Legalities

Legalities, a weekly column that appears in the Help section of the Southern Illinoisan, is a free service of the Self Help Legal Center. You can visit the Southern Illinoisan website at: http://www.southernillinoisan.com

Q: I was in the courthouse recently because they are foreclosing on my home and while I was there I tried to get some legal assistance. They wouldn't help me, and when I called the local legal aid office, they said that they couldn't help me either. I did see in the courthouse, however, where people can get a free attorney from the State if they have a child support problem. That doesn't seem fair to me. Why do some people get free attorneys and others don't? Don't attorneys care? Is getting someone child support more important than me losing my home?

A: Most of the time, whether someone can get free legal assistance with a civil problem is not a question of importance, nor is it a question of fairness. Rather, it is a question of resources and public policy and should be posed to your city, county, state, and federal elected officials, not the legal profession.

Under the United States Constitution, every United States citizen is guaranteed the right to legal representation for any criminal case where the punishment may exceed one-year imprisonment. Beyond that, whether you are have access to free legal representation for a particular problem will usually depend on whether your city, county, state, or federal government has decided to create a program which pays attorneys to do certain cases without charging their clients. As with most social programs, whether your city, county, state, or federal government has enacted such a program will usually depend on the following:

1) Does your government have the money (tax or other revenue) to do this?

A lot of programs fail not because they are bad ideas, but rather because it would cost too much to do them. A good example is a free television for everyone. A neat idea, but probably too costly. So when asking why there are no free attorneys for foreclosure cases, you should ask yourself whether your city, county, state, or federal government has the money to pay to provide free legal assistance to everyone who has a foreclosure problem?

2) Is there some type of public policy that is served by this program?

Let's say that you figured out that your government could afford to give everyone in your jurisdiction a free television. The next question that would probably come up would be what would be served by such a program? You might argue that if everyone had a television, more people would be informed about safety issues like severe weather warnings or boil water orders. The public policy which is served by giving people who have child support problems free legal assistance is twofold: 1) it encourages people who pay child support to do so because of fear of being sued and 2) the more people the State can get to pay child support, the less money it has to devote to programs which support children who don't receive child support.

3) Is there a public demand for this program?

Let's say that you convince your elected officials that they can afford your free television idea and that it serves some public policy for everyone to have a free television. The next (and most important) question you will likely get from your representative is whether there is a public demand for this kind of program. For example, there are programs funded at the state and federal level to provide legal assistance for victims of domestic violence. These programs did not always exist and this type of legal assistance is not guaranteed by the United States Constitution or any other law. Rather, advocates for victims of domestic violence worked very hard to garner and sustain public support for these types of programs and lobbied their elected officials to pass legislation to fund and establish these programs. Consequently, if you want to persuade your elected officials to provide free legal assistance for foreclosure cases, you need to find more people who agree with you, organize them, and lobby your elected officials.

Do you have a legal question? Write us at Self Help Legal Center, SIU School of Law, Mailcode 6804, Carbondale, Illinois or e-mail us at selfhelp@siu.edu. Not all questions will be answered and may be edited for space or content.

Legalities is written by the Self Help Legal Center, a public service of the SIU School of Law. The Self Help Legal Center cannot provide legal representation. It can, however, help you find the answer to your legal problem. This column is for general legal information purposes only and the advice given in this column may not apply to your situation. For specific legal advice about your situation, you should consult an attorney licensed to practice in Illinois. This column is not meant to give legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship.