Episode 17: The Power of Court-Watching and Advocacy with Lily Schwark

Lily Schwark Grey Minds

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Lily is also the current president of Families Against Court Travesties, also known as FACTS. Just for our listeners, I met Lily right after Greyson was killed, along with many other parent advocates wanting to help. We appeared at many City Council meetings to help spread awareness of family court awareness month and just about family court reform in general.

So it's so nice to see you again and have you here, Lily, how are you?

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Like I cannot believe it's been this much time. Yeah,

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[00:01:24] Lily Schwark: It's so awful. And I really appreciate the work that you do.

And I wouldn't be here if it weren't for Greyson. I think when we talk about, there's always like this thing online that's like what radicalized you. And what radicalized me was Greyson's murder for sure. I think I had just gotten into the court system myself, and it's every parent's worst nightmare.

And then you see that, and it was the same county I was in and I was like, this is not possible. This is. It's not possible that this is happening and you were ignored, and so it definitely radicalized me into saying, okay, this is a systemic issue. This is something that we need to address, and how can I help?

And that's when I showed up to Greyson's Vigil and I met you and I met other wonderful advocates. And then we got together and started, Florida Protective parents. And I joined Families Against Court Travesties, which has been an organization for 20 years. And. So it's incredible to kind of be here and be in the work and hold space, hold space for the people that are still going through it and hold space for the victims and hopefully keep on the hope that things are going to get better.

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[00:02:48] Lily Schwark: Definitely. So it's an interesting story.

I always tell everyone that I wasn't with a full blown narcissist because I don't think I would've gotten out as easily as I did. I was in the court system for two years and many of my friends of people that I helped litigants, they're in the court five, six years, some 13 years until their kids age out.

Some people have been in the court system since their kids are. Six months old and they don't get out until that kid is 18, and I really equate it to being in jail. I really feel like you're in jail and here's your inmate number, and if you don't learn about the court system and the rules, you're either in gen pop or you're in maximum security.

Because you lose more and more of your rights as you go, and it's very degrading. The court system is extremely degrading and so I, my ex abused drugs and he was verbally, emotionally abusive. He was very controlling and I kind of already knew in my head that getting out was going to be very hard.

He was not gonna let me go without a fight, so I tried to do everything in my power to make him happy so that I could leave and I bought a house. I left him my home. I bought him a brand new car and all my savings. And my student, he wouldn't even let me have a job for so long. So student grants, then money any type of my tax returns, anything that I had, it was all left there.

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[00:04:26] Lily Schwark: A hundred percent. I've always been pretty financially savvy, so he would always kind of brag to people that I was the one who held the pants in the relationship and I held the purse strings.

All I was really a bookkeeper for him. I had to allot money for drugs every week. I had to make sure that there was $400 for weed for that week, and I wasn't allowed to buy my daughter a $50 pair of shoes when she was learning how to walk.

As moms and we're trying to get the best for our kids. When you're with somebody who is so selfish and everything is for them, and it's just such a hard thing to navigate. And it was something that I was like, I cannot continue to do this. So when I left with my daughter and nothing.

I was sleeping on my mom's couch. I gave him everything and was just praying that he would let me walk away. And for a while it worked. He was willing to work with me and see her. And he just continually after I left, got really bad into drugs and I picked up my daughter one day and he was on cocaine.

He had friends, a party, and my daughter was one years old and she was, I went to pick her up at his house and she was. Naked out of the bath and there was 20 or 30 guys in their twenties with cases of beer, baggies of weed, baggies of cocaine in their hands walking through, and I could see what was happening.

And obviously like my immediate reaction was, oh my God, I have to get my baby outta this house. And it's like he knew that he had messed up to a point where he couldn't come back and he had given me all her clothes and everything and he was just so erratic and, shaking and things like that.

It was one of the scariest moments in my life and I. Said to him, if you wanna see her again, you're gonna have to enter a 90 day program. Like you're gonna have to go at least to AA and NA and get yourself figured out. And I tried to work with him as best as I could, and for a long time it was just the relationship between me and him trying to figure this out.

And. It didn't really hit me how abused I was. I just thought I was in a really toxic relationship and I had to get out 'cause I didn't even like who I was becoming anymore. You get reactive abuse and you become the person that starts yelling and I didn't like that. I didn't like who I was.

