Danger, Disappearances, and Divorce: A Conversation with Family Law Attorney Patricia McKinnon

Summary

Murder Sheet Podcast: Episode Summary

Title: Danger, Disappearances, and Divorce: A Conversation with Family Law Attorney Patricia McKinnon
Hosts: Áine Cain & Kevin Greenlee
Guest: Patricia McKinnon, Certified Family Law Specialist
Release Date: July 15, 2025

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1. Introduction

In this compelling episode of Murder Sheet, hosts Áine Cain and Kevin Greenlee delve into the intricate and often perilous world of family law with esteemed family law attorney Patricia McKinnon. The discussion explores the emotional and legal complexities that family law practitioners navigate, highlighting the intersection between personal turmoil and professional responsibility.

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2. Understanding Family Law

Patricia McKinnon begins by defining family law, emphasizing its broad scope:

"Family law deals with highly personal matters. Marriages, divorces, parents, children, abuse, protection." (07:40)

She elaborates on various facets, including divorce, paternity, guardianships, and cases involving children in need of services (CHINS). Patricia notes the dynamic nature of family law, where each case is unique and intertwines with multiple legal disciplines, from intellectual property to criminal law.

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3. Patricia's Path into Family Law

Patricia shares her unexpected journey into family law, influenced by personal circumstances:

"I was in the process of filing my own divorce from my first husband... I volunteered for political work and through that, I landed a position representing civil cases involving CHINS and termination of parental rights (TPR)." (10:29)

Despite initial skepticism from her superiors, Patricia thrived in her role, developing a deep understanding of the emotional and legal stakes involved in family disputes.

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4. Navigating Dangerous Territory

The conversation shifts to the inherent dangers in family law. Patricia recounts instances where attorneys face threats and violence due to the volatile nature of their cases:

"Family law is a dangerous area of law to practice in... Physical danger... It’s not just Indiana, it’s nationwide." (60:16)

She narrates specific cases, including an Indianapolis attorney targeted by an ex-spouse and a magistrate's tragic death, underscoring the real-life risks lawyers encounter.

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5. Emotional Toll and Coping Mechanisms

Patricia discusses the emotional challenges professionals face in family law:

"You have to be able to separate yourself from your client's emotions... If you take all that on and you can't distance yourself from it, you're going to crash and burn." (78:59)

She highlights the importance of mental health support, referencing her involvement with the Judges and Lawyers Assistance Program, which provides counseling and support groups for attorneys dealing with grief, addiction, or situational depression.

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6. Misconceptions About Family Law

Addressing common misconceptions, Patricia clarifies what family law attorneys can and cannot do:

"Attorneys don't always have all the facts... Don’t expect us to be magicians who can change the other side’s behavior." (90:36)

She emphasizes the necessity of honesty between clients and attorneys, explaining the legal ramifications of withholding information and the critical role of transparent communication in successful case outcomes.

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7. Intersection of Family and Criminal Law

Patricia explores how family law often intersects with criminal law, particularly in cases involving domestic violence and child abduction:

"Protective orders can be civil or criminal... Domestic violence cases can escalate to life-threatening situations for everyone involved." (37:58)

She discusses the processes surrounding protective orders, custody battles, and the legal protections in place to prevent violence, while also acknowledging their limitations.

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8. Memorable Cases and Lessons Learned

Sharing poignant anecdotes, Patricia recounts cases that have profoundly impacted her practice:

• Guardianship and Child Safety:
  A case involving a great-grandmother fighting for custody of a disabled child, where Patricia skillfully cross-examined the opposing party, leading to a favorable outcome.

  "It was important for the judge to know that Riley was sending her letters... And I asked her about her contact with Riley." (30:50)

• Attorney Safety:
  The harrowing experience of an attorney targeted by a former client’s new partner, resulting in a federal case and highlighting the potential dangers faced by legal professionals.

  "She ended up with a federal case... It was a terrifying situation." (60:16)

These stories underline the unpredictable and often dangerous nature of family law practice.

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9. Advice for Aspiring Family Law Attorneys

Patricia offers invaluable guidance for those considering a career in family law:

"If you can make time while you're in law school, try to work for an attorney in the area of family law... Don’t go into it blindly." (95:34)

She stresses the importance of hands-on experience, mentorship, and continuous learning to navigate the emotional and legal complexities inherent in family law.

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10. Conclusion

The episode concludes with a heartfelt appreciation for Patricia’s candor and expertise. The hosts acknowledge the relentless challenges faced by family law attorneys and the profound impact their work has on individuals and families.

"You’re doing a great job... You deserve a treat." (103:18)

Patricia reiterates the significance of resilience, ethical practice, and the continuous pursuit of justice in the face of adversity.

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Notable Quotes:

• "Family law is a dangerous area of law to practice in." – Patricia McKinnon (60:16)
• "You need to feel that trust with your attorney; it's crucial for your case." – Patricia McKinnon (33:03)
• "Protective orders can be civil or criminal, and their enforcement varies accordingly." – Patricia McKinnon (37:58)
• "Don’t go into it blindly; gain experience first-hand." – Patricia McKinnon (95:34)

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Key Takeaways:

• Complexity of Family Law: Family law encompasses a wide range of personal and legal issues, making each case unique and multifaceted.

• Emotional and Physical Risks: Practitioners often deal with highly charged emotional situations that can escalate to threats and violence.

• Importance of Mental Health Support: Attorneys need robust support systems to cope with the emotional toll of their cases.

• Client-Attorney Trust: Transparent and honest communication between clients and attorneys is essential for effective representation and successful outcomes.

• Interdisciplinary Nature: Family law frequently intersects with other legal areas, including criminal law, necessitating a broad understanding of various legal principles.

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Resources Mentioned:

• Indiana Super Lawyers Magazine: Patricia McKinnon was featured in the February 13, 2025 edition.
• Judges and Lawyers Assistance Program (JLAC): Provides counseling and support for attorneys.

For more insights and detailed discussions on family law and its challenges, listen to the full episode on Murder Sheet.

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This summary encapsulates the key points and discussions from the episode, providing listeners and those unfamiliar with the podcast a comprehensive overview of the insightful conversation with Patricia McKinnon.

Transcript

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[Anya Cain]

Here's something that may surprise you when we talk to lawyers about the most soul crushing, disturbing and frankly dangerous field of law. Most of them do not bring up criminal law.

[Kevin Greenlee]

They bring up family law in a.

[Anya Cain]

Way that kind of makes sense. Family law deals with highly personal matters. Marriages, divorces, parents, children, abuse, protection.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Add any of that to a legal dispute and you've got a recipe for a highly charged, highly emotional situation. Things can get heated fast in family law. In certain situations, it can even get dangerous for the parties. It can actually become perilous for the attorneys themselves.

[Anya Cain]

To get more information on this, we talked to an expert. We interviewed family law attorney Patricia McKinnon. Patricia is a certified family law specialist. She's been doing this work for many years.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Patricia has received a number of awards from both the American Bar association and the Indiana State Bar Foundation. She was the subject of a profile in the February 13, 2025 edition of Indiana Super Lawyers magazine. We will link to that article in our show Notes.

[Anya Cain]

We chatted with Patricia about her own journey into family law and all the ins and outs of this often contentious field. She also will talk to us about a few instances where attorneys were either put in danger or faced devastating news because of their work in family law. It really gives into both the importance of this work and the toll it can take on those who find themselves in the center of these cases. Patricia sums up many of these instances as when good people go bad or good people on their worst day.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Because any of us can find ourselves in a family law dispute. Patricia will also talk about a few murders that involved lawyers as victims. We find it is really important to stress that domestic abuse and violence can happen to anyone, even attorneys.

[Patricia McKinnon]

My name is Anya Cain. I'm a journalist.

[Anya Cain]

And I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm an attorney.

[Patricia McKinnon]

And this is the Murder Sheet.

[Anya Cain]

We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews and deep dives into murder cases.

[Kevin Greenlee]

We're the Murder Sheet.

[Anya Cain]

And this is Danger, Disappearances and Divorce. A conversation with family law attorney Patricia McKinnon.

[Unnamed Speaker]

It.

[Kevin Greenlee]

I guess to start off with.

[Patricia McKinnon]

Patricia, can you just tell us a little bit about what is family law?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Oh, that's a great question. A lot of people don't understand what family law is. If you ask family law attorneys, we'll tell you that we cover a multitude of areas within the law. Divorce paternities, which is a child born outside of a marriage. Guardianships, where a third party who's not the mom or dad would try to get custody or of either children or an adult and then manage either their money and their estates or manage themselves, their body, their person. It also covers what we call CHINS law in Indiana. CHINS is C H I N S and it stands stands for children in need of Services. That's a case where the Indiana Department of Child Services, or DCS is what it's referred to comes into your life and alleges that you've either abandoned or neglected or abused your children, either for some reason, and they take custody from you A later. Part of a CHINS case is another area of law called tpr, the initials tpr, or Involuntary Termination of Parental Rights. Those are cases where a parent had an order in a TUNES case, has not complied with all of the terms by DCS From DCS's point of view, and they've changed the permanency plan to terminate a parent's rights, whether they wanted to be terminated or not, permanently cut off their contact. So that's another area. The nice part about family law is we touch almost every other area of law. There was a judge in Johnson county who went on the bench as a federal bankruptcy judge that said, there, quote, there is nothing like a good divorce. There's drama, there's financial issues, there's custody. There's usually all kinds of interesting things. And I can tell you now, having been in practice 30 years, last October, doing family law, that I have never had the same case twice. Never. So you can touch. We touch intellectual property issues. You know, someone might have a patent or trademark. We will touch bankruptcy. Should the couple file bankruptcy. We'll touch criminal law. Every area of law you can think of basically will somehow interact with family law.

[Patricia McKinnon]

I'm curious, you know, we read a little bit about your work as a public offend defender doing chin's cases, involuntary termination of parental rights cases.

[Unnamed Speaker]

What.

[Patricia McKinnon]

What drew you to family law specifically? Like, was that something you knew you wanted to do as soon as you became a lawyer?

