Court offers help for legal do-it-yourselfers

Not everyone who comes before the McLeod County Court hires a lawyer. Especially in civil cases, people often choose to represent themselves, and Court Administrator Karen Messner said, “That seems to be increasing all the time.”

To help these do-it-yourselfers, the court offers a self-service workstation for printing out forms and researching the judicial process, and a direct phone line to the Minnesota Court Self Help Center.

McLeod County has had the workstation for more than a year, but before July 17, the workstation was in a locked room that doubled as a staff copy room and overflow conference room. “It’s now more visible,” Messner said.

“Just within the last two weeks,” said Court Operations Supervisor Debbie Donnay, “We’ve had a lot more people using it.”

The workstation is funded by the state, although the county paid for the rewiring that made it possible to move it out of the copy room and into the lobby of the County Courthouse. The station provides high-speed access to the online Self Help Center at www.mncourts.gov/selfhelp. The site offers information on:
• divorce, child custody and family law,
• small claims court,
• landlord and tenant concerns,
• car title problems,
• wills, estates and probate law,
• juvenile law and more.

It also offers interactive tools such as a calculator for estimating child-support payments based on incomes and family sizes.

The phone link to the Self Help Center, located in Hennepin County, is staffed by lawyers. “They can’t give legal advice,” Messner noted, “but they can answer questions about the forms and the procedures.”

(Jorge Sosa is a staff writer for the Hutchinson Leader. He can be reached at sosa@hutchinsonleader.com)