So during the time after I left, he got a new girlfriend and what I like to call stepmother syndrome happened. Where, they believe the new supply believes the narcissist. They believe everything that they're saying, oh, I'm being taken away from my kid. And they start to intervene and they start to say, at this time she was a paralegal, so she pushed him very hard to get into the court system and she's gonna pay you child support, you're gonna have full custody.

She's an alienator. All of those check boxes that we now know, those are like classic. Narc handbook, like they could just take a handbook and it goes down the list. Thanks to, I had an attorney who was an adoption attorney and she was very interesting, very creative, and she helped me navigate.

And so we did use some interesting legal tactics that if you guys wanna look up my docket, you can go ahead and look me up. Okay. But she was. Very interesting. And so for a long time we were able to delay things. And that's a, that's something that I always recommend. If you're a parent who, like me, like Ali, you were never married.

The father doesn't have his paternity established yet in the state of Florida. Delay as long as you can. If he's not a safe person, go ahead and delay that. There's plenty of tactic to delay, motions to dismiss, and things like that. A motion for status quo, where you ask the court to give you status quo in the meantime because they're gonna immediately ask for temporary time sharing orders.

So things like that helped me. Thankfully my ex was so egotistical that he never asked for temporary time sharing, and he said he didn't wanna do a DNA test because he wanted me to admit to the judge that was my child, that was his child. So thankfully it got to the point where we finally went to mediation and I had as much leverage as I could.

I did a lot of court watching. I learned a lot about the court system. I got in with so many wonderful women. So many stories. Really helped me fine tune what was possible, what I couldn't do. It helped me navigate his threats. So that was so huge in being able to secure. First I secured 90% and I waited to do child support because money drives these men.

So I was like, let's just get the time sharing figured out. I'm not interested in child support. Let's do that. Once I got to the point where I had majority time sharing. I started to drain him like I flipped the tactics that they use against us. I flipped and used those, right? It was like, okay, I waited three, four months, now I'm gonna do child support. Child support was a lot because I had 90%, and then he had to pay half of daycare, so he was paying me a thousand dollars a month and he was not making that much money and he had lost a good job because. I was always, he was always on drugs. So at the point where we were at, he was just exhausted.

And then I was able to exhaust him and exhaust him. And even though my daughter was coming back from those visits telling me, I don't wanna come, go back, and screaming and crying and telling me that he was, she was being left alone in a room for hours at a time. In my head I just kept thinking, what else can I use?

Because I had been told, don't say abuse. Don't go to court and tell anyone he abused you. You can if I had proof of the drugs. So I did send that. I was like, I have pictures, I have everything. I had his, he had been arrested for substance, so I was like able to use that, but it was still, I'm curious

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[00:10:13] Lily Schwark: what

would've would've done well.

the thing is though,

They never pushed it, and it was like, sometimes that's interesting. Sometimes what these guys will do is they will just file things in court to intimidate you and they're, they will never go through with it.

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[00:10:34] Lily Schwark: A hundred percent like it is. Like I said, my abuser was a baby narc compared to everyone else. Like we were both in our young twenties. And I always tell people they evolve. Absolutely. They go onto their next victim and they are better, stronger, smarter.

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[00:11:00] Lily Schwark: I'm really good friends with his ex-girlfriend that he was with for seven years, and she told me horrific things that never happened to me that he would hit her. And I was like, I never got hit. And so it was like they know what to use, they realize what worked, what didn't work. Oh, I lost her because of this, so I'm not gonna do that again.

I'm gonna do something else. And it's in their nature to control and they can't really help it. So it's like. I could I, and then they'd like to play the card. I'm reformed. I'm so much better. And then you go back to all the girlfriends and it's a different version, but the same flavor of things.

So I do say yeah, I was probably his second serious relationship. He was my first. And so that was a big catalyst to say, okay, this is why I got out. I will never say I got out 'cause I was stronger, better I got out. 'cause I was. Dealing with somebody who wasn't as experienced. And I got all the knowledge from all these women who had been dealing with crazier men and older and more, experienced.