[Unnamed Speaker]

That's another great question. And the answer is no. I had no idea. When I graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1994, I didn't really know what area of law that I wanted to practice in at that time. I was in the middle of my. Getting ready to file my own divorce from my first husband. And I had two very small children. And that climate in Indianapolis was not conducive to me being hired by a lot of firms, because since I would have been a single mom of two small children, the thought was that I might not be dependable. I might have to miss time for my children. So when I came to Indianapolis, I had worked for the Attorney General's office the summer before under Pamela Carter, who was the first black female attorney general in the entire country. I had interned half the year with her and then half the summer in Chicago for what they call the state's attorney's office, which is the prosecutor's office. And I was at juvenile court and I worked there. I was the only intern out of the entire summer program. Everybody else wanted to be in felony court. So I came to Indianapolis, a single mom with two small children in the process of filing a divorce. And. And I volunteered for political for the election. And through the course of volunteering I met people who knew people and subsequently I had an interview with. Her name is now Fran Watson, who she's a professor at IU here in the law school. Very esteemed, wins all kinds of awards, big criminal defense attorney, does a lot of exonerations. She was at that time, went by the name of Fran Hardy, was married and was the first head of the Marion County Public Defender Agency. And so she interviewed me and said we don't have any openings in our criminal cases, but we just took over the public defender's office at juvenile court on these new civil cases which were chins and termination cases. So I was literally the first attorney hired by the public defender agency to ever represent appearance. And the nice part about that was that I inherited a caseload of zero. The bad part about that was I had no one to give me advice on my cases. The man who was head of the public defender agency at juvenile court at that time was very upset that they had hired me because I was literally right out of law school and was worried how I would handle doing trials by myself. So it was a very unique experience. And continuing in doing those cases and helping another attorney with a federal case, I came to realize that family law was probably what I should be doing.

[Anya Cain]

You mentioned that that gentleman wasn't enthusiastic about you. Was any of that sexism?

[Unnamed Speaker]

No, it was that he wasn't part of my hiring process and also that I was literally a brand new attorney, a baby attorney we call him. So I had like, I had done a public defender clinic in at South Bend, but I hadn't done worked as an attorney. I'd not done trials by myself. And so he was worried, I think that I wasn't going to know what I was doing, which was my concern as well. You know, there I was.

[Patricia McKinnon]

What was it like doing those shins cases and those termination cases as a. As a public defender and just kind of getting right into it.

[Unnamed Speaker]

It was super scary. There is a book called the Chin's Desk Book that an organization called Kids Voice K I D S apostrophe after the S Kid's Voice Inc. And they still publish it and it is free and online. Anyone can look it up. And the Chin's desk book. I bought it at that time, nothing was online. And it has sections on all the statutes and case law, and it's updated fairly regularly. So that was a big help. They hired other attorneys after me who had been criminal public defenders. And so they were able to give me more advice about, like, trials. But prior to my. Me being hired, the judge out there who was at that time. Judge James Payne. Jim Payne, he had hired his own attorneys to represent parents and paid, you know, I don't know that they made more or less money than I did, but if you're hired by the judge, you. You know, it's a different mentality than if you're hired as an outside agency. And so I filed everything I could think of. I filed all kinds of motions. I asked for my own case plans. I fought everything tooth and nail. I didn't know any other way to do it. And it was kind of a shock, I think, for some of the DCS attorneys. There was an attorney at that time that you would be assigned to a specific judge. And there were four magistrates under Judge Payne. And the attorney that was opposite me in my cases, I went to her office one time to pick up documents, discovery documents that I had requested to help my client's case. And on the wall, she had a drawing of. Do you remember Calvin? The comic strip? Calvin and his tiger?

[Patricia McKinnon]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Right. And there was a picture of Calvin with his pants down and Calvin peeing on it. And my name was underneath where he was peeing. My gosh. And I thought, oh. And she didn't say anything. I don't think she even remembered it was on the wall, But I thought, oh, okay. I mean, I'm just trying to do a good job, right? And. And, you know, it was. That was an interesting experience. They were. All of the attorneys were very nice to me. They never were nasty to me. I just made. I just didn't. I made their jobs harder. Right. But I. I likened being a public defender right then to being in the front lines of a war. So I would be the foot soldier at the beginning, dodging the bullets and getting really quick at dodging the bullets, which would be, you know, the trial work. But. But I was getting a lot bloodier than the people at the back that were writing orders. Right. The clerks that were clerking, you know, doing things. But it was a great experience. Honestly. I believe if you can, as a baby attorney, if it's even possible, if you can work as a public defender or a prosecutor or for pro bono organization like Indiana Legal Services, Which I was on their board or Indianapolis Legal Aid or Neighborhood Christian Legal Clinic, one of those groups. It will affect you the rest of your life. It will completely change your mentality at how you look at the law and it'll make you a better person.

[Patricia McKinnon]

The other side, you mentioned the, the. The DCS people were, were nice in person, although maybe, maybe there was some tensions behind the scene. You know, how has that experience affected how you view DCS in general today? I mean, it's.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Oh, yeah. So I, I did a lot of. For a long time, I did seminars. I stopped. I just want to make sure your listeners know that I don't currently take chins or termination cases, but I do know there are a lot of good attorneys out there that do it. So I don't want anybody to call me and then be disappointed that I talked about something I won't accept a case on. If you think of like how people view kind of the irs, like the IRS maybe will institute a rule, even if the rule doesn't make sense because it's just been a rule and that's the way we have to do it. Those are those. It's the same thing for people who work at dcs. There are really good people that work there, but they have to follow their rules. There's no case by case exception. There's no. We can change the rule because of this bad experience. Yeah. To me, if you think of like a large institution that has this chugs along and the institution is valued over the individuals or the individual's experience, that's the same thing as true crime people.

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[Unnamed Speaker]

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I have to tell a story about Notre Dame while I'm doing this. I was very, very lucky to get into Notre Dame. I honestly believe I was diversity for Notre Dame, not necessarily in the sense of being a female, but at that time I was married to a Protestant minister and I was older. Out of my class, there were 15 of us who were out of like 180 plus students that were 25 or older. The majority of our classes, one else were right out of undergrad. And a lot of them were what they call double donors, where they had gone as undergrads and then also gone right into law school or maybe taken a year or two. But primarily we're 24 or under. Right? And I think that Notre Dame might have let me in because I was married to a Protestant minister and they didn't have a lot. And there was a. I would say the majority of people at the MI law school class were Catholic or had been Catholic or their families were Catholic. So I was a little different. Like our contracts professor, when he opened the class would do the Lord's Prayer. And if you know anything about religion, the Protestant version is a little different than the Catholic version. And I did my little Protestant version under my breath. I did. So I was very, very lucky. But the story about Notre Dame that I want to tell is that Notre Dame issues diplomas at that time in Latin. And our third year. So you go to law school for three years. So our third year they sent out a survey of the students and they said, do you want your diploma in English or in Latin? And so like, we all responded. And so I went and asked, you know, are we getting our diplomas in English or in Latin? And they're like, oh no, you're getting them in Latin. And I'm like, well, why did you ask us? And they're like, well, we just wanted to know. We just wanted to know. But again, an incredible institution. I mean, to have gone to Notre dame, a top 20 school, then still a top 20 law school. No one ever doubted when I came out of law school that I could write or that I was smart. In fact, here's my joke about Indianapolis. When I came to Indianapolis in 1994 in the fall and volunteered with Political Things to kind of meet people, because Indiana is much who you know and the person who knows someone, who knows someone. That's how I got my interview with the public defender agency. That's how I met this attorney that I helped with this federal case part time. I met a gentleman who said to me, you didn't go to law school here. And I'll be honest, I didn't even know there was a law school in Indianapolis. I'm not from Indiana. I'm originally from the Chicago suburbs. You can tell by my accent. And I met this gentleman and he said, you didn't go to law school here? And he said, I don't recognize you. And I'm like, what? He's like, yeah, I graduated and you know, I don't recognize you. And I said, oh. He said, where'd you go to law school? And I told him I went to, you know, University of Notre Dame. And he said, well, don't think you're any smarter than I am. And walked off. And this was like the third person I met.

[Patricia McKinnon]

Welcome to Indianapolis.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I was like, okay, all right. So I don't ever talk about it a whole lot, you know, because of that. Right. You know, you, you don't want to Notre Dame, if they teach national law, they don't teach state. Like you don't learn Indiana's law. And we had, out of my law school class, we had 15 of us, that's that sat for the Indiana bar. And just a few of us stayed here. But the other people from my class that came here clerked for, like Chief Justice Shepard or at that time, the head of the Supreme Court or another judge, Myra Selby, when she came on, the first black female judge in the Supreme Court of Indiana. Another classmate clerked for her, another one clerked on the court of appeals, the head of the court of appeals. And then there was me. Right. So I am happy now that the market's a little kinder towards single parents, particularly women with small children. But, you know, we survived and I'm a better person for it. Yeah, absolutely.

[Patricia McKinnon]

And I'm wondering, can you tell us a bit about your, the trajectory of your career since those days as a public defender, leaving that and then sort of all about what you've done since, what you specialize in now.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Okay, so. All right, so it's a two part answer. The first part is that I got this public defender job at the same time I got this part time position in the office here at 333 East Ohio, where an attorney was working on a federal case that had a RICO component. Rico, and that's racketeering. And he saw that I had taken a class at Notre Dame from the man who wrote the law, Professor Blakey. And I love Professor Blakey. So that was how I had these two little part time jobs. And then my caseload that started at zero on the Public Defender Agency. I started January 1st of 20 of 1995, sorry, 1995. And then by 2000, the year 2000, I had like 80 plus cases and it was a part time job. And we got like $1,800 a month and we got a pager at the public defender's expense and we got like $160 a month towards our rent of wherever we were. And that was it. And I had law school loans. My payments back then were like 800amonth from law school. So I wasn't making enough money to survive. And the cases. So one of the attorney's sisters worked in our office for him and said, you have to quit this public defender contract. You don't have time to build up a practice. So I bought an ad in the phone book. Remember the phone book? I bought an ad in the phone book and by myself. And I said I was going to do family law. And so I started building up cases from that. Like I said, In December of 2000 I was done being a public defender and it just broke my heart, really broke my heart. People still called me for years about cases and I still did some lecturing. So I. My primary law practice then had room to grow and I had time in 2000, oh gosh, I'm going to get the year wrong. In the early 2000s, the Indiana State Bar association started creating specialty tests where you could call yourself in real life a specialist. Every state's different on this. The first group that got a specialist certification was the trust Real estate Trust property and probate section. And theirs was a like a two day test. And then family law decided to create it through the family law executive board from the state bar. So I was part of the group that took that first test. And so I was able then to say that I was a specialist in family law. So you can't really say you're a specialist unless you're through one of these programs. And it's on my stationary so that you have to recertify every five years. And I think it's. I've done it four times to recertify so that the assumption with that you have to. They check your ethics, your kid, you know, have you ever had a malpractice case? You have to pass the substantive exam, that you have to get recommendations from judges and other attorneys. It's a process. But I never regretted doing it. There is a thought out there that because you hold yourself out as a specialist, that you're held to a higher malpractice standard, our ethical standard. But it's not been tested yet in Indiana that I know of, where someone has been sued and they said, well, you know, you're a specialist, you should know better. I use it when I ask for attorney fees. I make sure the judge knows that. That. So then I built out my practice. I was in the same location the whole time. I've been an attorney. I'm an anomaly. Most attorneys, their offices have moved, they've moved practices, they've changed. I have a friend who changed areas of law three times. That's not me. I've always. I admire them. They're smarter than I am. I've just done family law. That's all I've ever done. So built the practice up, had the office here, and that's how my practice got going.

