Woman who pressed for Family Court says efforts have paid off

      It took 10 years to establish Family Court in Clark County, and after four years of operations, Myrna Williams says it was worth it.
      Williams, then a legislator and social worker, saw the handwriting on the wall by the early 1980s.
      The number of divorces was skyrocketing. Nevada had to find a way to mitigate the consequences.
      "I don't know how to prove how many kids end up in juvie because they are hungry or want something they can't have because they live with only one parent and nobody is making the other parent pay support. But I know it happens. Everybody knows that the depression and the hopelessness that results from these situations lead to drug abuse and to alcoholism.
      "I started trying to talk to a District Court judge, who shall remain nameless, about what happened to women and children and sometimes men ... in that process. I just wanted the judges to see that these cases were deserving of their full attention, because the cases they dealt with in the morning would be the ones that came back to haunt them on the felony calendar that afternoon.
      "The judge said, 'We don't have time for this. We have a few minutes to deal with it in the morning. The attorneys come into the office; they're guys we've partied with, or friends, and we chat a little and we make an informal agreement and they're out the door. That's all we've got time to do.' "
      Williams, now a county commissioner, became an ally of Sue Wagner, then a state senator, and helped push a bill through the Nevada Legislature that removed divorces, related matters of family law, and juvenile cases from the district courts and placed them under a specialized court.
      The process required a constitutional amendment, which was passed in 1990. Nevada legislators then appointed a task force, headed by Supreme Court Justice Charles Springer, to determine what form Family Court should take. Nearly all the task force's recommendations were incorporated into the law permitting family courts.
      What they designed departed from the traditional role of courts. The new law stated, "The family court shall, whenever practicable and appropriate, encourage the resolution of disputes before the court through nonadversarial methods or other alternatives to traditional methods of resolution of disputes."
      The toughest fight in the Legislature, however, came not over this wording, but over the issue of how independent the judges would be from the rest of the district court. The commission had recommended that the Family Court administrator be accountable to the Supreme Court, but the final bill placed that position under the administrator of the district court. Since there are 16 civil-criminal judges in Clark County and eight Family Court judges, the traditional judges control the nontraditional court.
      Sen. Bill Raggio and others wanted the same judges who heard criminal and civil cases to be rotated periodically onto the family bench. They argued that this would prevent judges from becoming burned out and disinterested in the family law.
      Williams insisted on specialization and won.
      Any attorney may run for the office, because Nevada does not recognize specialization in family law, but once elected, family judges must take specified training.
      Today, there is talk legislation will be introduced this year to remove the requirement that family judges be elected for that specific purpose.
      "It is a tough and demanding job, and for that reason somebody who runs for it needs to be really committed to family law," Williams said. "I'm glad we fought for that. If they tried to change it, I would fight for it again."