JUDGE JOSEPH A. GOEKE: Thank you, very much for the opportunity to be with you again. I'm an associate circuit judge in St. Louis County, and have been in family court for the last nine years, at least most of the last nine years. I serve on the Supreme Court Family Committee that's reviewing the time standards. I also was the author of a standard visitation schedule that is generally used in St. Louis County and surrounding area and has spread throughout the state.

     One of the concerns that I have with the discussion that was earlier, setting up a minimum guideline for visitation, I'm concerned that if you set up a minimum guideline it's going to be less than they already have and I'm going to be going backwards. We have a visitation schedule now that is about 37 percent of the overnights, and it really doesn't make any difference what you call things, as a practical matter, they're sharing a lot of time. I'll deal with that later when we talk about joint custody.

     CASKEY: Does your standard tell us what reasonable visitation should be?
 
    GOEKE: Yes, Sir, Senator. Ours says that it shall be custody as the parties agree. In the event the parties can't agree, then it lays it out.

     CASKEY: As a minimum?

     GOEKE: It lays it out, if they cannot agree, and it's basically every other weekend, one night in the middle of the week, overnight, alternating holidays, including the weekend that goes with a Monday holiday, six weeks in the summer. It also gives four weeks in the summer to the custodial parent, because when you have an every Wednesday, if you don't give some time to the custodial parent, then the custodial parent doesn't have any time to go on vacation, etc. But, it results in about 37 percent of the overnights, and if you change that weekend to end on Monday morning instead of Sunday night, it's about 42 percent. So, reality, we don't have a whole lot of fights over custody. If you're getting 20 percent of the time you fight 20 to 50, but if you're getting 37 or 40 percent, there's a whole lot less tendency to fight, okay? And, if there's one thing that I'm proud about in my 22 years on the bench, it's that piece of work, because I think we've cut a lot of custody fights down in our area.

     CASKEY: I think that was the comment, was the statute being silent on what the standard is for reasonable visitation creates a problem, but you have defined it your jurisdiction.

     GOEKE: We have define it, and Chris Rogers says that I don't ever enter an order that says reasonable. I always define it, and I tell the parties I'm going to define it for you, so I'm going to save you time and money to come back, if you guys can't agree, and that's how I sell it to them, and anybody will agree to it.

     CASKEY: Representative Green.

     GREEN: When did your definition begin?

     GOEKE: I came into family court the first time in January of 1989. There was case that came out in November 1988, called Siegenthaler V. Siegenthaler, and I modeled it after Siegenthaler v. Siegenthaler. I tried to get it adopted for that first year, and then the following year, I stayed in domestic. We had a rule that said nobody had to go into domestic a second year until everybody was in it a first year. That's how unfavorable the assignment was considered by most judges. But, as luck would have it, my second, we were going to have somebody new, so I said give me my second time in a row, and the new team captain asked me, because I was the only person that was the same, the team captain asked me what did I learn in the year before, and I said the one thing I learned was that if I follow this custody schedule, I eliminate a significant amount of the disputes and then the other six judges started using it and then from thereon it started becoming adopted. So, it's spread out. We see it in other areas of the state, but not like we do in St. Louis County.

     My concern is if you have mandated visitation schedule, you're not going to have the overnight in the middle of the week. You're going to go back to the alternate weekends and six weeks in the summer and altering holidays and it's going to be a step backwards for me. It might be a step forward for others, but it will be a step backwards for me.

     As I was getting ready to prepare for being with you today, I went back and looked at some things that I had put together last year. I had testified in front of Senator Dougherty's committee on Children, Youth and Family, on Senate Bill 51. I had put together some stuff for the chairman of the Missouri Bar Family Court Committee. I had put together some stuff for Senator McKenna as potential compromises to some of the things that were going on, especially in the visitation area, and the enforcement area. I mean, in the joint custody area and the enforcement area. So, I kind of went and put those three things together, and my tact, generally, for those of you who have heard me before is not so much to tell you what you ought to do, because that's not my job. It's your job to make the laws. It's my job to enforce them, but try to give you a point of view as to what you're doing, how it might be easier for us to make it work, and if you do this, it creates a problem. If you do that, it doesn't create a problem. And so, the first thing I'd like to do is look at two items in Senate Bill 361 that you passed last year, because the two I'm going to talk about were things that were in 51 that ended up in 361.

