THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT

Lillian Kozak

“The courts are responsive to only one thing, in my experience, and that is public perception. They give not a damn about anything else.”

Lillian Kozak at the VFA Salute to Family Justice Lawyers, Judges & Activists event, Irvington, NY June 1995

I’m very pleased to be here today and very taken with the honor that’s going to be awarded. For years, almost 22, I’ve been working on changing the perspective that society has in the divorce area. Most of my activity has been in the form of law, changing divorce law in the state of New York. I believe it’s been the most difficult issue of all the issues in which the National Organization For Women has been working because most of the world seems to consider divorce when they hear about it as a personal issue, a domestic issue. But it isn’t a domestic issue, it’s a societal issue.

Outside of abortion, it is the issue that affects women the most severely from an economic point of view. Of course, like many of us, we get into an action because we’ve had a personal experience, and my personal experience after some 28 years of marriage, and after feeling that I was quite informed because I’m a CPA, as was my husband, and we had records like General Motors, and we were educated in tax law, business law, contract law, but I didn’t know a damn thing about divorce law.

I was absolutely in a state of shock when I found that in the state of New York, almost all of the assets in the marriage did not legally belong to me. And my first move was when I called the National Organization for Women, which subsequently happened to me, was to pick up the phone and say, “What are you doing about it?” Our response now was the response that I received then, “Why don’t you come and join us?” Because it’s an organization that is very open if somebody is interested in working on a feminist position.

I had several mentors with whom I started, and I began speaking at meetings. We reached out to more traditional organizations, and I started, as I said before, to develop some little trite statements of my own, like for women, stupid is spelled, T-R-U-S-T, because most of the women that came to me were in a position that after long marriages, they weren’t watching finances because they felt they had no reason not to trust. And at that time, New York was discussing, they had been discussing for years, changing the domestic relations law in New York State. And there were going to be hearings on what became the equitable distribution law.

And I went up to Albany. I didn’t know terribly many people. I come from Long Island. A number of the people who had come from NOW were from the city. And there sat the Judiciary Committee, joint meeting of the Committees of the Assembly and the Senate. I believe I was the second speaker, and I watched as the first speaker, an attorney, no less, started to speak. And as she spoke, the members of the Judiciary Hearing Committee started to speak among themselves, and she became terribly frustrated. They weren’t listening. And no matter what she did, their rudeness ceased to come to a conclusion.

And I followed her, nervous as could be. And I got up, And sure enough, no sooner had I started speaking, then their conversation started. I stopped speaking. They noticed eventually that I wasn’t saying anything. So they said, “Go ahead, go ahead.” And I started speaking, and they started speaking, and I stopped speaking. And this little scenario repeated itself several times until they said, “Mrs. Kozack, we know what you’re saying. We’re listening to you.” And I said, “Gentlemen, I got up at five in the morning to make this trip. And for us here today, this is a very important issue. I am quite sure that whatever you are speaking about is terribly important, so I am quite willing to wait.”

And that little performance, let’s say, on my part, when the hearing was over, just had endeared me to all of these people that were so frustrated with hearings they’d been to prior to this, that I just was enveloped and became part – a part of a group with whom I’ve continued working on and off. We’ve had people come and go. I’m very proud of the fact that we have made major, major inroads in New York state legislation.

To this day, I believe we’re the only state, or maybe one of the few states in New York, where children have to be supported until the age of 21 rather than 18. We do not have a unilateral no-fault divorce law, which is prevalent all over the country, I think, due to my efforts and those on my task force. We have established a great deal of respect for us in Albany. To bring it up to date, the laws in the state of New York today, although here and there could stand some improvement, are not bad.

Our major problem today is the courts and the legal system, and that’s the battle we’re in now. And to the chagrin of ex-chief Judge Wachtler, who is quite well known, I said what I’m going to say now. In my experience, and we have done court watching as well for years and helped women, nowhere have I seen the law broken more frequently than by the courts. And that brings us up to date.

My friend, Diane Welsh, from New York City, now, has often said, “I’m always interested in your reports, but you always leave me depressed.” So I’ve been wondering when contemplating what to say here if I should leave you depressed at such a great party. Actually, we’re very proud of what we’ve done at New York state NOW level, because I think it was back in 1978 that Noreen Connell brought me up to the state level. And I did submit to Jacqui Ceballos a whole page list of the legislation that we’ve worked on, and I was surprised myself when I started to list these things. And then I even later realized that one or two or three or four bills we worked on was not on the list.

And I’m very glad, even though you will honor him yourselves later, to be here with Jerry Nadler, who is the source, almost, of all of our progress in the New York state legislature. But I am going to leave you depressed. And that is to tell that the laws of the state of New York are not really so horrible. We can always find improvement. We can work within them. What is horrible, and what I said to the infamous Judge Wachler is that nowhere in my experience, and I have court watched and assisted women and participated in divorce cases, nowhere have I seen the law broken more frequently than by the courts.

So that today, where we wish to work and where we would like to attract your assistance is in the movement to actually force a revision of the way the courts function. And that can only be done in one way. I won’t lose this opportunity to lobby. The courts are responsive to only one thing, in my experience, and that is public perception. They give not a damn about anything else. And if you could help us in the critique of what they are doing in really still throwing women into poverty and divorce, and sometimes when the weaker party is the man, although unfortunately for women, that’s not generally the case, that is where we would appreciate attention, attention to the matter that is still going on.

And I thank you very much for this honor, and it’s wonderful to see you all.