[Anya Cain]

There's a great cover story on you, on the new Indiana Super Lawyers. And there's a story you tell in there about what you say. Maybe your most memorable case involves a woman in her 80s. I just wonder if you could share that with our audience as well.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah. So I can't give too much identifying information. She is deceased. But she was a great grandmother and she was raising a great grandson with disabilities. And once she qualified the child for Social Security disability, the mother popped up, and again, she was related to the great grandson through her son and then her grandson. And so we had a contested guardianship hearing where the mother came and said that she wanted custody. And, you know, my client was really old. She was very spry, she was really smart and very dedicated to this child. And the child had so many disabilities that he literally almost every day had to go to a specialist at Riley, like, multiple. He was in a wheelchair, all kinds of disabilities. And so we. I had the opportunity to cross examine the mom while she was on the stand. And I asked her about Riley and her contact with Riley and, you know, was she getting letters about the appointments? Because you have to show that the, you know, if you're trying to say a parent isn't going to appointments, you have to show that they've had notice. How do they know about the appointments? Right. So it was important for the judge to know that Riley was sending her letters. And I asked her, you know, was she getting mail from Riley to tell her about appointments that she could go to? And she said, oh, I see the envelopes, but I never open them. And I'm pausing because that's what I did at the trial. Because one thing you learn is that you can let something echo in a judge's head if you're smart enough to shut your mouth and not keep talking, which took me a long time to learn. But my mentor, Darrell Watson Duvall, who's retired, she was on that case with me, and she did a great job.

[Patricia McKinnon]

One thing that strikes us is that so many of the things that are kind of under the umbrella of family law are things that are just highly emotional, highly contentious, personal. This is your life, this is your family, this is your relationships.

[Unnamed Speaker]

How.

[Patricia McKinnon]

How as a lawyer, do you communicate with the clients going through something like that?

[Unnamed Speaker]

So about 10 years into practice, I realized that I had to change myself to fit my individual clients rather than expect the clients to conform to me. Kind of the opposite of the irs, Notre Dame kind of thing I've been talking about earlier. And people pay you based on how they feel you did, not necessarily on the legal results. So it's their impression of how well you listened to them and respected their wishes and whether you communicated well with them. So if you look at the disciplinary cases that are filed against attorneys in Indiana, one of the top areas that attorneys get grievances filed against them are on communication, lack of communication. So I decided early on that that wasn't going to be me because I just did not want that problem coming up. So I made it a practice, and I still make it a practice that my clients know everything that's going on in their case all the time. So emails, offers, whatever. You can't accept an offer on behalf of a client without their consent. You can't agree to continue a hearing in a client's case without the client's consent. That's the rules. But that doesn't mean. Doesn't mean that, you know, clients, they want to know what's going on. They're paying you a lot of money, an obscene amount of money in their mind. Right. Much more normally than they're making per hour. And they need to feel that. I also had to adjust how I communicated. So if I had a client in the beginning, who wouldn't do email? I mailed them, like, here's copies of things. And sometimes clients complain, you know, I Get so many emails from you, and I'm like, well, it's your decision whether you read them or not. But you also have to be very careful with your interactions to see if the client. The client. And I learned this from my public defender days. The client may. One word of what the client's saying to you may be true in a sentence. Every word in the sentence may be true. Nothing in the sentence may be true. But at the beginning of a case, you take everything a client tells you as true until you learn otherwise, because you're building a bond with them. You're building trust. And if you don't have that trust or the trust gets broken, you have to get off. Because if they don't believe you on a small thing, they're not going to believe you on a big thing. Like they don't know whether an offer is good or not, and you tell them it's a good offer, and if they didn't, they didn't trust you, they're never going to believe you. So I never told a client in a public defender case you should accept this agreement to give up your parental rights. That's not my decision. I can tell them you always. And it's true today. Everyone gets a day in court on any family law case on any issue. If you want it, if you want me to do it, I will do it. And so what I tell the clients is that there in my mind, is an imaginary funnel. F U N N E L A funnel. And as long as they're in the funnel of normal, I'm holding my hands like a funnel. As long as they're in the funnel, I don't care where they are in the funnel. But if they're outside the funnel on either side, I don't want them. They don't need me. If they want to take an offer that I think no judge would ever order, that really hurts them. They don't need me to get that bad of a deal, and I don't want my name on it. If, on the other hand, they want the sun and the moon and all the stars, and I work with them and try to show them that that's not going to happen and they're not going to be happy, I then tell them, look, I learned this from an attorney named Donna Bass who's still in practice, who's very good at her job. And she told me what she does is she tells a client, you deserve to be happy. I'm not making you happy. So you need to find another attorney that makes you Happy. And what client is going to say, I don't want to be happy? Am I right? And sometimes they try and get you to stay on there. But to me, if a client fires me because I'm not making them happy, that's not a client that's going to file a grievance. The client that I fire because they're not making me happy, that's a different story. Right, right. And what you have to remember as an attorney is if you have malpractice insurance, which is not required in Indiana, but everyone who's a specialist has to have it, and most attorneys do, your malpractice premiums are based on the number of malpractice cases filed against you, whether they're valid or not. And you get a malpractice case and you have to report it, the rest of your care to, for your, for your malpractice insurance. Did you ever have a malpractice case filed against you, even whether it was dismissed or not? So you don't want that.

[Patricia McKinnon]

That makes a lot of sense. And I, I want to kind of go into some generalities around family law, violence, crime.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yep.

[Patricia McKinnon]

Divorce, things like that, before we get into some specific cases.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Okay.

[Patricia McKinnon]

Can you talk a little bit about the intersection of things like divorce, domestic violence and sort of how that gets handled within families?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Sure. So I think what you're asking about is protective order cases. And protective order cases can have a civil, can be civil or they can be criminal. And if they're criminal, obviously they're filed by the prosecutor in connection with the crime. A civil one would be one side filing against another. And there are situations where one is better than the other. And I don't want to spend a lot of time on that other than to say, if a prosecutor asks in a criminal case for a criminal no contact order, that's the best situation. And a family court judge who isn't in the criminal case cannot touch that. Criminal law criminal case, no contact order. A lot of times the criminal judges will carve out exceptions. They'll say, well, there's no contact between the two parents. If, say, the victim is a wife and perpetrator of the alleged crime is the husband, they may make a carve out exception for communication through a third party about exchanging the children or information. But again, keep in mind that those criminal no contact orders, if you violate it, you are going, you can be arrested and go to jail. On a civil protective order, there does not need to be a criminal case. It exists on its own and it's filed by one side against the other. And a lot of times there's cross or counter petitions. So husband will preemptively file against wife or wife will preemptively file against husband. And some people use them as a manipulation tool in order to get possession of a house. So for example, we say a husband files a protective order against a wife and alleges abuse and asks for what we commonly refer to as a kickout order. You know, kick the wife out of the house so that I am there with the children rather than the wife is there with the children. And the judges have a lot of discretion in what they can do. In protective order cases, there may not be a divorce on file. There may then subsequently be a divorce on file. There may be a divorce first and then a protective order is filed. We have, in Marion County, Indiana, where I primarily practice, we have a series of family law courts and they will consolidate their like, think of like separate file folders, but they're rubber banded together, but they're electronic files with separate numbers assigned to them, separate cause numbers for a protective order case and a divorce case. But they will be combined for hearing whenever possible because you can't have two different orders on the same set of kits. The same thing is if there's an adoption filed and there's an existing paternity case, so the parents weren't married and someone established paternity and gave a parent custody and another parent, non custodial parent, and now someone files to adopt. Maybe the wife who had custody has married and she wants her new husband to adopt the child away from the original biological father who had parenting time and child support order. The courts require you to notify the adoption court and the paternity court and those cases to be in the same court again. But keep in mind, it doesn't make any sense to have two different orders on custody on the same set of kids. So that's how it works. In Marion county. There are agencies that will assist people who cannot afford an attorney. The Indiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence, I see a DV something like that. They have attorneys that they pay to represent people on contested hearings to help the victims. The prosecutor's office, if there's a criminal case, has domestic violence staff to help, help with, you know, the victims. So and we have really good, we have, you know, Cockburn Place and we have the Julian center places that will assist women and with advocates to help them and men. People forget that there is a percentage of men that are victims of domestic violence and they face all Kinds of stigmas society and from people not understanding what it's like. So, yeah, so there is a lot of. You have to be very careful. You have to be very careful that in what you allege, because you're alleging everything under oath and penalties of perjury. So if you have a client that's filed on their own, a protective order, you have to make sure you've reviewed that in a subsequent divorce or paternity case to make sure, because that information can come in against them. You know that courts take those cases very seriously. As you know from your criminal expertise, that's the fastest the police are supposed to respond is a call alleging domestic violence for a reason. And there's people who've been killed in domestic violence cases, even attorneys, even magistrates, judges. And it's not just Indiana, it's nationwide.

[Anya Cain]

I think when we talk about some cases where attorneys faced some jeopardy here in a few minutes. But before we do, I'm curious. A lot of people go through divorces. Sometimes they're very amicable. Amicable. And sometimes they end disastrously. What's the difference?