     And, the first one has to do with the requirement of attending college. Judge Rogers says that you have to pass 12 hours a semester. That's not the way I read the law. The way I read the law is you have to pass 12 hours a term. When I read that, the first thing that came to my mind, do you mean, summer term? What if you're on trimester or quarters, do you have to pass 12 each period? I think you need to say what you mean. When you say, complete, does complete mean pass or is an "F" good enough. What if somebody takes 12 hours, flunks three of them, and he only passes nine in the fall semester, but passes 15 in the spring semester, now they have their 24 for the year. Is that good enough? You have a requirement that this child has to give a transcript to the parent paying support. Do they have to do that every time? We don't have any notice provision for that? Shouldn't it be they only have to give it if the parent wants it? And, in the handout that they gave you, I've kind of given you some suggestions as to how you might go in and change that statute if you wanted to answer some of those questions.

     The modification of child support was something that I testified on last year, and that was a change to 452.370.1, by adding a provision at the end that the 20 percent rule, and we all know that you have a prima facie change in circumstances if the current order and the Form 14 order is more than 20 percent difference, you have a prima facie change in circumstances, but the issue was raised, what if, on the time you entered your order, you had more than a 20 percent change by agreement or for whatever reason. The order that you entered was 20 percent different than the Form 14. Did that mean the next day you had a change in circumstances, and, obviously, the answer was no, and we added a provision in there that the 20 percent rule would only apply if the existing amount was the presumed amount when it was entered? And, then you went and passed that change. That was in Section 1., and in Section 8. , of the same section, you said, except that when you have a IV-D case you don't have to prove a change of circumstances and any change is enough, okay, don't even have to be 20 percent change. Any change is sufficient.

     Now, I didn't understand this until I get into it, but when you talk about definition of IV-D, IV-D, as I understand it means any time the division is involved. So, if I go to the division and ask for modification, it's now a IV-D case. So, assume I go into court, Senator Dougherty, you're shaking your head, no, but that's my understanding.......

     DOUGHERTY: Let me get myself out of trouble here. First of all, it's Representative Dougherty, and I don't want you to get yourself in trouble by insulting the House.

     GOEKE: I knew it was Representative Dougherty. I'm sorry.

     DOUGHERTY: That's the cheapest campaign I've ever had.

     CASKEY: Well, we Senators didn't mind to give him a moment of......

     GOEKE: I didn't mean any offense to the Senators.

     DOUGHERTY: Is this my fifteen minutes of glory? This is it.

     CASKEY: That's it.

     DOUGHERTY: That's it, huh.

     CASKEY: 15 seconds of glory.

     DOUGHERTY: 15 seconds of glory.

     In terms of IV-D cases, is the director still in the audience here, okay, we'll come back. We can have a discussion later about IV-D.

     GOEKE: It refers to 454.400 and 454.400 is any time the division is involved, and that's what I've been led to believe, if wrong, what I'm about to say doesn't make a whole lot of difference because it's going to go the same.

     That one says you don't need any change, whatsoever. If the division files a motion to modify, I must modify. Then if you go look at 454.498, it says the division, if appropriate, shall modify if there's no change. So, the division gets to decide whether it's appropriate or not and I don't get to decide whether it's appropriate or not. Sometime I think that maybe you ought to look at that. I would suggest that 452.370, you ought to use the same language for a judge as you're using for a division. I only have to do it if it's appropriate and you might go back in at look at adding the same provision that we had in. Let's compare apples and apples. If it was a Form 14 amount, we should compare it to a Form-14 amount, but if it wasn't, we shouldn't.

     JACOB: Mr. Chairman. Question, real quick.

     CASKEY: Senator Jacob.

     JACOB: Also, isn't there a difference in how they deal with the calculation of Form-14 for women on AFDC, no longer AFDC payments, put in your court, they would impute come kind of income to unemployed person.....

