By Jessica Garrison, Times Staff Writer

Starting today, Michael Jackson will figure in another courtroom drama - this one centering on attempts by Los Angeles Superior Court officials to show that celebrities and other rich people can’t buy special treatment from the legal system when they have business disputes or want to get divorced.

For years, Jackson’s custody battle with ex-wife Deborah Rowe sometimes seemed to suggest the opposite point.

Despite the media firestorm that accompanied the pop star when he was tried and acquitted last year on child molestation charges, he managed to keep the custody dispute largely out of the public eye.

He did so by hiring a private judge - a service that celebrities and rich people regularly use.

These judges are privately paid by the parties in the dispute, but are required to follow the same rules of public access and procedure used in public courtrooms.

But earlier this year, stung by the appearance that celebrities were buying special treatment, Los Angeles County court officials announced a push for greater compliance with the rules governing private judging. They also moved the Jackson case back into the public system.

This morning, lawyers for the pop star and his ex-wife are expected in the teeming, somewhat dilapidated downtown courthouse - a far different environment from the sleek conference rooms where some hearings had been held.

On the agenda are Rowe’s efforts to win visitation with her and Jackson’s two children, Prince Michael and Paris, as well as attorney’s fees.

Court officials also ordered lawyers for Jackson and Rowe to publicly file all legal documents since the divorce this week. As the papers have flooded in, they have opened yet another window into Jackson’s life.

Jackson and Rowe, who had been a nurse in the office of Jackson’s dermatologist, were married in 1996.

Rowe gave birth to Prince Michael Joseph Jackson Jr. in 1997 and to Paris Michael Katherine Jackson in 1998. In 1999, Rowe filed for divorce.

Jackson got custody. Rowe received an $8-million settlement, along with a house in Beverly Hills. At first, she also had the right to visit the children every 45 days, but in 2001, she went back to court and asked the private judge, Stephen Lachs, to terminate her parental rights.

She said she felt like “an intrusion on their life and they’re going to have enough intrusions as it is,” according to a transcript. “I’m absolutely around if Michael ever needs me, if the children need me for a liver, kidney, a hello, whatever, I will always be around for him.”

But she added, “These are his children. I had the children for him…. They’re his kids. They’re not my kids.”

At that time, Lachs, a well-regarded retired family law judge, agreed to terminate her parental rights.

But after Jackson was arrested on charges of child molestation, Rowe reconsidered. She went back to Lachs and asked him to void that order.

Lachs did, saying that he had erred when he terminated Rowe’s rights to Paris and Prince Michael without having someone represent the children’s interests. But he stopped short of allowing Rowe increased visitation without further evaluation of the situation.

That ruling set off a furious round of fighting between lawyers for Jackson and Rowe.

At one point last summer, lawyers for Jackson said Rowe was “trying to hold up Michael Jackson for money using the children as the tool…. I believe she is one step below a common crook or extortionist.”

Jackson’s lawyers also took Lachs’ decision to the Court of Appeal, which sided with Rowe in a ruling published earlier this year.

Source: LA Times

Category: General