[Unnamed Speaker]

So I can tell you that any attorney who's been in practice for five years or longer in family law does not take the client's word for it. When a client comes to you for an initial meeting, we call them consultations. One hour. Most attorneys charge for them. Some attorneys do them for free. I'm not one of those. They meet with you and they're like, oh, it's all going to be amicable. We're going to agree on everything. Everything's going to be fine. And again, I believe the client at the beginning, but I don't charge them any less. And I don't expect that to be what happens. And the reason is, is sometimes everyone who files for divorce, male, female, whatever your gender, you will feel guilty at some point. And everyone who's filed upon is angry. Now, I have had a case where the husband gave the wife money to hire me and said, I'm not getting an attorney. You get an attorney. And was still angry when the husband got served with the divorce papers. I mean, it's the nature of the beast, right? And so that anger can take forms. Or sometimes they're getting along fine during the divorce, and then one of them will get a new girlfriend or boyfriend, and then everything goes out the window because the new girlfriend and boyfriend are around the children, or even if there's no children, they saw a car in the driveway at the Maribel residence that doesn't belong to anyone. They know when they came to drop off some paperwork or pick up the lawnmower from the garage that they're getting. And just like real estate closings, if you talk to real estate attorneys or real estate agents, closing can fail over a dollar. It's the same thing in a divorce, a divorce that's contested at the end. And they're arguing about stuff, not necessarily the kids, but stuff. Like, I had a case where we argued about a teddy bear collection, and there were like 36 teddy bears, and they both wanted the two of the brown bears, and one was tan and one was, like slate colored and, you know, a little more. And the judge is like, we're here arguing about teddy bears. And I said, yes, you, Honor, we're here arguing about teddy bears. And the judge said, I'm going to take a recess, and got off the bench and went and looked up the teddy bears and came back on and said, so I thought these were like, you know, really expensive collector bears, and they're not. And so I don't. You guys are going to work this out. I'm going to take a recess and you're going to work this out because you're wasting my time. The court reporter's time, the two attorney's time. I know how much you're paying. And the entire teddy bear collection isn't worth one hour of one attorney's time. And so they worked it out. There's a famous meme on the Internet you can find where the couples in court dividing Beanie babies from, like, 15 years ago. And it's a famous photo for a reason. Right. But it's really not about the stuff. It's really that someone unconsciously doesn't want the divorce is usually what it comes down to. Right. They'll argue about Christmas decorations. I mean, every attorney you talk to that does family law has a story about something unusual that they've fought against. I had a case where the mother agreed, this is from again over 20 years ago, where the mother had a drinking problem. And she agreed that my client, the husband, could have the marital residence and custody of the five children, but she agreed that he could have custody, but she wanted to be in the marital residence. She was a. And we said, well, she was a nurse midwife. And we said, well, why is it that you want custody of the marital residents? And she said, this is a quote, because my children's placentas are buried in the backyard, and I have an emotional attachment to the house. That's placenta. Yeah, from childbirth. And. And again, I knew enough to not say anything after that line and sat down. And this is back when we filed papers with the court in person. And I went later that week to the court and I couldn't tell if the judge heard that line or not, even though I stopped. And so I asked the court staff. I'm like, oh, how's it going? You got any interesting cases lately? And I said, I was here Monday on a case with the magistrate. And the. They looked at me and they go, was that the placenta in the backyard case? Yeah, yeah, it was. So he did get the house. Right? Which he should have. If you're going to have custody of five children, you're not exactly going to rent a one bedroom apartment. Right. But every attorney has those stories. We all have. So that's why I kind of collect, as a hobby, humorous legal stories, because you have to laugh. It's kind of like those of us that are old enough to remember the TV show mash. You have to be able to cope with horrific things. Kind of emergency room doctors have humor. Right. And nurses. It's the same thing. So we cope with it by sharing the funny stories. Right.

[Patricia McKinnon]

Because you're dealing with kind of like the wreckage of relationships, lives, just like heartbreak in a way.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Right. The first five years is really telling. If an attorney stays with family law for more than five years, they're probably going to stay with it for longer. I would say there's a huge amount of attorneys that will dabble in family law and. And get out. Because you didn't go to law school because you like to deal with emotions. You went to law school.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Seriously, you're calling out all the lawyers.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I'm not saying we're bad with emotions. I'm just saying that isn't the reason we went to law school. We went to law school to learn how to find out rules and how to apply rules in real life. We didn't go, you know, we didn't go to social work, we didn't go to counseling and. But there are attorneys that do have degrees involved, and I admire them.

[Patricia McKinnon]

Patti. I'm going to be quoting this the next time Kevin and I get into an argument.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Didn't go to law school for emotions?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah, to learn about. I mean, it's not. I mean, you have law school. I call in a law school intellectual boot camp because you have to learn to separate your emotions from the cases and you're reading horrific things and you have to not react to it. And it's the same thing in family law. You have to be able to separate yourself from your client's emotions. Because your clients are mad or sad, and they want you to be mad or sad. And we call it transferred stress. And if you take all that on and you can't distance yourself from it, you're going to crash and burn. It's inevitable.

[Patricia McKinnon]

Well, it's like if you're dealing with a surgeon, right, they're having to cut into somebody to do surgery. You don't want someone who's going to be flinching or crying or feel like trying, you know, overly empathetic, because then.

[Kevin Greenlee]

They'Re going to be less effective at what they're doing.

[Unnamed Speaker]

But they still have to have a good bedside manner. Yes, right. But the good bedside manner. And there are still surgeons that go to people's funerals, right? Just like there's attorneys that stay attached to clients. I mean, you can have multiple clients in the same family. Came back. I. I had a family where I did one daughter's divorce, I did another daughter's divorce, and I did the brother's divorce. And the father of the. Of the kids paid the adult kids, paid all their bills. And he wanted, he said, and the last one, he said, do I get a group discount? You know, And I said, well, I'll send you a fruit basket at Christmas, you know, like. Because again, emotionally, when that family got together for holidays that year, they talked about me, right? And was I doing a good job? And that's the thing you have to realize as an attorney, especially an attorney in a solo practice like I've been, is that you are constantly being judged by opposing counsel, by your client, by your client's family, your client's neighbors, your client's hairdresser, you know, and the Dutch. And I tell new attorneys to think of physics, right? Like physics, you learn in physics, the table isn't really solid. It's composed of atoms that are constantly moving. And that's all you have as an attorney, is your time and your reputation. And that reputation changes with every single case. It's moving up or down. Whether you believe it or not. A judge is changing their opinion of you one way or another. Opposing counsel is changing your opinion every single case and your clients, and they're talking to everybody about it.

[Patricia McKinnon]

That's a really, really good thing to remember.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I have a thing in my original contract that they sign where I make them make all their social media silent while their case is on. And my clients hate it. So even if the other side is talking about them on Facebook or Instagram, I will Fire a client that will respond because everything will come into evidence. And I'm not going to have the client that goes on there and makes a comment about a judge and it comes back to affect me and my other cases. And it happens. It happens. If you're angry, you don't care who you're telling. So you have to be very careful. Again, if you're a new attorney and you're listening to this, you will learn everything. You would just maybe I'm trying to help you not be me and learn it the hard way. Yeah, right. Yeah.

[Patricia McKinnon]

We talked about the, the basically the divorces that are end relatively amicably versus those that kind of go bad. Is there any nuance in there where you throw child custody agreements into that mix?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Well, in Indiana, a child custody agreement is going to be part of the divorce. There are other states where they're separate, separate documents, separate things. But normally, and I guess from the attorneys, I know I shouldn't speak for every attorney, they're normally incorporated either in what we call an agreed entry, a G, R, E, C, D, agreed entry, or they're part of the final divorce agreement of settlement or settlement agreement. And you have all the, what I call the nuts and bolts in there of what it is. And the Supreme Court tracks how long it takes judges in Indiana to close a case and they give more time, more anticipated time in a divorce case involving children than they do in one that doesn't have children. And now they can track it by the number in the case because it has letters and it's DN if there's no kids and DC if it's divorced with children. So they expect that those cases are going to be more contested and they're going to take longer.

[Patricia McKinnon]

I'm curious, you know, just speaking generally here.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah.

[Patricia McKinnon]

For a divorce case that involves kids, does that tend to make things more contentious or less?

[Unnamed Speaker]

That's a good question. And I would answer that in different years in different ways. I would say the general rule or that maybe the presumption is that if it's a divorce with children, it is likely to be more contentious and it may be something small. We divide custody in Indiana into legal, separate from everything else that's not legal custody. Legal custody being if you have joint legal custody, you make mutual decisions, agreed upon decisions in three areas. Educational decisions like private school tutoring, also medical decisions. Should the child have an individual education plan, IEP at school for assistance. Should the child go to a different, you know, have, be on medication for ADHD or not? Those are often contested decisions and then religious decisions. You can have one parent who's one faith and one who's another. So if you, you have a lot of times where people will come into me post divorce, divorce is final and say I have joint custody and it turns out they have joint legal custody, but they're the other side or they have primary physical custody. So. And what is physical custody in Indiana? It is everything that is not legal. So it's everything that's not education, medical. So a lot of times that there's joint legal and then one parent having custody. But you can have exact equal custody split. We can have split custody where one child resides with one parent, one with another. We can have joint custody which is exactly equal, you know, exact number of overnights between the parents or, you know, that's joint physical custody. So you're not going to have. The presumption is you're not going to have joint legal custody unless you can get along at least a little. And you're not going to have joint physical custody, equal amounts of overnights unless you really can get along. There's statutes on that and there's a lot of case law on that. And that tends to be an area that gets fought a lot.

[Anya Cain]

There was a case recently, I'm not going to ask you about the specifics of it, but it involved a person who was on YouTube and he was going through a divorce and something happened with the custody and he ended up going to his wife's workplace and killing her. And there were some apologists at the time who followed this person's channel and they said, oh, it's not his fault his wife took his kids away from him. And so not talking about this case, but can you enlighten us on what steps need to be taken before a person loses custody? It's not as easy as a person just being, oh, I'm vindictive, I'm going to take the children.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Well, so this isn't an Indiana case, right, that you're talking about or it is.