     GOEKE: Representative, the rule would not be any different. I could either impute it or not impute it. The division can impute it or not. They have so many rules, as I understand when they impute. But, Rule 8801 is the same for everybody. So, there wouldn't be any different.

     JACOB: It's not interpreted different by or enforced differently .......

     GOEKE: Not significantly, as I understand it, no.

     One of the other things that I suggested throughout my testimony last time, was that if you are going to say I should make findings on certain things, don't make it mandatory unless one of the parties wants it. If one of the parties wants it, that's fine, like in the college, don't make them give a transcript unless the person who's paying support asks for the transcript. Don't make me make findings why I do one thing or another unless somebody asks me. My concern is that the court of appeals will reverse it just on the fact that a finding wasn't made, to give you an example. The Supreme Court has a rule that says every order shall be titled Judgement. Supreme Court has sent things - the Court of Appeals has sent things back as not being final ordered because it wasn't titled Judgement. So, we don't want me to miss something such as a noncontested situation. Everybody has agreed that I should A,B,C, but their separation agreement doesn't list the reasons. Should I have to make those findings when they don't want it? I suggest that you ought to be looking at things and don't make things mandatory unless somebody asks for it.

     A couple of the items that were in 51 that were not passed for one reason or another was the question of relocation within the state. There was a provision of one draft that talked about you couldn't move more than 50 miles. I, personally, think that is a great idea. I don't know that 50 miles is the right figure. I'm not sure that 50 miles isn't too far, but I think there ought to be something, because as I understand the law today, is if somebody lives in St. Louis, they can't move across to East St. Louis, Illinois, or Belleville, but they can move to Kansas City. If somebody is in St. Louis, and dad's visiting in St. Louis, and mom, with the kids, moves to Kansas City, it is very difficult to visit every Wednesday night. So, you ought to be looking at that, and it's not that mom can't do it, it's just that she either has to get consent of the other side or come into court and have me do it. So, it ought to not be unilaterally things, because the argument is that sometimes it's used as a tool to deny visitation. We routinely enter orders now that allows mom to move out of state for various reasons. It's not something we want to prohibit. It's something that we need to look at to make sure that it's done in the right way.

     One of the biggest concerns that I have is that we don't do things that undermine what we've been doing in the last ten years. For the time that we were trying to get that visitation schedule approved, we had women say, fighting for every amount of time, and dad's trying to get time, and dad's consistently said, I don't care what it costs, I'll pay the total support, give me the time. If we now start saying, oh, you've now got this time, now we're going to take money away from you. We are going to reverse where we were and we wouldn't be where we are today.

     Now, one of the things that we dealt with in the Supreme Court committee on child support review, was to address that fact that there are some costs by the visiting and, again, I agree it's the person who doesn't have custody. Visitation, for purposes of our committee, visitation was when you don't take the child away from where they're at. Temporary custody is the thing that we call - when one side had physical custody, the other one had temporary custody. That was the differentiation that we used.

     But, there was a provision in there, in Senate Bill 51, that talked about the guidelines should be changed to allow for full credit, for all the expenses used with regards to visitation. I suggest that if you took it to the logical conclusion, there would never be any support paid because you've got housing cost and car cost and all kinds of things for visitation, and that if you're concerned that the Supreme Court will not adopt what the recommendation is, a suggestion to them that the guidelines should consider giving some credit, not a full credit, but some credit, would give the message to the Supreme Court, I'm confident the Supreme Court will consider what we have suggested, not that they will pass it, but they will consider it.

     With the area of visitation enforcement, I will tell you that the provision in 51 that talked about this exparte order. When I saw that, first instance, it was, oh, my Gosh, how many extra cases am I going to have? I will tell you the more that I thought about, the more that I came to the conclusion that, yes, it would be more work, but it would less work in the long-run. A contempt takes a lot of time. There are always lawyers on both sides. It is very, very technical. I would much rather do something very expeditious, even if I had to do it, even if we didn't get it to a system where mediators and things were doing it, even if I had to do it and get the parties before me and I had to spend five or ten minutes to say, did you deny, etc. The problem that I have with that is, if I enter an order to obey my order, shouldn't the second order have some more clout to it? And, one of the suggestions was, well, make it a criminal penalty. Now, we all know the prosecutor is not going to prosecute those. That's not the point. The point is, the perception is, that there's some teeth in it, and when the police go out, at least they have the ability to threaten it, even if we know they're not going to do it. So, those are some of the things and I've kind of laid that out a little bit further in my comments to you.