So I saw all the tricks and things like that. So, I don't think that you could just get by. Like I love Tina Swithin. I love one mom's battle. One of the things she says is, profile your narc. Profile them. Figure out what triggers them, figure out what pushes their buttons, make a list of it, put things in writing of what really bothers that person or what they're interested in.

And those are the key pieces that you're going to drive your strategy around. Not everybody has the same thing. Some men have unlimited money. They don't care. You're not gonna drain them financially. They could have millions in the bank. It's never gonna happen. I think to your point.

I don't think that there's anything that you could have done. Like, no, hell no. Like it, it is, it's just I got lucky. I got lucky.

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[00:12:50] Lily Schwark: Mm-hmm. So my ex towards the end of my court battle, his girlfriend began hitting my daughter and so she came home and told me, and I tried to have a conversation with him and we're both Latin and it's common in our cultures to do that. So I had a conversation with him. I don't condone it, but I was like, she's very heavily pregnant.

Like, is there something going on? Can you talk to her? And of course, vehemently denied it. You're raising a little liar. Just derogatory comments about a child. And I, thankfully, because I bought that property, and even though my name wasn't on the title, I gave the money for it, I didn't realize that I had interest in it.

So I spoke to a couple of property attorneys after I got tipped off by thankfully, survivor moms, right? And I looked into it and I was able to send him a demand letter for my equity in the home. And because my ex was motivated by money, he turned around and said, have her drop the suit. She can have full custody.

Wow. And he, I bet you for

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[00:13:59] Lily Schwark: Yeah. And on top of that, he also wanted $20,000, which is illegal. That's extortion. It's selling your kid, it's child trafficking. So that was kind of off the table, thankfully, like my attorney was like, you guys will both go to jail for this, but if you try to even attempt that.

So he signed away his rights. I was able to convince him like, Hey, you're paying so much child support, you're gonna make that money in a few years anyways, like two, two years you'll get the money back. That was kind of the process, and he signed away his rights. I mean, the guy was such a dramatic theatrical person that he signed away his rights on the day his other baby was born because he said, I need to go into her life fresh. Let me just give up one kid. And get another kid.

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[00:14:54] Lily Schwark: Yes. So Florida Protective parents really came about because of Greyson.

Yanina is amazing. She's the president of Florida Protective Parents. We have Jessica and Daria. So we are a group of moms that really decided, okay, what can we do to help other moms? So we put together Florida protective parents, but not just other moms, like other domestic violence survivors.

And really what Florida Protected Parents is, a conduit to other resources. So if you come to us for help, we're going to point you in the right direction, tell you, hey, like you might wanna look at this statute or this place, or you might wanna look at this case law.

You wanna look into play therapy. We're gonna analyze like what's going on and like what you might need. Honestly, where to protective parents has taken a little bit of a step back from really dealing with cases or anything like that just because a ton of trauma and we want to try to explore more holistic or more people that can have that type of experience or that type of training to deal with the amount of trauma.

You can tell people ask for help all the time, Ali, I'm sure. And you're just like, no. And

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Yeah. Which is why I do this podcast and have people like you on so that way maybe they can just listen to an episode and understand a little bit more.

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Here. Take a look at what they did. And so I really feel like the power of court watching. So we always work hand in hand, right? Families against court, travesties and

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[00:16:51] Lily Schwark: So FACTS is an organization that was founded like 22 years ago, and they were founded primarily because this group of feminists in the national organization of women saw a need for people to attend court watches.

They had women who needed help, like they were domestic violence injunctions and things like that. And they wanted support. So they created these court watchers. So they would go to court. And this was in person, 20 years ago they would go to court and they would watch court hearings for them and do court watch report reports and things like that.

What is so wonderful about during Covid is that everything turned Zoom, right? All these court hearings are on Zoom now. We have court hearings, like CMCs are normally on Zoom, and now we're able to court watch like nationally So that's a wonderful thing. And so what we did is we capitalized on that like, oh my God, like we Greyson and then we found families against court travesties and I started court watching all over.

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[00:17:54] Lily Schwark: Yes. That's our main initiative. Did they do anything else? For right now? No. Okay. Became the president and we did, they had previous initiatives and things like that, and they would do protests. And when I got handed the keys to the kingdom a little bit like.

We've decided to go back to basics and so we're revamping our website. It's going to be out very soon. We are redoing our court watch report forms because I am a, an accountant. I come from in data analytics, like I, I love data and one of the things that's severely missing for us is research in high conflict divorces, right?

