Deborah Haendiges, BA '80 & JD '91

Helping families in crisis

Not many people get to work both sides of the judicial bench in the way that Deborah Haendiges, BA, '80 & JD, '91 has. Perhaps even fewer have had her level of influence on Western New York families in crisis.

Haendiges started her legal life as an attorney who specialized in family law. While at UB Law School, she thought she'd work in the area of criminal law and clerked at the District Attorney's office the summers after her first and second years. Instead, the firm she joined immediately after graduation, Pusatier, Sherman, Abbott & Sugarman, brought her on to tackle family law. "Never in a million years did I think I'd focus on family law," she says, laughing. "But it turned out to be blessing in disguise, because I fell in love with it."

Haendiges spent more than a decade working on cases involving divorce, child custody and other family law issues. She spent about half her time as a trial lawyer in New York State Supreme Court and half in Erie County Family Court, along with occasional appellate court cases. Always active in the Law Guardian Program and other Erie County Bar Association committees, she gained a good deal of visibility as a regular speaker to the legal community at training seminars and presentations.

Taking the bench

During Haendiges' 13th year of practice, her focus shifted. Erie County Family Court Judge Sharon Townsend had been elected to the state's Supreme Court, leaving that position vacant. Haendiges began lobbying for the position. She applied for the job, appearing before New York's Fourth Department's Bipartisan Judicial Screening Committee and coming under a "tremendous amount" of scrutiny in the process. Much to her surprise and honor, Haendiges got the job.

"It was thrilling," she says. "I loved the job." Assigned to an extremely heavy custody and visitation case calendar – about 4,300 dockets in seven months – Haendiges also handled other types of family-court cases when she covered for absent judges. Interestingly, only one of her cases went to the hearing stage; the majority of the remaining cases were settled.

The move to the bench suited Haendiges: "I truly believe it's a tremendous benefit to be a practicing lawyer who takes the bench. I know what everyone's thinking and feeling because I stood with them for years." She also found that being a judge allowed her to look at a situation without advocating a position that might not be in the child's or family's best interest, to try to find a resolution that's best for everyone. "It's wonderful to take it out of the adversarial realm and help them make the right decision – or make the decision myself, if I had to," she says.

Making a positive difference

At the close of her term, Haendiges had to run in an election to keep the position, but lost in a close race. After the term ended, she applied for a vacancy as Support Magistrate in Family Court and received the appointment. "Family law is my passion and I wanted to stay," she says. In her role as Magistrate, Haendiges hears cases concerning paternity, child support, spousal support and the enforcement of support orders. "It's all about money," she notes, "but that's often what ties everything together and is frequently at the heart of the family dispute." Because many litigants can't afford to hire lawyers, and the majority can't receive assigned counsel referrals for support-related matters, Haendiges misses the contact with lawyers. She is rewarded, however, when she can encourage the litigants down a path toward a resolution without going to trial. "When that happens, I feel I've made a positive difference."

Haendiges is running for one of three vacant seats on New York State's Supreme Court in November 2005. The calendar for Supreme Court is about 40 percent matrimonial cases and is "very heavy." She thinks the position would be "a great opportunity to do legal work in other areas." She also finds the research and writing that judges must do "very intellectually fulfilling."

Though she has name recognition and visibility from her Family Court campaign, Haendiges' future seems more a function of her willpower. "I always felt that if you put your mind to something, you can achieve it. I never would have thought when I graduated that I'd be in this position at this point in my life. I've had this opportunity and honor happen, I think, because I believed it could when people told me it couldn't. That belief in success is critical."

Written by Grace Lazzara

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