     One of the things that happened to be ones that I thought was absolutely a bad result was, I had a situation where mom had moved away and had not told dad where she was. Dad could not pay support. Couldn't see the kids because she didn't know where he was. Mom moved to another state and then went to the other state under the enforcement of provisions of the other state and filed for all this back support that she hadn't gotten while she had been gone, and, dad filed a motion, a counter motion to modify for custody in that case that she had filed in Missouri. Court of Appeals said mom was not a party to the litigation and that, therefore, she was not subject to the jurisdiction of the court, that it was the division that was the party to the lawsuit. I think that's something you need to look at. If we are going to allow them to enforce their support, they ought to make themselves subject to enforcing visitation if they're denying visitation at the same time.

     DOUGHERTY: Judge, if I could, please?

     GOEKE: Yes, Sir.

     DOUGHERTY: On the relocation thing. That tore our committee up. I mean, nobody particularly liked a definite mile, because once we began to talk about miles, then we talked about across the street, and if it's got to when the mile was here and across the street is a different school district. We talked about the school districts. We talked about the problems involved. We talked about the fact that it needs to be some, however, resolved, but we couldn't find any living Solomons around, and to arbitrarily pick any number out, irrespective, there were just too many pro's and too many con's. So, since our committee of extremely wise people really battled this back and forth for quite some time, and couldn't really come to any agreement, why should we put 50 miles, or in your case, 49, 51, 57, 82. Why pick a definite number? How many problems is that going to  cause for us to solve? I mean, we could not come up with a resolution of that and I think some of the committee members are here at this.....

     GOEKE: I think you have less interpretation if you have a number of miles than if you're fighting over what the number of miles should be. Remember, this is just a presumption, that up to those number of miles, you can do whatever you want. It's over those number of miles you can't. That doesn't mean you can't come in and I don't say, yes, you can go. It's just what you can do without agreement of the other side. Now, if you want to say an hour driving time. Think in terms of ......

     DOUGHERTY: Everything you can think of we talked about, honest to God.

     GOEKE: I think you need to, somehow, stop moving somebody moving across the state, because that even interferes with - surely it interferes with the Wednesday night visitation, in our case. It even interferes with the weekend visitation.

     DOUGHERTY: Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. We're just trying to.....I must be new to somebody out there.

     But our committee had just fought tooth and nail to try to come up with something that wasn't fraught with problems in and of itself.

     GOEKE: Well, I can't give you, necessarily, the solution. I'm telling you what the potential problems are. I, personally, would feel more comfortable with some figure, whatever that figure be than everybody going different numbers.

     CASKEY: Representative Green.

     GREEN: Judge, you had just talked about the division having to enforce child support, they should also have to support child visitation. Where's that in your testimony?

     GOEKE: I don't believe that's what I said, and I will say that's not in my comments. That was something that other people testifying brought up, okay? If mom is coming into court and is getting the benefit of coming into court to collect her support, she ought to, then, be subject to the jurisdiction of the court if she has done something wrong, i.e., like moved away and denied visitation. She shouldn't be able to come in and use the court to get her support when she's moved away and denied the visitation. If she wants to come into court, that fine. But, she shouldn't be able to - I'll give you a horrendous example. That is not fiction. I was reversed on appeal.

     JACOB: Through child support enforcement, you can't come in, otherwise you could.

     GOEKE: If mom files a motion to modify you can file a counter motion. That's not what happened. The division filed and mom was in a different state, dad could not get service on her for a motion to modify, didn't know where mom was, but mom still got the support, even though dad wasn't seeing the kid, and I don't have any problem with mom getting the support. I have problem with mom not being to the jurisdiction of the court to determine whether or not custody should be changed, or visitation should be changed.