[Anya Cain]

It is.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Okay. So in Indiana, we call it the, we have custody factors. So the, the court has to consider. We call them the section 8 factors because they have eight subsections. And under the section 8 factors, the court can consider lots of things. Comparing the two households, how is the child adjusted to the home, the school and the community at either parent's house, does the child have friends at both house? They will look at a history of domestic violence. Is there on one side, they can look at the physical and mental Health of either party. Has there been what we call a third party, a de facto custodian that has perhaps taken care of the children instead of one of the parents. Has there been a like the judges are really smart and the judges know that in family law cases we have good people on their worst day as opposed to criminal law cases where we have the, this is the cliche bad people on their best day in court. So in a family law case we may have someone who has all their life done the right thing, but now is off the rails. Now is just cannot believe that their spouse is divorcing them. Cannot believe maybe there's another person involved in the relationship between, you know, dating one of the parties. So the judges are used to this and they're also used to super parents. Like a parent who hasn't been a really good parent, never made time to go to doctor or dentist appointments, never went to the kids games or practices because they're just too busy all of a sudden in a divorce will become a super parent. And the judges know this and it's appropriate to introduce testimony and evidence. A parent, unless a DCS is involved, a parent is not going to lose custody without a court hearing. And again, DCS is like a trump card. They can do they override everybody's orders from any case ever they're involved, you're going to deal with them and that's how it's going to be. You're not going to be able to get a court order from a divorce or paternity or guardianship overriding dcs. It's not going to happen. But there will be hearings. I would highly advise the parents who are in the middle of a divorce, who haven't had an attorney represent them to seek the advice of attorney and quite possibly hire an attorney. Even if you're an attorney yourself, it would not be a wise move to represent yourself in a divorce. You're just again, emotionally too close to it. But there are steps, there are steps that happen there. You can ask for third parties to come in and do evaluations, what we call a copy custody evaluations. They are expensive, they take a lot of time. Those can be. You can ask for those. You can ask for appointment in Indiana of a independent third person called a guardian ad litem. And starting January 1st of this year, those guardian ad litems have specific codes of conduct that they are required to follow. And there's a registry for them and they cannot be appointed by the court on a new case unless they are on that registry. And that Just started here in Indiana this year. So it's like a professionalism of them. They have minimal educational requirements. They can only get on the registry if they meet the test and so on. Old cases that have been out there where they've had guardian ad items from years prior to January 1st of 2025, those Guardian items can continue. So if you're checking on a registry and your guardian item's not on there, if your case is old, that guardian item can stay on there regardless. There's also what they call CASAs, which are court appointed special advocates. And those aren't the same as guardian liners, but they're not attorneys. Guardian lines are typically attorneys. And yes, on a private case, you will have to pay them unless they're through an agency that does it for free.

[Anya Cain]

We love all of our guests. I have a special warm spot in my heart when they do our work for us. And you were kind enough to find some cases where the practice of family law was harmful to the actual attorneys involved. Can you tell us about some of those?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yes. So I didn't want to come to this interview and be unprepared. Kind of like court hearings. I'm much more relaxed if I know I've got questions written out in my exhibits. I once was accused of overkill by an attorney, actually was a DCS attorney in A Chin's case, a termination of criminal rights case, tpr, where she said that trees shuddered when I walked by. What a burn. Because I always have exhibits, right. If I. My clients, if I can. I mean, there are clients that won't do things and I still represent them. So, you know, you're on the other side of a case and you're listening to this and going, shoot, I have a lot of exhibits in my case. Yeah, my attorney. But I can tell you that family law is a dangerous area of law to practice in. I mentioned earlier about grievances with the Indiana Supreme Court. The grievances filed against attorneys, alternates. Who has the most grievances filed against them between family law and criminal law. And so you are. And your malpractice insurance is high, so it's dangerous on more than one level. So physical danger. We had an attorney in Indianapolis who does family law who ended up with a federal case. And I'm going to tell you a little bit about it with that attorney's permission. You can find it if you look for it. But it was May, Memorial day weekend of 2015, and this was a female attorney, she's married, and they were getting ready to go out of town. The attorney had represented a wife in a divorce, and the husband from the divorce, divorce was final, had a new girlfriend, and the new girlfriend wanted to harm her. The attorney for the ex wife. So again, the woman was not in the case, but it was her boyfriend who was the ex husband in the attorney's case. And so the attorney's husband goes out to their home in the greater Indianapolis area, goes out to their van, gets in the van, looks back in this mirror and sees feet in the cargo area. And so he gets out of the van, goes around, opens the back of the van, and sees a woman and her son. So older woman, younger man, with a shovel with ropes and a syringe filled with liquid. And. And says to them, I'm calling 91 1. Don't move, and slams the door. It says, I have a gun. Okay. Well, in real life, the attorney's husband's gun was in his vehicle, which was not the same vehicle. And he calls 911. And the deputies come, and the deputies tell him he has to open the van. And they're standing behind him, covering him. And he said, you know, so he has to open the van, and the deputies then arrest the woman and her son. And they find, you know, all these things to indicate that they were trying to kidnap and kill the woman. It turns out that the liquid in the syringe that the attorney's husband saw was a paralytic to paralyze her if she had been injected. So they get arrested. And even though in a murder case, you can not bond someone out, in this case that was not. They were allowed to bond out, and they disappeared, even though they had bond posted here in Indiana. And once they crossed state lines and disappeared, it became a federal case. And so eventually, the federal marshals found the woman and her son. Woman went to trial and was sentenced in federal prison. So much harsher sentencing. Right. Than it would have been perhaps been in Indiana, especially if she hadn't disappeared. So they were arrested by U.S. marshals, but it was very upsetting to the attorney, and rightly so. And I'm not giving you any information that's not in published articles. It was very upsetting. And she did forgive the woman, but she didn't want anything to do with her. So again, when that case came out and those people were arrested in the period between when they bonded out and they were found, that attorney literally was in fear for her life. And they were at her house. They knew where she lived. They knew where she practiced. Her office was. So That's a terrifying situation. And it struck fear in the heart of every family. All attorney in Indiana that knew anything about the case. The sentencing she got, the woman, she got sentenced on two counts, conspiracy to commit kidnapping and murder for hire. And the murder for hire charge came after she wrote a federal agent who was posing as a hitman while she was in jail and asked the hitman to murder the attorney. So there was a second layer of threats after the original layer. And she did turn to the attorney because the attorney did have to testify in federal court and said, I sincerely apologize. She's saying, she said, I'm not saying I was entirely innocent, but I never should have gone to her property. And later she claimed she wasn't ever going to kidnap her at all. So imagine that. Imagine having to testify in that trial.

[Anya Cain]

Yeah, it's horrifying.

[Patricia McKinnon]

It really is horrifying. And it's a family law attorney doing their job doing that.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And it wasn't a case that was in the news before that. Obviously, the press would have found it if there was publicity around the original divorce. And there wasn't.

[Patricia McKinnon]

You just get people who are just. I mean, it's just interesting. You hear about people trying to go after their former spouse or their new spouse's new partner, but to have the blame and the aggression be toward the attorney, like, it just, I mean, I don't. It's just, it's shocking.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Well, and again, you have to keep in mind that was 2015, and if you can generalize about anything about the public right now, and the climate is people are even angrier 10 years later than they were back then, and they want someone to blame. Right. As a. And the climate. So, yeah, so it's even. It's even scarier.

[Patricia McKinnon]

Is there any sense, and I imagine the answer may be unfortunately, no. But is there any sense of, like, this family law attorneys trying to, like, be aware of that or like, like it just feels like if you get the wrong person, then there's nothing you can do about that.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Well, there's still people that make threats against their attorneys. There hasn't happened to me as far as a protective order, but I do know of attorneys who have had to file for protective orders. But then you, you have to walk. Right. And if it's your client, you can't disclose things unless it's, you know, under certain circumstances. And if it's the other side, are you then going to have to get off the case because now you've become a witness against the other side. So, yeah, it's a very tough area. And I'm sure there are people who are going to listen to your podcast and say, if I go to law school, I will never do family law. And the answer is that 90% of the attorneys get a question by someone in their family about a family law case. I mean, it just happens. And so that's why attorneys dabble in it. And sometimes they dabble in it, much to their dismay later. Yeah, yeah.

[Patricia McKinnon]

I mean, and I know there were some cases we were. You mentioned and we looked at, and these are horrible because they actually are sort of domestic violence cases that ended up involving attorneys.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Right. So I sent you guys an article from to August of 2010 about an attorney who wasn't a family law attorney, worked for a big name firm in Indianapolis, and she was strangled by her husband in the home. And then he went to her law firm downtown in Indianapolis and fired shots from a parking garage, a roof of a parking garage that hit the outside of the law firm, killed himself. I believe he fell off the building. I'm going to check and make sure I'm right on that. He was a parking garage behind the law firm on that day and he was on the eighth floor with two handguns. He filed some shots in the air and then turned the gun on himself. And then he fell on the sidewalk in front of the parking garage. So, yeah, they had to put the whole building, the law firm, on lockdown until they determined if he was a threat and that if he was the only shooter. And again, the Indiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence, I mentioned before that, you know, this was a community leader. This was a woman with children, children. And she had gone to law school here in Indianapolis. And it was a tragedy. Just because you're an attorney does not mean you are immune from violence from your partner. And it does mean, I mean, there's I, I told you about another case that's pending and I don't know if we want to talk about that.

[Anya Cain]

Sure.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah. And again, I did not know this attorney, the one that was strangled by her husband back in August of 2010. I knew people who knew of her. I knew people who met with her children and tried to help her children through this. Because if you think about it from the children's point of view, they were adults. I think one was almost an adult and another was an adult. They've lost their mother and their father in the same blow. Right. So they have to pick up all the pieces. They have to deal with the house and cars and the pensions and all the 401. How did they deal with it? But a different case that's pending now and I strongly urged you guys to consider monitoring. This case is pending in Fort Wayne and it's set for trial in April. And it's a former magistrate who had been a public defender like me in the past, and she was found dead. And her boyfriend, who's 60 years old, has been charged with murder in the case. He claims it was self defense, but the police opinion is that it appeared to be staged. So that's a scary case. And there's also some. They've got a special judge on the case from out of Allen county, and there's been competency, multiple competency examinations to see if he's mentally able to understand what he did. There's, I believe there's been two or three already. Again, just because you're an attorney doesn't mean that you can stay safe. And you don't have to be in family law. I mean, it's anyone in any relationship.

