Probate and Family Courts are supposed to be the most humane arm of our judicial system. They deal with children, elders, guardianship, inheritance, and the intimate bonds that define family life. Yet, for far too many families of color, these courts have become a quiet but powerful mechanism of family separation, dispossession, and long-term harm.
This is not because the statutes openly target Black, African, Afro-Latino, or Caribbean families. It is because discretion, culture, and power converge in ways that consistently disadvantage them.
I say this not as an outside critic, but as someone who has worked inside the system. As a former probation officer in the Hampden County Probate Court in Springfield, Massachusetts, I witnessed firsthand how “neutral” processes often operate very differently depending on who is standing before the bench.
Temporary Orders That Become Permanent Loss
One of the most common ways Probate Courts are weaponized is through emergency or temporary orders. A parent, often a mother of color, appears before the court under urgent circumstances. She may be grieving, afraid, angry, or distrustful of a system that has historically harmed her community. Her affect, language, or cultural expression is misread as instability.
A temporary custody or guardianship order is entered “out of caution.” That temporary order then becomes the new status quo. Weeks turn into months. Months into years. The burden silently shifts: now the parent must prove why her child should be returned, rather than the court proving why removal was necessary in the first place.
Procedure replaces justice.
Culture Treated as Pathology
Probate Courts rely heavily on mediators, evaluators, probation-style compliance officers, Children’s Law Project (CLP) attorneys and guardians ad litem. These roles carry enormous influence, yet they are often staffed by individuals who do not share the cultural, linguistic, or historical experience of the families most affected by their reports.
When few judges, mediators, probation officers, or probate specialists come from communities of color, cultural difference is routinely reframed as pathology. Extended family caregiving becomes “lack of boundaries.” Poverty becomes “instability.” Distrust of institutions earned through generations of harm becomes “lack of insight” or “noncompliance.”
In my own experience working within the courthouse, I described the environment as one shaped by white privilege, white fragility, and microaggressions, producing what I called internalized racial depression among both staff and litigants of color. The racism was not always loud. It was often passive-aggressive, procedural, and easily denied, but deeply felt.
Soft Power Is Still Power
Many defenders of the system point to mediation and service plans as evidence of compassion. But “soft power” can be just as coercive as overt force.
Unrepresented parents are pressured to sign agreements “to look reasonable.” They are warned explicitly or implicitly that resistance will anger the judge or delay reunification. Missed appointments caused by work schedules, transportation barriers, or childcare are documented as failures of character rather than structural realities.
This is how civil family court begins to resemble the logic of the criminal legal system: surveillance, compliance, documentation, and punishment, without the same constitutional protections.
The Absence That Speaks Loudest
Representation matters. When families of color enter a courtroom and see few, if any, judges, mediators, probation officers, or evaluators who look like them or understand their lived reality, the message is clear: this system was not built with you in mind.
Carter G. Woodson warned us long ago, “When you control a man’s thinking, you do not have to worry about his actions.” Probate courts do not need to announce racial bias if the structure itself teaches families that resistance is futile and compliance is survival.
Frantz Fanon reminded us that domination often hides behind institutions and procedure. And Dr. Amos Wilson taught that justice without repair is not justice at all.
What Is Really at Stake
This is not merely about court reform. It is about intergenerational harm. Children separated under the banner of “best interests” internalize loss, confusion, and state authority as normal. Parents learn that the system will interpret their pain as evidence against them. Families fracture, not because they failed, but because the court normalized their dismantling.
If Probate and Family Courts are to serve justice rather than manage inequality, they must confront uncomfortable truths:
● Temporary orders should not function as permanent outcomes.
● Cultural difference is not dysfunction.
● Neutrality without representation is not fairness.
● Family preservation must be a real priority, not a rhetorical one.
Until then, we must be honest enough to say what many families already know: in too many cases, Probate Court has become less a place of healing and more a bureaucratic pathway to family destruction.
— Bro. Geb
formerly known as Garry A. Porter
Psychotherapist, African Diaspora Mental Health Association (ADMHA) ■