     JACOB: I missed part of the presentation from the previous speaker, but under the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act, ....

     CASKEY: Senator, we can't hear your question.

     JACOB: Under the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act now, will that allow others issues than just custody? That won't allow support too, will it?

     GOEKE: Actually, there's another uniform act that deals with support, and I can't give you those initials, but there's another one that also deals with support, and it says once you have a support order, another state can't get it, and you don't have conflicting support orders like we have right now. They're two different things.

     JACOB: You can't do the same issues in one proceeding, though?

     GOEKE: Not as the current status of the law is.

     JACOB: That's what I wanted to point out.

     DOUGHERTY: Judge, on the criminalization, some of your colleagues said, don't even begin to go down that road, and someone had thrown up as a potential method for dealing with repeats or egregious offenders versus going to the criminalization route. You seem to be the only out there.....

     GOEKE: Remember, it's already a crime to interfere with custody. You already have a statute.

     DOUGHERTY: Talking about the increased hammer that you asked for. What about the bond idea that was floated earlier?

     GOEKE: The question of bond is, how are you going to get the money? Where are you going to get the money from? Assume mom is the one that, and I will tell you, I've done it. I have required a bond and the way I got the money was, mom happened to have been in an automobile accident and she had a personal injury recovery and I knew what lawyer had the proceeds and we attached it. The problem is getting the money.

     DOUGHERTY: You attached the lawyer's salary?

     GOEKE: No. We attached the person of the fee that the lawyer was holding that was going to mom. That was a great lead into my next one and that's attorney's fees.

     DOUGHERTY: I didn't do that on purpose.

     GOEKE: One of the suggestions that I had made when I testified last time was we can divide marital debt, and I can say that if you have a debt to ABC Finance, you're going to pay this out of that asset or that asset. I can't order attorney's fees to be paid out of an asset, and the reason for that is, because we have a statute that says you can only order one side to pay the other's attorneys fees, and you can't order one side to pay their own attorney's fee. I don't have any problem with that, but it's a debt like any other debt. And, I suggest that we ought to be looking at the possibility of paying debts, i.e., the attorney's fees out of the proceeds of the marriage, or the assets. At least give us that option. As a practical matter, what that happens is, antidotally, we're down at the lake at some conference, and one lawyer said what we did was we took an account that they had on a temporary motion. We took an account, $100,000, and we set that aside, and we said that account is going to be used to pay attorney's fees, and then they gave some money to mom, and some money to dad, while the case was pending, and the parties, real quick, figured out that the attorney's fees were going to be their money, and the case ended up settling very quickly when it was, wait a minute, if we fight, that's our money. So, and the other side of it is, it's not uncommon for dad's, particularly, that's the way it tends to happen. You divide the property and then out of the court dad has you say, okay, pay mom's attorney's fees, so dad ends up not only getting whatever his share is, but less than his share, so at least you ought to give us the option of treating this debt like any other debt.

     The next issue I'd like to discuss is wage withholdings. The current status of the law is that any time I enter a custody order I shall enter a wage withholding unless the parties in writing agree otherwise, or unless I find a good reason not to do it. I think you have told me we should do wage withholdings and I generally do wage withholdings unless I have a written agreement to the contrary.

     You create some problems when one of the children drops out of school. You still have a wage withholding for all of that. That child is not emancipated, you can't get service maybe on mom to bring her into court. There ought to be a mechanism for you to go in and get the wage withholding changed, and then have mom come in and challenge it if it's not the right thing. Right now, mom can come in and get a wage withholding. If it's not the right amount, dad can challenge it, because we're going to have other problems. We are going to need to modify wage withholdings a whole lot more than we are right now, as was brought up with college. If dad's paying college, then we don't want wage withheld for his support for those nine months. If there has been a voluntary transfer of custody, they haven't gone in and gotten a motion to modify, but mom has given dad custody of the kids, dad ought to be able to terminate that support because mom is no longer entitled to support if she's given up custody of the kids. So, we need to get a mechanism to make it easier to modify the wage withholdings. I think that's something that you ought to at least look at.

