Services Working Group. It is unclear the level of involvement the Commission to Expand Civil Legal Services (a/k/a the Justice Gap Commission) had in the study and the resulting December 2023 report produced by the TAJC’s newly formed Texas Access to Legal Services Working Group.

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According to government documents, including IRS 990s and Supreme Court orders awarding legal aid funding, in 2015, Texas legal aid organizations received $81.3 million in public funding and served 100,000 people, equating to $812.75 per person served.  In 2022, Texas legal aid organizations received $145.1 million in public funding and served 120,000 people, equating to $1,209.46 per person served. Funding increased by 78%, while people served increased by only 20%. What’s more alarming is that the need for services increased by more than 20% during this same period, so services provided fell further behind services needed.

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It is easy for people to misunderstand what is meant by a “person served,” sometimes called a “case closed.” This does not mean that someone was represented in court, or that there was ever a court case, or that any type of legal proceeding ever took place. It is often as simple as giving a person legal advice over the phone or at a walk-up clinic or giving them a legal form to complete. A “person served” certainly doesn’t mean their issue was resolved.

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Furthermore, the same person and situation can be counted multiple times.  Part of the “service” provided by many legal aid organizations often involves referring the person in need to other legal aid organizations or programs within the same organization, called “resource referrals.” A “resource referral” counts as a “person served.” Every time a person in need is referred to another organization or program, they are counted as a “person served.” When they call the next organization or program for help, they are counted again, and again, and again. This practice is typically called the “service multiplier” or “service duplicator.”

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Family Law Help and Assistance

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America Family Law Center is devoted to helping low-income and underserved people get family law help and assistance.  This includes assistance for various family law matters such as child custody, divorce, and parental rights.  America Family Law Center’s Assisted Pro Se service is available to paid or comped clients in good standing. Some of the areas of family law that the organization can help with include:

Child Custody in Texas

 

Other Questions – Parental Rights, Child Custody, Child Support, and Grandparent Rights

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Parents and individuals often need additional information about a situation before legal action.  America Family Law Center can help provide a better understanding of many topics, including:

  • What are my parental rights?
  • How do I get custody of my children?
  • How do I get child support from my child’s other parent?
  • How do I get rid of back child support?
  • How do I change my child support?
  • What are fathers’ rights?
  • How do I stop child support when my son or daughter turns 18?
  • How do I establish visitation with my children?
  • What is an Acknowledgment of Paternity, or AOP?
  • How do I get a DNA paternity test to determine if I am the father or dad?
  • What does it mean to adjudicate parentage?
  • What does conservatorship mean
  • How do I find my child?
  • How do I enforce my visitation?
  • Can the mother go to jail for not letting me see my child?
  • Do grandparents have rights?
  • Why might I go to jail for not paying child support?
  • Do I have to let my child go for visitation?

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Other Resources

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America Family Law Center collaborates with many other agencies and resources to help people get access to assistance for situations that may involve:

Get Your Questions Answered

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Call Today

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We are here to help.  Call today to find the help you need.

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America Family Law Center
can be contacted by
phone or text at 214-516-7700
Children need their parents