[Patricia McKinnon]

So I think that's so important to stress. Like what you said earlier, men can be victims of domestic violence, women, high powered women, no matter what your job, no one is immune to this. And it's a scourge in society that we need to talk about.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Again, I don't want people to say, oh, it's because of politics. It's not because of politics. This kind of violence has existed all along. I'm, I'm giving you old cases besides this new one that it's just something you need to be aware of, you need to be concerned about. And you know, it's, I mean, even if you have a gun, that doesn't mean necessarily you won't get stabbed and your gun is in the truck next to you or in your glove box or under the bed. So it's, it's, it's a scary thing. I know your listeners are interested in true crime, and there are a lot of true crime cases, not just in Indiana, about attorneys being killed, being shot. Okay, I have one more story that I haven't told you that's about a gun, not necessarily about a crime. So in law school in your third year at Notre Dame, you are required to do a trial practice class where you do a mock trial and they bring in judges from other areas and they use like the Notre Dame courtroom or other courtrooms, and it's a great experience. My case I did a trial with. Everyone has a partner. And our judge was a judge from Michigan because South Bend, where Notre Dame is located, is Fairly close to the border. So a Michigan judge came down, and this is before metal detectors, okay. So anybody could bring anything in a courtroom. Okay? I graduated law school in 94, so this would have been 93, probably, that we did this trial. And one of the things you can do is you don't always have, like, this is like a hypothetical case, and everybody has the same facts, and you have to be able to argue either side. Well, we were the prosecution trying to convict this guy. And we had. My babysitter's husband was a deputy sheriff, and he gave me his unloaded gun that was similar to the gun that was alleged to be used. We had it in a bag, like a bag for real. And we moved and we introduced this gun to be similar to the gun. So after the trial was over, the judge says, I have to tell you, you think that gun was like the gun in the case? He goes, that's nothing like the gun. He goes, my gun's similar. And pulled the gun out from his pocket, right? And went, oops, it's loaded, Cha Ching. And the bullet fell on the ground. Said, this is like the gun in the hypothetical case. This is after the case is over. This is not in front of the high school students. I don't remember the judge's name. I don't remember anything else. That's not a fact you forget. Right.

[Anya Cain]

It's amazing.

[Unnamed Speaker]

So, but again, you know, metal detectors came in, and I don't. You know, I just can't. I mean. And if you want to talk about cases where people have gotten killed. Right. That. Again, I have another story if you have time.

[Anya Cain]

Yes, definitely.

[Unnamed Speaker]

All right. So when I was a Young Attorney Before 2000, I had a woman come into me, I knew a family member, and she was concerned about filing for divorce because she believed her husband had some mental illness issues. He was on medication, didn't take his medication, blah, blah, blah. So she comes in and I give her my advice, right? And when you have those kind of consultations with an attorney, you're not obligated to ever go back to them. You can go to another attorney. You can do 10 consultations. You can do as many consultations as you want at. So I never heard from her again on filing the divorce. I just gave her advice. And then it turns out that later on, she was killed in a car accident. And her husband was driving. He was in no way caused her to be killed. There was no allegation on that. They had two small children. And by small children, I mean very young. Under the age of 10, I believe, at least I think both were under the age of five. And so his mental illness issues had not gone away. So her parents, the mom's deceased mom's parents, came to me and said, will you represent us in what's called a guardianship case? And a guardianship case is where a third party seeks to take custody away from a biological mother and a biological father. Now, they can be temporary in nature, a temporary guardianship that's only good for 90 days, or it can be permanent. And sometimes you can get a temporary order that then converts into being permanent. But they believed that the children were at risk being in the father's care. So I took them on as clients. We did a guardianship hearing and the father did not show up. His parents came to court. His parents came to court and contested the guardianship. They did not have attorneys. And at the end of the hearing, the judge issued an order based on the evidence and gave the maternal grandparents, my clients, custody of these two small children. And so his parents left the courtroom and told him he found out somehow about the court order. I don't know if it was from them or some other source. And he then proceeded to kill both of the two small children and then turned the gun on himself. Oh my gosh. And you talk about transferred stress. I had been to the daughter's funeral and then I had been to the two small children's funeral. And I'll never forget the maternal grandmother placing a flower at her daughter's grave from the flowers from the two children. And I'm trying not to cry on the case. The order came out in October and every October I think about that case because just like being a medical professional, there are cases that always haunt you. Woulda, shoulda, coulda. Was there anything we could have done? Was there anything different? The PS to that story was that I belonged to the YMCA at that time. I had a family membership on the south side because I had lived on the south side of Indiana, Indianapolis, but wasn't living there at the time. But there wasn't a YMCA where I lived. So I would drag my husband, my second husband, and my children down to the south side. So like the week after this all happened and it was on the news and I went to the YMCA and checked in and I saw the paternal grandfather, the deceased dad who had killed his children. I saw him working behind the desk at the ymca. And when he saw me, he ran over to the computer and checked me in with my id, my car, so he could see where I Lived my phone numbers, my children, my children's names, everything about my family that the YMCA had on file. And I thought, oh, boy, you know, do I need to be concerned about this now? Of course, my husband was livid, but the damage had been done. You know, I didn't. I wasn't quick enough to stop him. And so I never did hear from that father, grandfather again. He never did contact me. But there was a period of time where I worried that he would, you know, even though I didn't know his personal history, I just knew his sons. So it's personal, you know, it's personal. But again, attorneys who do any area of law, partners who do estate work, they have stories, right? I mean, we're human beings. We have human emotions, and these human emotions can affect us. And again, all we can do is try to do a good job and try to stay safe. The nice part about being in practice for a long period of time now, over 30 years, is that you develop instincts. You develop, like, gut reactions, and sometimes it can't tell you why. Your gut reaction. And so I have the luxury of turning away clients. I'm very busy, so I just, you know, I'm too busy sometimes to take clients. But if a client comes to me and my inner instinct tells me, don't take this client, I listen to that. And you can't develop that until you've been a practice for a while. I'm sure it happens in business. You know, business law, attorneys have the same thing. Intellectual property, bankruptcy attorneys, everybody. You know, you develop that third sense.

[Anya Cain]

How do you deal with all these terrible things you see in all these stressful events? How does that not just drive you insane?

[Unnamed Speaker]

So I don't know how every attorney does it. I am a volunteer with an organization called JLAC Judges and Lawyers Assistance Program that is funded through the Supreme Court. And it's to help attorneys who are experiencing situational depression or the loss of a family member spouse or have alcohol or drug addiction issues. A lot of their work is with people who aren't under an investigation and aren't at risk of losing their law. But to help them, they can refer you to counseling. They have support groups. They started a couple support groups because I pushed for them. One is for care for the caregivers. If you are an attorney in Indiana and you're caring for an ill spouse or a parent, they have a support group for that. They also have one. They make fun of me because I call it the death group, and that's not the title. And they Listen to this podcast. I will get in there now. But it's a grief group to help attorneys who are grieving. It could be the loss of a pet, it could be the loss of a spouse. And these are all free programs. I learned early on that my victories in a case and my loss is in a case and my client's actions are not mine. And so I would say to myself, my clients victories are not my victories, my clients losses are not my losses. I like to use real life examples like that people can relate to. So I tell my clients that a court case like a custody battle is like a card game. And I ask them, do you play Euchre or do you play poker? And most people in Indiana, I don't know if you're outside Indiana, you may not have heard of Ugurt. It's a card game, very popular in Indiana. But people who play cards are aware of or a high, not the president, but that a card overrides. And so I say it's a card game. When I go to court and my client is, I'm sitting in one corner and the other attorney or the party without attorney is in the other corner and the judge is the dealer and the judge says who has the better hand and what's in my hand to play in front of the judge to make it look good. Those are the facts. And that's my client's behavior and what they've done in the past, what they're doing now, what they did or didn't do, the documents they've given me. And I tell them, sometimes you're handing me twos and sometimes you're handing me aces, but I can't make those cards. You make those cards and I'll do my best to make those cards look pretty and I'll put them in a really good spotlight and I'll maybe say, look judge, this is a really fancy 10, but it's not my 10 and that's what you're paying for me for. So clients like those kind of things because they can relate to them just like I use. And I told you, I think I told you guys this story about the Budweiser beer wagon. Right. You know everybody knows the Clydesdales. Yep. Right. And how the Clydesdales have to work really hard to pull the wagon. And it's not one horse. So I say we're pulling your case, which is the coach. Right. That the horses are pulling and there's two of us and I'm the horse on one side and you're the horse on the other side. And this worked even with my public defender clients. And if I'm pulling really hard and you're not pulling and you're not doing your work, the wagon's not going to move forward. But so we both have to do it. And I've had clients say to me, you're not being the horse pulling the wagon. I'm doing all the work here. And I'm like, okay, that's fair, right? But I think people need to understand the law. They need to know how to do the right thing, and they need to know what happens if they don't.

[Patricia McKinnon]

And I think, like, by having those kind of clear conversations, you're also probably setting expectations, too, right? Taking some personal responsibility for the clients.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Like, if.

[Patricia McKinnon]

If you're doing a great job and they're bashing the judge on Facebook or whatever, you know, it's. It's probably not going to go their way.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Well, and what I tell them is that it's your case, it's not my case, and I'll do what you want me to do within, again, what I can, but I won't do it. Like, you know, it's reasonable for a client to say, I don't want to spend money forcing the other side to answer questions called interrogatories in interrogatories. I don't want to. I don't want to spend money on request reduction. That's the client's decision in any area of law. The client. It's the client's case. You're just the hired gun. You come in, sometimes you got a bazooka, sometimes you got a water gun. But it's the client that tells you and, you know, you prepare as much as you can and the client's willing.