     Joint Custody - Preference vs. Presumption. I understand the law  to be the day that it's a preference. There was some discussion in 51 that it be a presumption. I'm not a proponent of it being a presumption. I'm a proponent of it as being a presumption like you have right now and I think you need to clarify what it is that you mean. I think when you originally passed joint custody, you meant, joint physical and legal custody. I think it was only after your original act that we lawyers and judges created this fiction of joint legal vs. joint physical, and the law today, as you read that section, which is 452.375, talks about joint physical and legal custody, but the thing that we see the most often in St. Louis County is joint legal custody with primary physical custody to one person and the one who doesn't have primary physical custody has temporary custody 37 to 40 percent of the time.

     Now, for want of discussion, in the southern district, that's joint custody. The Southern District Court of Appeals has said, and I don't remember exactly, so I ask Judge Frawley, because he's the expert on case law. What was the southern district ruling and Tom said, it was either 20 or 25 percent. Souther District says if a noncustodial parent has 20 to 25 percent of the overnights, that's joint custody. If what we're talking about is joint custody 50/50, not even the expert from Texas, and I'm sorry I don't have his name, he didn't even talk about that being joint custody. You know you've got 30/40 percent of the time could be joint custody. You need to talk in terms of what joint custody is. And, I suggest to you that there ought to be a second one. You ought to have joint legal with primary physical. That ought to be a preference that you consider, and if you start with considering joint legal and physical and if you don't think that's the right thing, then look at joint legal or primary physical for one. You could have joint physical with primary legal, but in reality, that never happens. That's just not something we see. So, you might think in terms of joint legal and physical, as option No. l. Option No. 2., is joint legal with primary physical. Option No. 3., is primary physical and legal, and then set up and say the preference is for the first one. If you don't like the first one, then you look at the second one, because the way it's been interpreted right now by the court of appeals is there is no order of preference between one, two, three, and four, as currently written in the statute. I don't think that's your intent. I think your intent was us to look at one, and then to look at two, and then to look at three.

     DOUGHERTY: Excuse me, Judge, the intent, whoever made it, there's hardly anybody here left except for maybe two or three people around this table. But given the nature of what we're hearing today, it seems to be a tossup even amongst folks from the bar today in this room in terms of whether or not there should be a hierarchy or whether or not there should be the joint, how it could be construed. It's obviously not construed 50/50, but you're coming down on the side that A., there should be an hierarchy and B., it should be a rebuttable presumption or just presumed.

     GOEKE: Just a preference.

     DOUGHERTY: Just the preference.

     GOEKE: You go, already listed as a preference, that you consider as a judge. That doesn't mean I'm going to do number one, because in reality, I happen to be a proponent of joint custody. That was my divorce, was a joint custody, but I will tell you the most common thing that I enter is joint legal or primary physical for one. That's the most common order that I enter. I always look at the other one, but that's not - you don't have a whole lot of cases where it's shared 50/50.

     CASKEY: Judge, we appreciate your testifying today.

     DOUGHERTY: We have about five minutes.

     CASKEY: Representative Green.

     GREEN: They come into you with this preference, who's actually making the preference to you?

     GOEKE: It usually starts out, Representative, I say, well, first, when I talk in a pre-trial, my first question is, what are the kids doing right now, and then my next question is, is there any fight over custody? 80 percent of the time, there's no fight over custody.

     GREEN: Okay, in fight over custody is when you're doing preference. What is the plight of the child now? Who is that child with at the time the separation occurs?

     GOEKE: The current status of the law is that has custody when the divorce is filed is the custodian pending divorce until there is another order.

     GREEN: What about in these conflicts. You have one parent who wants the divorce, the other one is not interested, takes the child with him, and then files for divorce. Automatically, would that so-called parent, is now a noncustodial parent, for just going to work one day, coming home from work, let's just use, the wife is gone, the child is gone, the next thing he's served with papers. He now has no opportunity to be a temporary custodial parent, because he went to work that day, under our current system.

     GOEKE: I'm not sure I understand the question.

     GREEN: You're saying I was going from preference. Who is the child with, and then we went on to if the separation, who is the child with? That's the temporary.

     GOEKE: No, that's the primary. Who the child is with is the primary pending.