So my idea is that we're going to start doing court watch report forms that are gonna hit data points. We're going to be able to have metrics and analyze and be able to do that and working with wonderful like data scientists on that too. So we're going to try and just focus on court watches and Families Against Court Travesties is really a neutral place. Anyone can request a court watch. We'll take court watch from anyone in the world does not matter.

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[00:18:59] Lily Schwark: So in the United States it is completely legal, ethical, moral that any citizen in, in the United States can visit pretty much any court hearing except for like dependency and certain court hearings that are private.

But not many people know that our family court hearings are completely public. Our records are completely public. That's part one of the points that I say it's a little bit degrading 'cause all of our information is out there for anyone to see. My tax returns, my financial statements.

It's crazy. The amount of data that they have on us for public view is really concerning to me sometimes, but the great thing about that is, is that you're allowed to be in any hearing and when you need help or you feel like alone or scared and you want someone to at least view and witness what's happening to you.

Then it's great to ask for a court watcher, right? And so we basically we're like a conduit. We find volunteers and we assign them. We say, Hey, there's a court hearing. Do you wanna come to it? It's virtual, it's this day. And you just log into Zoom, I've done a few

you're quiet, you're professional, you don't say anything.

You take notes if you want, and you basically just watch.

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[00:20:31] Lily Schwark: Yeah, that does happen. That definitely does happen and. That's why it's our right. And that's what we like families against court, Travis, is that's why it's so important for us to be involved because anybody can start a court watch, right? Like you can put your hearing on Facebook and I see a lot of people doing that now, and that's wonderful, but you run the risk of being kicked out, right?

What we do is we go back to the judges because. If I'm outta court, no one's gonna come and harm my case. So I can go to a judge and the chief judge, and that's what we do. We reach out to the chief judge and we say, Hey, we were kicked out of this in so hearing you do know that we're allowed to be there.

Here's the statute, we are Sunshine State, so we have freedom of information, like things like that. And they will normally reprimand the judge who did that. Then that will never happen again. That's you'll be allowed in the hearing and that's what happens. So that's how we deal with judges kicking us out.

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[00:21:26] Lily Schwark: Well, they do it internally. They reprimand them internally. Hey, don't do that again, type of thing. That's not gonna be on record.

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[00:21:33] Lily Schwark: Yeah, a hundred percent. I think anybody would get nervous in Broward seeing Ali Kessler or even Palm Beach or Miami seeing you on a hearing most of the time it's pretty blase.

Like we're in Palm Beach a lot, it was founded in Palm Beach and so the judges there know us. So judges in Miami, Broward. Palm Beach, they don't really give us too much trouble. They don't kick us out. They actually are very polite, kind. They welcome us in like, okay, thank you. Just make sure.

So it depends on Judge. They might ask you to turn your camera off. They might ask you to turn your camera on. They might ask you to put your court watcher in, the the name or they might ask you to put a name. Honestly, they can't ask you what's your full name, and they, that's not, that doesn't happen.

So people who are afraid to court watch, I urge you to not be so afraid. Come join us, come talk to us.

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[00:22:26] Lily Schwark: So personally, I will even say that I wouldn't have my daughter today if I didn't do court watching.

It allowed me to learn the ins and outs, and so the big picture is you go to court. I've never been to court, I've never gotten arrested. Nothing has ever happened to me that I've been to court. So I didn't know how to behave. I didn't know if you have to stand up. Yes, your Honor.

No, your Honor. How that works. So when you go to these court hearings, you see how to behave, you're able to see how the judge behaves. You can court watch your judge, and I did that quite often to see what that's smart made him, what made him mad, what made him tick, what he actually cared about, because certain judges care about certain things.

Right? Right. And some of them are more strict, some of them are more lenient. You can see what you can get away with, what you can't get away with. Like versus entering evidence. I'm not talking about doing anything crazy.

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I. I wish I had that. Yeah, a hundred

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So that's like nice to just be able to go in and be anonymous. And those are the CMCs are easier for you to just go in and be a fly on the wall and see what's happening. If you don't wanna show your face or you're afraid your judge is gonna recognize you, or something like that. So those are good ways to be involved and see those things.