[Anya Cain]

Before we wrap up, I want to make sure we cover everything you. You prepared. I see something over there about Rule 1.9.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah. So one of the things you have to keep in mind about an attorney is there are times where an attorney can't take your case or can't talk about a case. And they use. So we have what's called the Indiana Rules of Professional Conduct, and we go by the acronym of the letters. Right. Indiana Rules of Professional Conduct. You have to keep your. We are licensed as attorneys, just like doctors are licensed. And even if we never had a malpractice case, we could still lose our license because this commission comes after us and says, you didn't follow these professional conduct rules. So one of the rules is that you cannot represent the other side from a case if it's the same or substantially related matter, okay? And that's the actual rule. It says, a lawyer who has formally represented a client in a matter shall not thereafter represent another person in the same or substantially related matter in which that person's interests are materially adverse to the interests of the former client unless the former client gives informed consent confirmed in writing. So what you learn in law school is that, like, every phrase in a sentence has an effect and you can, you know, you gotta pay attention to where the commas are and where things are. So basically they give you an example and in the commentary, because, like, all the rules have commentary. So that was rule 1.9, and I just read you subsection A. But if you look under the commentary under three, it tells you what you could consider substantially related. So, for example, if there's a substantial risk that confidential information that would have normally been obtained in the prior representation would materially adverse the client's position in a subsequent matter. And they say, well, what is that? Well, what is that? Here it is in the rule I'm quoting, For example, a lawyer who has represented a business person and has learned extensive private financial information about that person may not then represent that person's spouse in a divorce. Okay? So I represent you, a business person, in perhaps a buy sell agreement about your business or a real estate transaction or a bankruptcy where I've learned about you. And then I can't go around and represent your wife in a later divorce unless you not only consented, but you've consented in writing, okay? And you're within your rights, husband to say, no, no, you cannot represent my wife. Now, the courts will look at the passage of time. You know, again, I've been in practice 30 years. If 30 years ago I did something, and now 30 years later, any information I have is 30 years old. So how appropriate is it? But that doesn't mean that the husband wouldn't maybe raise it. So you have to be aware of this as an attorney. And so if an attorney turns you down and says, I have a conflict or a potential conflict, again, almost every conflict is waivable or able to be given up, but the other side has to agree to give it up. And it has to be informed. They have to know that they don't have to give it up, and it has to be in writing. So these are things. So again, you represent a boyfriend in a divorce. I mean, a man in a divorce, and he ends up being the boyfriend later. And did you learn confidential stuff? And the smart move of course, is to say, stay away. Right? Stay away. And a lot of the advice to younger attorneys is the money isn't worth it. Right? It's not. So those are my stories. I have really appreciated. Oh, I did want to tell you. You mentioned about me being on the COVID of Super Lawyer, and I have to tell you one funny thing about it. I didn't know I was going to be on the COVID of Super Lawyer, and I told you guys this story the first time I met you. Well, I don't know if I put it in the email when I sent you the thing, but I got contacted by Super Lawyer to do an article, and I thought I was just going to be one of the little inside articles, because there are. I don't know. I don't know why they picked me. There's nothing really.

[Kevin Greenlee]

You are a super lawyer.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Come on. I mean, but they picked me. But then at the end of the interview, and they, you know, we're really nice, and they fact check and they confirm and they, you know, talk to people. Then at the end, they're like, oh, yeah, you're gonna see a photographer. And I'm like, a photographer. And so I was like, okay. And so I went to the photographer and he. And he's like, yeah, this is gonna take like an hour, an hour and a half. I'm like, what? And so he took all these pictures, and I said, so can you tell me why you're taking it? I'm like, isn't this, like, a one photograph? It's going to be easy. He's like, no, no, you're on the COVID They didn't tell you. And I was like, oh, I'm on the COVID So that's my story. But I do have a Super Lawyer story that was pointed out to me by someone when I told them about being on this podcast. And mentioning Super Lawyer was to tell you that if you know the name William Conauer or Bill Konauer, C O N O U r. He was on the COVID of Super Lawyer and three years later was federally criminally charged for his actions. So just because you're on the COVID and Super Lawyer, my understanding, I haven't seen it, but my understanding is another attorney was substituted online, but the published ones had come out. But, you know, again, I'm not judging, because, again, just because you think you're, you know, all that in a can of beans is. My mom would have said, doesn't mean you're the, you know, you're not going to commit a crime. So keep toad you know, and who knows what's going to happen to me down the road.

[Patricia McKinnon]

No, you're cursed now.

[Kevin Greenlee]

No, I'm just kidding.

[Patricia McKinnon]

Well, what you said was so apt. What you. I mean, it's, in a way, it's like you have to look at your last case. You can't just cruise case changes your reputation.

[Unnamed Speaker]

You have to keep that in mind. It doesn't matter what you do, because a judge is going back to their office and thinking about how you acted and what you said and didn't say. And you know, attorneys, we have happened some to us where a judge starts asking questions when you're done, and you're like, oh, if the judge starts asking questions, maybe these were things you should have thought of. And so I always write those down, you know, or sometimes. And then how do you object to a judge asking questions? Your honor, that's been asked and answered. Your honor, that's beyond the scope. No, you can't. So. No. But again, for your true crime, people keep in mind that not just Indiana, there's a lot of states where there's probably good stories out there and hopefully, you know, they'll keep listening to your episodes.

[Patricia McKinnon]

Absolutely. And just. We have three more questions for you.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I thought I was talking too long. Keep going.

[Patricia McKinnon]

No, you're doing great. This is a question just, you know, for the, for the public in and out of Indiana. What would you say are the biggest misconceptions or myths or just things that people don't seem to really fully understand about family law?

[Unnamed Speaker]

So I know an attorney who they tell every client that comes in, this is a line. I am not a magician. I cannot magically change your. The other side in this case, spouse or non spouse, I cannot wave my magic wand and change them and their behavior. All I can do is apply the law to your case and ask the judge to apply the law to the case and help that. But if you've been married a long time, you know that person better than the attorney's ever going to know them. You probably have a better idea of what they're going to do or not do, whether they're going to follow a rule or not follow, whether we should file a protective order or shouldn't. We're guessing. We're guessing. So attorneys don't always have all the facts. And I can say the second thing is that I have had clients where clients don't tell their attorneys the truth. And what you have to keep in mind is in Indiana, and I'm sure in almost any state, an attorney has to go to jail. Just like a reporter before an attorney reveals confidential information from a client. If you subpoenaed me and you're a judge, and you brought me in and said, tell me what your client told you. It's a murder case and you represent them in their divorce, tell me what they told you. I cannot tell you. I have to go to jail. So be honest with your attorney, because if you're not honest and you don't tell your attorney the truth, then it's going to hurt your case. It's never going to help you. It's only going to hurt you. Don't tell your attorney with a third party present, and it's the client's privilege to give up. And I always tell them. They're like, I want to bring my mom to my interview with you. I want my sister to be on the zoom call, and I have to start out every single one. Say you have this absolute confidentiality with me. I have to go to jail, not tell what you said. But it doesn't apply to information you said in front of another person. So if your sister is a witness in the case, whether she wants to be or not, and they ask her, have you ever been present when the Ms. McKinnon talked to her client? I can't let you lie. And you're going to have to tell the judge what advice I gave them that was otherwise confidential in what they said to me. And the clients usually want to give it up and have the third party there, but that's their choice, not mine, right? I always know, on the other hand, at a court hearing, as me as my practice, and it's not common, I like my clients to bring somebody with them as emotional support person. I like them to have somebody there who takes notes, someone with good handwriting that takes notes. Because nine times out of 10, my client will say, the judge said blank or I didn't say blank. And their family member or best friend or sister, you know, our neighbor next door can say, no, no, no, I have my notes. Your attorney's right. That's what you said. I want somebody there because I'm not trained to deal with their emotions. And that person is. I don't know, you know, what else is going on unless they've told me. But that person usually does so that a lot of attorneys don't like that because those people can get kicked out of the courtroom really easily. They can't snick, snicker or, you know, tsk, tsk, or roll their eyes. I tell them, you gotta Be a slate. And if you get kicked out of the courtroom, it's gonna hurt my case. But that's my thing. So people don't understand about being honest. And they don't understand the attorney's not a magician. It would be nice if we were just like people think, oh, if I file divorce for divorce, it's an advantage over the other side filing. I said if petitioners, meaning the one who started the case, if they always won, you would know there's nobody out there that says every petitioner wins or every respondent loses. Right? Yeah, right. We don't say that. And, you know, again, you take your client as you find them. And I tell my clients that I take you as I find you. I don't expect you to be perfect. I expect you to listen and try. And we'll do what we can with your cards you give me.

[Patricia McKinnon]

Attorneys can't go back in time and make people not commit domestic violence or change it to make it look better.

[Unnamed Speaker]

You got to remember that a lot of the court system is based on rehabilitation, and it's not just in criminal cases. So there are people who have taken on cases where the parent has supervised parenting time and gotten them custody. By the end. Everybody can be rehabilitated if they're willing to do the work and do the services. And, you know, sometimes it's spending money that they, you know, maybe don't want to have. Everybody can. Don't ever give up. And if you're a case where you've had supervised parenting time for years, that doesn't mean you. This can't be the year you try to get rid of it. But again, it's going to take work, and it's going to be the person's work, not necessarily just the attorney's work. And it may cost you more than you think it's worth. Absolutely.

[Patricia McKinnon]

I'm curious. You know, we talked about, you know, law students and baby lawyers who may be thinking about family law. What would your advice be to them if they're considering family law as a place where they want to go into.

[Unnamed Speaker]

So that's a really great question. What I would say is, if at all possible, if you can make time while you're in law school, try to work for an attorney in the area of family law. Don't go into it blindly. Be a law clerk somewhere, even if it's for one summer, even if maybe you make very little money. But I. I would never advise anyone to go to an area of law if they didn't have any experience in that area of law, whatever that is, you have to, to know what you're getting into. We have a great thing in Indiana, this. Pardon me, through the State Bar. The State Bar has a division for solo and small firm attorneys, and they have a conference every year and it's always the first weekend in June. It's always at French Lick. And it's called the. So we call it ssfc, the Solo and Small Firm Conference. And you can sign up to go to it. And it's a great way to meet attorneys from all over the state from various areas of practice. A lot of people go to law school thinking they're going to work for a big firm and it doesn't work out. But most attorneys in Indiana are in solo or small firm. I think it's a. At one time it was like 70% or 80%. It may be even higher now. Attorneys who are with big firms a lot of times leave and go out on their own. And so then they'll try areas of law they haven't looked at before. Like in your small county, you may be one of, you know, 10 attorneys, so you may be representing the school corporation and you may also be a public defender part time, and you may also building up a private practice. I, I would go to seminars in the area and I would seek out someone to mentor you who does that area of law.

[Patricia McKinnon]

Is there anything we didn't ask you about? I feel like we covered so much.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Well, I did want to talk to you about an area you did bring up, if that's okay with you.

