Jennifer Edwards, a Salt Lake City resident who wanted to file for a divorce, received the help she needed from Legal Aid Society of Salt Lake (LAS), a nonprofit organization that provides legal aid to low-income individuals.
Edwards, like many other low-income individuals, needed legal help but couldn’t afford it. After losing her husband’s income, Edwards didn’t have the means to acquire legal help to assist her with her divorce and gaining child support. In doing research, she came across LAS.
“I knew they didn’t have the resources and time to give to my case like another for-profit lawfirm would have. But I knew I had to try it,” Edwards said.
When asked about her legal case, Edwards wondered where to begin. She can trace it back to 2005 when her estranged husband, Ray, kept avoiding Edwards’s attempts to go to mediation for divorce. Ray kept putting it off, claiming that he needed to save money to marry another woman. After Ray remarried, Edwards asked again to go to mediation. This time, she said Ray told her no. Edwards told him that she would take him to court.
“I guess he thought I was bluffing because he didn’t take me seriously. He never thought that I could afford to get legal help,” Edwards said.
That was partly true: Edwards was supporting herself and her daughter on just her income, without alimony or child support. After discovering LAS, she began the application process by going to the Matheson Courthouse and filling out some initial paperwork.
Stewart Ralphs, director of LAS, says this can take up to four to five hours. “It is not something you can do on your lunch break,” Ralphs said.
Edwards made it through the screening process and was assigned her first attorney, Mary Peck Kashman, whom Edwards described as “awesome.” Edwards said Kashman always showed a personal interest and attentiveness with her case.
“She really knew my case backwards and front,” she said.
Edwards’s case has lasted several years, unlike a lot of the cases that LAS deals with. There was a lot of “contention,” as Edwards put it, between her and Ray. In addition to refusing to go to mediation, she said Ray tried at one point to get her to pay child support, and was emotionally manipulating their 3-year-old daughter, Maya. A lot of legal work was done to help fix the situation — work that took about two years and two different lawyers.
Edwards didn’t always have court victories with LAS. In fact, she described her first court appearance as “devastating.” The commissioner hearing the case had not read Edwards’s case file and simply scolded her and Ray for fighting.
Edwards said she left in tears. “I was trying to hold it together but I just broke down sobbing in the middle of the courtroom,” she said. But soon afterward came the first sign of hope. The commissioner read her file and awarded Edwards temporary partial custody of Maya.
But that was not the end of the legal headache for Edwards.
“I would have to call the police a lot on Ray,” she said. “Especially when I was going to pick up Maya. He would just do things like either not be home when he knew I was supposed to come, or he would just flat out refuse to hand her over.”
She also had trouble with Ray “emotionally manipulating” Maya. “I didn’t know what to do for her, I didn’t know how to help. So I took her to counseling which turned out to be a success,” Edwards said.
Then came another breakthrough. Ray was assigned another attorney whom Edwards described as a “reasonable man.” Edwards believes the new attorney helped Ray see that he needed to hold up his end of the bargain.
Edwards was also assigned another attorney after Kashman had to fly home to be with her sick mother. At first Edwards was frustrated when her new attorney didn’t seem to know her case, but eventually he “got caught up” and finished out the rest of the legal work. They finally got Ray into mediation, he is paying child support, and Edwards was awarded full custody of Maya.
One of the paralegals working on the case was Michelle Beddoes, who said they had to approach Ray with six different parenting plans before Ray and Edwards finally agreed.
“It always takes a while to reach an agreement when the opposing party is really difficult to deal with,” Beddoes said.
Overall, Edwards is very happy with the way her case turned out and the services she received from LAS.
“[LAS] completely saved my sanity,” she said. “They gave me new hope, another chance, and I hate to think where I would still be without them.”
Edwards has been out of the courtroom for a couple years and her daughter Maya is doing well after counseling. Edwards said she is now able to move on with her life, thanks to the Legal Aid Society of Salt Lake.
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