The other benefits is, you get to see other survivors, right? How they're handling things, what motions are being filed. So if you have a similar situation, I can add this in my injunction and the case law that's being used. And one of the things I'll say is your attorney

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[00:24:31] Lily Schwark: Yeah, and I love, see here's the thing is I love pro se people because pro se people, they really try to do their research. They're more in tune with the court system. Whereas like I even feel like people who have attorneys need more help because you trust your attorney. You are like exactly paying you thousands of dollars to take care of this.

And the way that I see so many attorneys treating people is insane. They treat them like you're not their client. Like they're your self-defense lawyer, right? Like they're your, I forget what that's called. When you get arrested and they give you a, an attorney it's like legal aid or something, they act like you're not paying that and they will convince you not to file things.

And I see that so many times, like I'll say, 'cause they're lazy and they don't wanna do more work. Pretty much it's not even, and sometimes I don't even think that it's lazy. You have to remember that the American Bar Association is a fraternity. Yes. They're not part of our federal government and they are not regulated by any outside sources.

So when you get your bar license, it's like joining that frat and at the end of the day, what is gonna be protected is the members in. That organization. So you don't really wanna ruffle feathers of another attorney. You don't wanna ruffle feathers of a judge because you don't know when you're gonna sit in front of them again.

Or another attorney might turn into a judge and you might have to sit in front of them. So attorneys are very unlikely to order sanctions against another attorney even if it is warranted. They're very unlikely to go toe to toe, even though they know it's right. They're more conservative. And they also try to, like you said, sometimes they're just lazy and they're gonna try to convince you to settle out of court.

Well, let's just settle for 50 50. That's the most you're gonna get anyways.

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[00:26:26] Lily Schwark: Yeah. And it's so dangerous because. You really believe this person, you trust them.

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A lot of them are not trained properly, especially in dv. And now that Greyson's law exists, we still need to get the lawyers and judges and gals and mediators, everybody trained on domestic violence.

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And there are attorney offices that treat cases like it's McDonald's in, out, in, out here. Let's get you through the drive-through, keep going. I wanna settle this, I wanna get this off my books. You're not paying me enough for this. And it turns into, you have some attorneys that are super aggressive and will subpoena and subpoena and do all of this casework that ultimately amounts to nothing.

'cause they're gonna push you into this and they're just draining your retainer. Right? And then you have attorneys that are like trying to convince you because they genuinely think like this is gonna work itself out. I've seen other cases like this. Like you said, they're not trained in this and they'll tell you.

Just give them 50 50 or just do this. Or just do that. Let's not rock the boat. And those are especially dangerous, I think, because they ignore our gut, right. Like you have a gut instinct and you're talking to them, I need this done. Yeah. And they're ignoring you. That's how what happened to Greyson happened. That's how it keeps happening to other

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[00:28:44] Lily Schwark: That's exactly what I'm saying. I refused to take that for an answer. I was told that initially I couldn't really

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[00:28:55] Lily Schwark: Yeah. I mean like that. That is a hundred percent like the danger.

And I think, you know, the only difference between me and you is I already be like, and I'm just saying this from a point of like, I'm a brown woman in America. I expect to be oppressed by these systems. So when I walked into court or I got my served, I knew I had a very bad chance of being treated fairly. And thankfully that was not my experience, but it is the experience of so many black and brown women that I was already on cautious, and I will never fully trust anyone who's in a position of authority that works with these other positions of authority to tell me what my rights are. And unfortunately, that did save a lot of my headache and my pain. But that is the system for us, and I think it's for all women that come into the system. You need to understand you are not going to be believed, you are not going to be in this position of privilege that maybe you've enjoyed for most of your life.

You enjoy like. Not for nothing, Ali, but I'm saying like if you went to the police and you said I got robbed and it was this guy, and a lot of times they might believe you, they might question me, did you know him? Were you hooking? You know what I'm saying? It becomes a whole different conversation when you're black or brown versus when you're white in most systems.

And so when you go into the court, cases, I knew I'm gonna be put down and people are gonna tell me that things aren't possible, that maybe would be possible for somebody with more money or more leverage, because honestly, Ali, if you had a hundred thousand dollars in the bank, do you think your attorney would've said, no, Ali, you could go for, you need to do 50 50.

