Margie Palladino had 13 years of legal experience, but it didn’t seem to translate in family court.
Noticeably absent from the proceedings were the standard protocols and many basic court functions Palladino was accustomed to. What struck her most, however, was the lack of advocates for the women and children going through the system.
“It was clear that we needed to do something about it,” Palladino said.
She channeled her experience into creating the Mass Family Advocacy Coalition (MFAC), a nonprofit dedicated to advocating for a better family court system for women and families.
But family advocacy wasn’t the path Palladino, BC Law ’85, originally took. She started her legal career in commercial litigation at a Boston law firm.
“It was mainly dealing with commercial disputes, breach of lease and intellectual property,” Palladino said.
Eventually, Palladino decided to step away and become the primary caregiver for her children.
But when she felt it was time to go back to work, Palladino did not immediately feel compelled to return to law. First, she tried out the real estate business for several years until around the time of the 2008 recession.
What came next was influenced heavily by her law school class’s 25th reunion, where she took on a temporary role in the reunion committee.
Despite the fun she had with it, Palladino didn’t think much of it. Her law school classmates, on the other hand, saw potential in Palladino’s knack for reunions.
“All my classmates at my reunion said ‘Forget the practice of law. You should do this as a business,’” Palladino said. “So I started a reunion engagement business, focusing on law schools as my niche.”
With the success of her reunion business, Palladino’s life shifted away from the courtroom. But her personal life soon wound her up back in court, as she dealt with child support issues following a divorce with her husband.
The family courtroom Palladino entered was not like the one she had learned about or experienced previously.
“I knew how cases should proceed, how they should function, how courts should function,” Palladino said. “And I did not have that experience at all.”
After seeing how women and families were dealt with in this system firsthand, Palladino sought out to find more information.
“I went to my state legislator and asked, ‘Who was advocating and looking out for the interests of women and children in family court?’” Palladino said. “She wasn’t aware of any advocacy group.”
Palladino knew someone needed to be doing this advocacy work. So, in collaboration with Lori Johnson, a member of her support group for mothers going through divorce, Palladino began work on MFAC.
The non-profit would be different from support groups like the one the two currently attended. For one, it would advocate for, rather than listen to, women’s concerns.
“The support group gets a lot of their funding from law firms, and they really try to be friends with everybody,” Johnson said. “As an advocate, we sometimes push back on law firms for various reasons, like dropping clients or other ethical considerations.”
Supporting, while at the same time advocating for women, is often a challenge, according to Johnson.
“There’s kind of an inherent conflict between supporting women going through a divorce and advocating for change within the system,” said Johnson.
MFAC would focus on advocating.
One of Palladino’s top priorities was to establish relationships with the systems and organizations they were going to be dealing with.
“It was really important to us to establish a working relationship with the family court, and we have done that,” Palladino said. “We work with different law schools and legal reform, like Massachusetts Legal Reform Institute and the legal services organization and other advocacy groups.”
In collaboration with these groups, they have been able to keep tabs on what is happening around them and where they can direct their efforts.
“We try to keep our finger on the pulse of what’s happening out there and try to make change where we can,” Palladino said. “And we’ve been pretty successful at it so far in such a short period of time that we’ve been in existence.”
Their success has led the non-profit to host lectures and panels at various law schools, including a symposium held at BC last April.
The event was called ““The Prevalence and Impact of Domestic Abuse in Contested Custody Cases and Parenting Plans,” and brought together over 100 judges, attorneys, and advocates to learn about what could be done to reform the current system.
One mechanism MFAC has found helpful in the reform process are amicus briefs—reports that can be submitted by anyone with a vested interest in the case’s outcome that include data or relevant case information. These reports are intended to aid the decision of the court by providing information that involved parties may be unable to give.
Palladino has used such briefs to help explain the importance of providing long-term caregivers who give up their career to care for their family appropriate alimony, or financial support from their spouse, for that work.
Without this support, many women are left in vulnerable positions, according to Palladino.
“Once you step away from your career, you lose so much earning potential,” Palladino said. “Combined with the gender wage gap, and because the vast majority of primary caregivers are women, it really puts women at a major disadvantage.”
MFAC wants to raise awareness about the crucial role courts play in determining the future quality of life for women who are dealing with alimony cases. Palladino sees this issue having an especially large impact on retired women.
“There’s a growing poverty rate for women over 65 who’ve retired and don’t have enough retirement savings,” Palladino said.
Palladino has found success advocating for women in need of alimony.
“With one case, the highest court in Massachusetts agreed with our position and determined that a primary caregiver has the right to savings as a component of alimony,” Palladino said.
MFAC also aids survivors of abuse in creating and presenting testimony to obtain a protective order.
“It’s like a restraining order to keep the abuser away from you, for nonviolent acts such as stalking, threatening to harm a family pet or a child, taking your keys, not allowing you to leave the house,” Palladino said.
These nonviolent acts are examples of coercive control, where an abuser attempts to isolate or threaten an intimate party into fear and compliance.
“All of that was legal until the law was changed to include coercive control acts as domestic violence,” Palladino said.
The law that created this change was the Coercive Control Act, passed in Massachusetts in 2023. MFAC’s advocacy, some of which took the form of survivor testimony, helped lead to this reform.
“The legislators said that the testimony was key in their decision to pass this bill so quickly,” Palladino said.
Carmen Aliber, founder of Together Rising Above Coercion (TRAC), shares Palladino’s vision for reform. But obtaining testimony from victims that can help drive this type of change can often prove difficult, according to Aliber.
“When we’re trying to pass legislation to protect survivors of domestic abuse, and it involves children and protective parents, people can get very caught up in emotions,” Aliber said.
Aliber believes Palladino possesses a unique ability to deal with these challenges.
“Margie always had the ability to respect the emotions that went with it, but to be able to sort out the important pieces to share,” Aliber said.
Palladino emphasizes the importance of an effective testimony.
“You only get three minutes to tell your story before the Judiciary Committee,” Palladino said. “So it was really important that all the cogent facts got out within three minutes.”
In order to get these facts, Palladino worked with survivors on how to best tell their stories in accordance with time limitations.
“Where we were able to help was to help them structure their stories so that they would be as impactful as possible,” Palladino said.
One initiative that MFAC and TRAC currently share is one related to abuse of the legal system that can suck partners back into the courtroom long after their relationship ends.
“It’s absolutely devastating to these protective parents who are trying to move on, and they just keep getting pulled back into court,” Aliber said. “Or there’s a contempt of court where their ex spouse does not follow the orders that the judge has set, but the only way they can get the judge’s orders enacted is to go back to court.”
Aliber believes MFAC is playing a major role in helping keep people out of this cycle.
“You can imagine how MFAC is instrumental as the liaison between the courts and legislation,” said Aliber.
Beyond court work, MFAC also aims to educate and bring general awareness to the various forms abuse can take, according to Johnson.
“I think people that don’t know about the family court process are extremely surprised by what happens in it,” Johnson said. “And so that’s why one of our main goals in the organization is just to educate people on what’s going on, and, you know, to enlist as much help as possible in trying to reform the process.”
Palladino believes that the women in MFAC remain committed in part because of their own personal experiences.
“We all do this because we know our situations are over. I am not doing this to improve my case. My case is over,” Palladino said. “Every woman that is part of our group says they just don’t want this to happen to other women and other children.”
Small successes continue to inspire Palladino, as they prove the potential MFAC has to make real changes in families’ lives.
“It has really impacted my life,” Palladino said. “Because I feel like every time we move the needle ever so slightly, we’ve helped another woman and her children.”