     GREEN: Right. Okay, what I'm saying is, I also feel, maybe it's not what we're dealing with today, but there's a dilemma there also, that a parent is not even given a fair assessment and when we're doing primary care before you do the divorce proceeding......

     SMITH: He's talking about the race to the courthouse.

     GREEN: Right.

     GOEKE: That happens, okay? It doesn't happen often, and over the years, the person - the hypothetical, most often, is mom has the kids. They're separated. Mom has the kids. Dad has this weekend, and he doesn't bring the kids back Monday morning, and he files for divorce. Now, he has the kids. All mom is in immediately asking for a temporary order and we go back to square one and correct things. If you want to deal with that problem, a solution could be to change the law that says who has custody today to who's had custody most during the last month, six months, whatever, and would solve that problem.

     GREEN: That's a dilemma also that I just wanted to touch upon with you. I've enjoyed your testimony. Thank you, Senator.

     CASKEY: Representative Hollingsworth?

     HOLLINGSWORTH: Thank you. Judge, I've been thinking about this for a long time and talked to a couple of people here today about it. It's about the enforcement of visitation rights, and we've talked about some penalties and possible punishments through fines or abatement of child support. Current statute provides, as you know, Judge, that that can be considered a reason for transfer in custody. Judge, I've heard attorneys yell at custodial mothers, their attorneys, and say, give him the baby, or the judge has every right to take that baby away from you. I have rarely heard a judge yell at the custodial parent to tell them, look, to threaten them. You and I were chatting about this at the lunch break. I think that if judges, which you perhaps use that statute a little bit stronger then not only would the custodial parent of that case, but her girl friend, and her girl friend, and her girl friend, all who may be playing games, using the child, might, in essence, start understanding the seriousness of visitation, if you have one judge transfer custody for that reason.

     The other comment I want to make, I guess, just briefly, is I think Judge Frawley suggested that, perhaps, transferring custody was, if you fine them, you're going to damage, or you're hurting the child support obligation. If you take the child from the mother or the custodial parent, then you're penalizing the child, and we all, of course, know frequent and meaningful contact is the public policy. So, that means we're penalizing the child either way, and I just wish that I guess our judiciary and our circuits would be a little bit stronger when those cases do come up to the bench to yell at mom, yell at the custodial, turn the baby over, and I just wish that that would happen more, and I don't know if you want to give me any examples that you would like to use from your judicial experience but maybe you can make a comment on that.

     GOEKE: I don't usually talk to the parties, at least pre-trial. I talk to the parties pre-trial for, I mean I talk to the lawyers pre-trial for a number of reasons. I don't want the parties to get a perception that I've made up my mind. Lawyers understand that what we say in pre-trial is just discussions. I've not made up my mind. Lay people don't understand that. But, I have many times told lawyers, you understand this is grounds for me to transfer custody, and they go out and yell at their client or talk to their client. The problem that you have is the case where dad being a good parent knows that it's best for mom to have primary custody. He doesn't want primary custody. He knows it's best for the child for mom to have primary custody, but he wants his visitation. So, dad's not even asking for custody, so I can't transfer custody. You need a mechanism to be able to increase the risk. I tell all my colleagues when I talk and do training on how you settle cases that unless you create risk, you do not settle cases. So, you have to have the risk out there, even if I never use it, I want the ability to create risk, and you've got to have a penalty, otherwise, I'm just issuing an order that, obey the order that I previously entered. Well, they haven't obeyed the last one, what makes you think they're going to obey this one. There's got to be some penalty to make them believe something is going to happen and then you've got to have something for the police to go out and enforce it. If you don't have a criminal penalty the only choice the police if the go out there is to physically transfer to custody, and we don't want that.

     HOLLINGSWORTH: Judge, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

     CASKEY: Any other questions? Judge, there may be comments that you didn't get to cover in your presentation. Do you have them in writing?

     GOEKE: They've already been given to you, Senator.

     CASKEY: They've been distributed. Excellent. Thank you, very much, for being with us today.
 We're going to deviate from the printed schedule. We're going to call Karen Plax and Margaret Donnelly.