I doubt it.

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[00:30:48] Lily Schwark: It is extremely sad. It's like the people with the most money in court end up if not getting what they want, end up being able to torture the other person in court.

Sometimes they don't get what they want, but there's an ability to continue bringing that other person back in, other, in back and back to court. So that's what's really dangerous and just, I know I went off on a whole tangent, but to go back to court watching, it's so important to know your rights.

It's so important to know. You know what is actually real? Because when you go into court, it feels like Alice in Wonderland. You feel like you're in bizarro world and everything is upside down, and you're like, well, what do you mean? He hit my kid and you guys can't do anything about it. What do you mean?

Like he was screaming at her and telling her that I hate her and I'm a bad mother and you can't do anything, they tell you, oh, sorry, that's not enough to go in front of the judge. Right? And so knowing what is possible and what's not possible, I think is a game changer to empowering yourself to make better decisions and empowering yourself to advocate for yourself and really push and say, no, you can't tell me I can't file an injunction because I know I can't because I see, I saw three other cases where they got an injunction and they had less than I did.

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[00:32:23] Lily Schwark: Exactly.

And we're in so much trauma and I can tell you I would pass out like I would be found blacked out in my bathroom because didn't even know. I was just so overwhelmed, overloaded with all of this information and once you get hit in court, all of this other trauma starts to compound on you that you didn't even realize.

Once you start realizing that this is an abusive person, you go back and you start looking at every single point and you're like, oh my God, what I thought was normal was him prepping me for this, for ruining my life. And so that, so

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[00:33:02] Lily Schwark: Well, that's such a loaded question and such a thing that I don't even know. If there's an answer to that, let's flip a coin. What does he feel like today? What does this judge feel like today? You're at the mercy of, is he ready

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[00:33:16] Lily Schwark: You're right.

You're at the mercy of someone, right? And that's why I say who watching's important is you find out who this person is, what makes him tick, what makes her tick, what really gonna impress her. What is gonna make a judge believe you is what is the composition of their own set of values, their own set of ideas, prejudices, biases, things like that.

And so investigating that, but also trying to make sure that your side of the street is clean, that you are doing by the rules of what they want you to do. Those things. And what about collecting evidence?

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Because I know for me, I wrote down things every single day in a journal, so I was able to have a running list because we forget. So what else do you recommend?

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If you're asking for documentation, I can give you guys a template. But I know how daunting documentation is and how it can bring up a lot of PTSD too, because when you're right before your hearing and you have to go through a hundred text messages of that person telling you that they wanna kill you, that sends you into a spiral where you gotta have a bottle that it's next to you or Xanax or something, it's awful.

So what I always recommend to women is save it and drop it in a folder. So text messages, things like that. Talking parents, medical emails, things, anything like that's pertinent to your case and it happens on a day-to-day basis and you're documenting that first try to get a source that's verifiable gonna be admissible in court, that's the first thing. You don't wanna just I love you having a journal and I think everybody should have a journal while they're going through this so that they can look at things that, the details that they might've missed and think about their mindset in that moment. But having something like screenshots doctor's notes, things like that, and dropping them in one big folder, like on Google Drive or one Box and just put the date on it.

And just a quick like doctor's note. And then the date and maybe like actually had a spreadsheet

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[00:35:30] Lily Schwark: Yeah, it was crazy. And that's wonderful. And I think if you're just starting out, doing this daily, like things that come up and then when I was gonna have a hearing, what I would do is I would search keywords and look for that and just create a specific folder for that hearing or that motion.

That way I wasn't inundated. While you're trying to prepare for a hearing and you are spending nine to 10 hours at your kitchen table trying to ruffle through papers and everything like that. So putting keywords and things like dropping it in the correct folder like this is medical, I'm gonna drop it in a medical folder, or this is school, I'm gonna drop, stay organized.

Yeah, staying organized like that in a way that's not gonna be overwhelming. I really try to preach mental health before, take care of your mental health before you try to take care of your case. Because what ends up happening, and I see people getting burnt out, is they go off the deep end. They start screaming at their attorneys, writing long on unintelligible emails like, you need to this.

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Now I'm just curious, in your court watching all the cases that you have watched, has Greyson's law ever come up?

