Marriage and the courts, assert cynics, go hand in hand.
For what usually begins in a church on wedding day, “in the presence of God” and with smiles on almost every face while priests, pastors or other religious officials quote the biblical passage in St Matthew: “What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder” in order to remind couples of their sacred and life-long pledge of togetherness, routinely ends up before a judge or a referee.
With an estimated two million weddings taking place across the United States every year and between 50 per cent of the first marriages, 67 per cent of the second and 74 per cent of the third marriages ending in divorce, according to the Forest Institute of Professional Psychology in Missouri, the courts are kept extremely busy.
Marston Gibson, who is set to become Barbados’ next Chief Justice, would be the first to explain that marriage is a legal contract between two people and it would take a court for warring spouses to receive a legal green light to become single again.
As a judicial referee in Nassau County, one of the busiest divorce centres in New York State and in the country, the pressure is on the judges and referees to hear and determine who should get the house, furniture or car and who should have custody of children, pay spousal support and help educate the offspring until they reach the age of adulthood or maturity.
“In the past seven years I have heard and determined the outcome of at least 300 matrimonial cases,” said Gibson, the lone black referee in the New York Supreme Court system in Nassau County, a predominantly white suburban area.
“As a referee I do all of the things that a judge does, except that I don’t wear the judicial robes which are reserved for the State Supreme Court judges who are elected by the voters.”
On a recent weekday afternoon, Gibson was hearing one such case. He was collecting evidence in his second floor office and chambers where two attorneys representing the combatants were arguing for and against the husband paying child support.
But there was more to it than that. The husband had previously been ordered to vacate the matrimonial home and pay child support and Gibson, the only Oxford University trained Rhodes scholar in the sprawling complex of criminal and civil courtrooms populated by judicial court officers, support staff, security officers and others, had the task to decide if he had committed contempt of court by failing to pay child support.
Court referees speed up the hearing and decision-making of judges and relieve the court of many time-wasting tactics by litigants and attorneys.
Both attorneys who had agreed that Gibson shouldn’t simply hear the evidence but decide the case were solicitous of him, treating the Barbadian with respect in what may have been an attempt to secure a decision in their favour.
After more than an hour of hearing both sides, the referee adjourned the case and promised to provide an early determination.
“The options in this case are to hold him in contempt or to impose a money settlement,” Gibson said afterwards without indicating which way he was leaning.
“In Nassau County we go out of our way not to hold litigants in contempt. I have had cases with both of these attorneys on previous occasions and so it was quite easy for them to agree that I should determine the case.”
That’s not unusual for Gibson, who is highly regarded as a judicial referee at the Nassau County courthouse where he has heard and determined thousands of cases involving commercial disputes, property owners seeking relief from county and village real estate taxes, and small claims disputes.
“Ninety-five per cent of the cases assigned to me by the court I not only hear but determine the outcome,” he explained. “In the remainder, I report the outcome to a state Supreme Court justice. I have heard the full range of cases, not simply matrimonial disputes. I like hearing cases and that’s why I have stayed with it for so long.”
If and when he leaves for Barbados, perhaps as early as next week, Gibson, who has a solid reputation in the Long Island court system for writing judgments on time and for knowing the law, is going to be missed by his colleagues, say some of them.