[Patricia McKinnon]

Yes, certainly.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Okay. So you had originally reached out to me and said, we want to talk about where family law can interact with other areas of law, particularly criminal law. Right. So one of the areas that can interact is a parent can lose in a custody matter and then decide to kidnap the child. And I bring this to your attention because this isn't an Indiana case, but there's an article that came out actually in the Indianapolis Star on March 12 of this year, and it was a woman who was abducted by her mother 25 years ago in Connecticut. Okay. So the mother went to the country of Mexico with the child, and the child was reported missing in 1999. So this is 26 years ago. Right. Reported missing. So how does a court. How do you deal with that as a parent? Like, what do you do? How do you handle it? Well, in this case and in a lot of cases, and I've had cases where a parent has disappeared with a child despite a court order. Yeah, they've Just gone into hiding and they've gone. Obviously, they usually go out of state. They may go under another name. They may not use their Social Security number for work. So you can't track them that way. In this case, and in my case, the parent hired private investigators out of their pocket to try and locate the parent. And then of course, they'll try and find them by using credit cards or filing tax returns or however they can. The case that I've been talking about from Connecticut, which in the article that the child was 2 years old when she disappeared October of 1999, abducted by her mother, that's from New Haven, Connecticut. And there's still an active war now for her mother, but multiple three. Well, private investigator located the daughter on social media. Now, because she's an adult, she had her own social media account. This is where social media is a good thing, not necessarily a bad thing. The father had reported the child missing, had gotten a court order, had gotten a bench warrant on the mom. There is an organization called the national center for Missing and Exploited Children, and they reported the child there. They're out there. Police can see that all over. They used search warrants, they, they did interviews. They still haven't, as of last week, found the mother. But when the daughter was contacted, she agreed to DNA testing to prove to her this really was her father and that she really was his child. And they had contact for the first time this year. Wow. So 25 years after she was kidnapped, her. Her dad finally got to see her. So again, you can't protect against anything. What a court order. I tell people like protective artists, court orders. Protective orders don't stop a bullet. You know, it's not a magic tool. You do what you can through the existing system. You try to work through the legal system as best you can, use every option you can to try and find it. But the kicker that has happened to people is if you are married to someone who is a citizen of another country and they take the child back to their country, you go through the U.S. state Department and you ask the State Department to contact the State Department, you know, their counterpart in the country. Well, you can run into problems. And because there is something called the Hague Convention H A G U E and the Hague Convention countries are signatories or non signatories toward it. And I sent you guys a list of countries that were on it. But there are a lot of countries that are not on it, such as China or Vietnam, Haiti, Afghanistan, Cuba, Egypt, Taiwan, Thailand. And if the parent is from a non signatory Hague country, like those ones I just named, they're in no way going to cooperate. There's no reason for them to cooperate with the US in trying to extradite a kidnapped child. They're not going to care about a USA court order and assist. And even in the Hague country signatories, it's a very long process. And like Mexico, which was a signatory to the Hague Convention with this child that didn't see her dad for 27 years, they could find them out. So these are things to keep in mind. If you marry someone who has a citizenship of another country, it is something to think about. And if you have a child with them and the courts can order passports held. Okay, so I have had case where you say judge, we think the parent is going to flee to their country with the child, order the parent to turn over the passport of themselves of the child and court can hold it in the clerk's office. The clerk's office can hold documents, not just cash. Right. And that has happened. But you know, you're not going to hold it forever expire. But that's one way. But again if the parent has a passport from the other country and they can get out with that passport, it may not make any difference if they have a USA or they don't. So these are other areas where sometimes criminal and family law can intersect. And I'm sure your listeners have have heard of cases or know of cases where things have happened and perhaps someone will come forward and you'll have a different episode.

[Patricia McKinnon]

Absolutely right. Yeah, no, absolutely. This has been so fascinating.

[Anya Cain]

Thank you so much. This is wonderful.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Thank you. You guys are great. I love this. I'm, I, you are just been so kind. Thank you so much. I've really enjoyed this. I'm sure that your listeners have. Like I said, if somebody contacts me about a case, just remember I don't do chins or termination law.

[Patricia McKinnon]

But no, don't, don't contact her about that.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Don't want them to be disappointed when I don't jump on their case.

[Patricia McKinnon]

Exactly. But we've really appreciate it and your stories are fascinating.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Have you ever considered writing a book.

[Patricia McKinnon]

About all the funny ones that you gathered?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Well, the Lawyer, the Super Lawyer article which you can find online. Indiana Super Lawyer. It does have a couple other attorney stories that you guys. Do you want me to mention? I don't know if I should mention them because they're in the article.

[Patricia McKinnon]

Read the Super Lawyers.

[Anya Cain]

Yeah, read the Super Lawyers.

[Unnamed Speaker]

But there are. But again, keep in mind that pretty much every Attorney you know that you meet will have a story about, a funny story about that they've heard may not be their case. The other thing you can say to an attorney when you meet another attorney and you're trying to make conversation, or more importantly, when you meet a judge is, and this worked really well up until about four years or until we had electronic filing. But you say to them, what's in your evidence closet? Because judges who have done trial, civil or criminal a lot of times will have really interesting things in their evidence closet because sometimes people don't move for substitution and substitute a photograph for the actual object. So there's judges, I know a case where the judge had a brick, another judge had a bumper from a car in evidence. So these are like, I'm just giving you conversation starters. If you meet an attorney or a judge and you're, you know, what's the most interesting case you've ever had? Or what's the most interesting case you've ever heard of, or have you had a case where you wished you would have done something differently or the opposing counsel. And again, keep in mind that attorneys, like any other profession, talk about each other. So if you're mean to another attorney, they're going to tell people, if you're rude to them, the same thing with the judge. And never ever, I'm telling all your listeners, if you go to court, never, ever insult court staff. Never, never be mean to them, never yell at them, never accuse them of things. Same thing with clerks in the clerk's office, because that gets around and you could be hurting yourself and your case without even meaning to because you just had a really bad day. So there's more advice. Well said.

[Patricia McKinnon]

Well said. Well, thank you so much, Patty.

[Kevin Greenlee]

We really appreciate it.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Thank.

[Anya Cain]

You. Thanks so much to Patricia.

[Kevin Greenlee]

We really enjoyed our conversation with her.

[Anya Cain]

Thanks so much for listening to the Murder Sheet. If you have a tip concerning one of the cases we cover, please email [e-mail] if you have actionable information about an unsolved crime, please report it to the appropriate authorities.

[Kevin Greenlee]

If you're interested in joining our Patreon, that's available at www.patreon.com murdersheet if you want to tip us a bit of money for records requests, you can do so at www. Buymeacoffee.com murdersheet we very much appreciate any support.

[Anya Cain]

Special thanks to Kevin Tyler Greenlee, who composed the music for the Murder Sheet and who you can find on the [e-mail] if you're looking to talk with.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Other listeners about a case we've covered. You can join the Murder Sheet discussion group on Facebook. We mostly focus our time on research and reporting, so we're not on social media much. We do try to check our email account, but we ask for patience as we often receive a lot of messages. Thanks again for listening.

[Anya Cain]

You know, Anya, we are in this true crime space. It's such a difficult place to be in sometimes. And one of the reasons is because you're talking about cases that people have a real emotional involvement in. And so if you reach a conclusion that some people don't like online, they're going to, like, start attacking you and even threatening you.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Yes.

[Anya Cain]

And I know when that first started happening to us, it was really, really unsettling and difficult. And I know one thing that really helped us feel better and safer to continue on with the show was SimpliSafe.

[Kevin Greenlee]

SimpliSafe has been a company we've trusted for years. We've used them for years to protect our home. And one of the reasons is they just give us that peace of mind. As Kevin said, we're no strangers to controversy. And sometimes that can mean getting threats or getting basically veiled threats where people say they're gonna come hurt you because they disagree with what you're saying about a case. And so with SimpliSafe, we're able to kind of keep the murder sheet train chugging along and not worry about that too much, because we know that they are so proactive about how they keep homes secure. This is a company, I mean, their new active guard outdoor protection, that's there to stop break ins before they happen. They're not just letting you know about, oh, this bad thing happened. They're trying to prevent it from even happening so you don't have to go through that trauma. They have live monitoring agents on hand 247 to possibly detect suspicious activity around the property. They have cameras. And also, one thing I like about them is they're flexible. They know that different people have different needs. They know that if you're a renter, you can't necessarily set up the same amount of equipment, and it can't be on the walls permanently, as you could do if you're a homeowner. So they're great for renters, they're great for homeowners. No contracts, no hidden fees. Visit simplisafe.com msheet to claim 50% off a new system with a professional monitoring plan and get your first month free. That's simplisafe.com msheet there's no safe like simplisafe. I think you and I, Kevin, are people who always like to support a company that's giving back to the community in some key way and supporting a cause that we care about. Is that fair to say?

[Anya Cain]

That's very fair to say.

[Kevin Greenlee]

One cause that we care about is supporting veterans. Veterans, people who've served our country, people who have served in the military. They deserve all the support they can get when they come back and when they're adjusting to society and dealing with things like trauma.

[Anya Cain]

Right, right.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Well, one company that's based in Austin, Texas, is Hometown Hero, and they're doing just that. They're founded by a US Veteran, and he understood, first and foremost how trauma can affect veterans. So a portion of their profits actually goes into causes that support veterans and groups that are supporting veterans. So when you're buying one of their premium hemp products, you're actually giving back to veterans. We think that's awesome. A lot of their products have this live rosin in it. This is a cannabis concentrate that's extracted using heat and pressure. That means you're getting very pure, very good cannabis in your hemp product that you're getting from them. They ship all throughout the country. It's very discreet packaging. It goes right to your door. And you can really experiment with them because they have something for people with all sorts of levels of THC experience. They have infused chocolates, they have gummies, they've got tinctures, they've got inhalables. Basically, whatever you want to try. It's a great thing for you and for even your dog. I think they have some CBD products for dogs, so it's something to really kind of check out and see if you're interested. Reclaim your evening. Visit hometownhero.com and use code msheet to take 20% off your first purchase. That's hometownhero.com code msheet for 20% off your first purchase. So we want to shout out one of our wonderful sponsors right now, and that sponsor is Happy Mammoth. This is a wonderful natural wellness brand. We've been using it, and it's been terrific. They're a great solution if you feel like you might be dealing with some hormone disruptors. I mean, that kind of happens to everyone. It's in the air, it's in the food, it's in lots of different products.

[Anya Cain]

So it's really reduced your cravings.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Yeah, for me, it's. I mean, I get crying nuts about my cravings sometimes. I will, you know, suddenly really want Macintosh apples, which aren't even in season, and various other things. We all know I've been stealing a lot of cereal recently, or allegedly, I should say. And so to kind of help beat that, I've been using their hormone Harmony supplement. It's just a supplement. You take it a couple of times, you know, couple doses, and I feel like it's boosted my gut health, to be honest. It's also something that women who are in perimenopause or menopause, they can use it, and it's gonna reduce your hot flashes. You're gonna have more energy, get to sleep better. So it's really good for women of all ages. But for me, the gut health element of it has been really special. So if you're interested for a limited time, you can get 15% off your entire first order at Happy Mammoth.com, just use the code msheet at checkout. That's HappyMammoth.com and use the code msheet for 15% off today.