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How do we use Greyson's Law? How do we use Greyson's law? My attorney doesn't wanna use Greyson's Law. And one of the biggest things that we talk about is Greyson's Law is not just Greyson's Law. It's Florida statute. Yes, it is the law. There's no Greyson's law. Like I think what people think when they think Greyson's Law is, it's just this own law in its own bubble.

No, it's part of 61.13. It's part of the child statute in Florida. It's in there. It's in the Florida statute. So this is not just it's own lone star. You're applying Florida statute to here, and it, I would recommend if your attorney doesn't wanna use it, because there's no case law. I've seen attorneys who don't wanna use case law because it's not in the statute.

So it goes both ways.

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So if you ever get someone that asks that, again, direct them to those.

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I thought the attorney did a fantastic job. So that's another thing that's great about. That's another thing that's great about court watching is you have access to being able to see all of these different cases and the motions filed and Right. And the lawyers,

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I know people ask me all the time if I know of a good lawyer and I say I know of a not good lawyer. Yeah,

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Ask them, can I come see your case? Can I come see one of your cases? I'd love to see you practice. I'd love to see you litigate.

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[00:39:36] Lily Schwark: You can. You can look up their bar number. There's certain, so every docket I. Every county in Florida has a different website for their clerk of court.

And this is, it's perfect timing. I was gonna mention this is, oh, I recommend every single person, whether you have an attorney or don't get registered user access to your county and your. Clerk of court registered user access so that you can see your court documents. You don't have to ask your attorney.

You can see the timeline and you can see every motion filed and you have access to everything. You're also able to search for other cases, and in certain counties like Palm Beach, you're able to search an attorney's bar number. So before you hire an attorney, you can see all the cases that they have right now, their caseload in that county.

You can also see what they're filing their, how well their motions are written, if they're winning their motions, if they're winning their hearings. So doing research on attorneys becomes easier when you have access to things like that because I think we go in blind. We just find an attorney and you have to just go off of what you feel.

But doing more research, digging in a little bit further is better because when you search their name, you might only find a couple, one or two appeals or something like that. You don't get to see the full scope of what they're doing. 'cause you don't want an attorney that's got 50 cases on their docket right now.

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[00:41:03] Lily Schwark: So yes, there is a button on our website that is request a court watch and there's the,

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[00:41:12] Lily Schwark: Yeah, it is FACTS court watch.org, F-A-C-T-S. Court watch and there is a button on our website that says, request a court watch. We are now taking anonymous requests, so we used to ask for people's names and now we're not going to be doing that because we don't wanna deter anyone from.

Seeking help. And we also wanna maintain our neutrality. So if we go into a court hearing and we don't know who asks us to be there, that helps us maintain our neutrality and seeing what's going on, right? And reporting accurately. So we want that data really bad. I really want that data. So we want go into courts neutral, not being aggressive, not being like, I'm on this side or on that side.

Just seeing what's happening. The judges tend to explain more when someone is in as a court watch, because they are pandering to the audience at that point. So they wanna talk to explain why they're making their decision. They're a little bit more gentle with pro se litigants. They're minding their Ps and the Qs more and other, and the attorneys are too, attorneys are behaving better because you have a room full of potential clients, right?

So you wanna behave better. Absolutely.

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[00:42:41] Lily Schwark: I'm really happy that you had me on your show, Ali. There's not enough words in the world that can explain the impact that you're having, just showing up and holding space for people and using your voice, and I think that you're honoring Greyson's legacy and his memory every single day.

Thank you. Just by being here,

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[00:43:06] Lily Schwark: I'll tell you that little boy is the reason that many of us don't stop because we are not forgetting Greyson and we're not forgetting, melody and we're not forgetting Cassie, Carli, we're not gonna forget those names. Our reason why it's important because we do feel that these deaths are preventable.

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[00:43:28] Lily Schwark: Yes. That mom is phenomenal. She is a powerhouse.

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And then we'd have funding for it here in Florida and either amend Greyson's Law or start another law.

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Right.

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All right, Lily. Well I will talk to you very soon and we thank you so much for sharing all of your knowledge about Court Watch and I'm going to look into it more. And if you need any watchers, you let me know.

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[00:44:34] Ali Kessler: Alright, take care.