I’m a California attorney and agree with Darleen based on my personal experience. I’m a trial court research attorney with some but not a lot of family law experience from private practice, but we have a full-time family law guy here and rotation will put me in his place full-time in a year or so.
It is absolutely, 100%, true that misuse of restraining orders (RO) is only made possible by men not opposing them. I once got a woman to pay my male client’s attorney fees for misuse of a restraining order due for abuse of process – the temporary restraining order kept him out of the insurance office he owned, and the application did not advise the Court it would have that effect. I pointed this out to the lady’s attorney, who immediately realized her client’s peril, stipulated to amendment of the TRO without trying to get her client’s approval, and then successfully badgered her client to pay my guy’s attorney fees if he agreed to not oppose a properly worded RO. Admittedly my reputation as an aggressive litigator helped.
But lawyers can’t do anything for clients who cave at once, or don’t retain counsel at all. It’s called the adversarial legal system for a reason. Courts review temporary restraining order applications for form and content – they don’t have the resources to investigate the facts alleged.
The anti-male presumptions Dr. Helen mentions vary from state to state, and seem vulnerable to a federal constitutional “as applied” challenge absent rather detailed legislative factual findings and record, plus sunset clauses. City of Richmond v. Croson, 488 U.S. 469, 511 (1989), Parents Involved v. Seattle School Dist. 377 Fed. 3d 949, 969 (2001). Statutory gender discrimination is not quite the same as that based on race and ethnicity, but gender is every bit as inherent as race and ethnicity.
I’m surprised no challenges based on these arguments have been brought yet.
