The Tuesday Crew (Misfit Nation): Mark Astor on Building Astor Simovitch Law Around the Marchman Act and Baker Act

Outlet: The Tuesday Crew (Misfit Nation) | Appearance Type: Video Interview
Last reviewed July 10, 2026 by Mark Astor, Florida attorney.

AT A GLANCE

Mark Astor joined The Tuesday Crew on Misfit Nation for a wide-ranging conversation about his path from Palm Beach County prosecutor to founder of Astor Simovitch Law and Baker Act Attorneys, and how those years shaped the way he now helps families navigate the Marchman Act, Baker Act, and guardianship when a loved one is caught in addiction or mental illness. He walked through why families wait too long to call, how the Baker Act gets misused as a treatment tool it was never meant to be, why veterans are especially vulnerable to it, and the one change he would make to the Marchman Act to close its biggest enforcement gap.

SETTING THE SCENE

On July 7, 2026, Mark Astor appeared on The Tuesday Crew, a weekly segment of the Misfit Nation show, hosted that night by Stephen (introduced on air by his show name, Kagny), who stepped in solo for his usual co-host. The show opened by marking the days since America’s 250th birthday before turning the full hour over to Mark for an in-depth conversation about his career and his work helping families in crisis.

This wasn’t commentary on a case in the news. It was a personal interview: Mark’s own story of becoming a prosecutor, losing his way for a while, and eventually building a law practice around the Marchman Act, Baker Act, and guardianship law, followed by an extended audience question and answer session.

THE BREAKDOWN

Mark opened with his own story. Thirty-two years as a lawyer, five of them as a prosecutor in Palm Beach County from 1994 to 1999, where he tried roughly 200 jury trials, including murder cases by the end. That work never left him, he said. Giving a grieving family some closure was a feeling he never found anywhere else in the law.

But the system had a blind spot even then. Florida had none of the specialty courts it has today, no drug court, no veterans court, no mental health court, so anyone with an untreated behavioral health issue who kept cycling through the system eventually just got locked up, since Florida’s mandate has always been to punish first and rehabilitate second.

He left prosecution exhausted in 1999, moved into defense work, made more money, and lost his sense of purpose. The years that followed were rough: a divorce at 35, a year in Washington, D.C. chasing a losing presidential campaign and a master’s degree, most of his savings gone after the 2008 crash, and three years in California that ended with him failing the California bar exam twice.

The turning point came at a breakfast meeting back in Florida, broke and unsure what came next, where he met a mentor, RJon Robbins, who taught him two things: take complete responsibility for your own life, and find a group of people you can actually help. 

Mark already had close family and friends dealing with substance use, so in February 2016 he opened a law firm out of a coffee shop with the cheapest business cards he could print.

It took 14 months before anyone called him with a behavioral health case. He paid the bills in the meantime with whatever work came in the door. 

Eleven months into the firm, he lost his father, and two days after burying him, a family member of his own got pulled into Florida’s mental health system, an experience that shaped how he practices today. He met his now-wife, a guardianship attorney, in 2017. The two of them ran the entire firm together for six years before hiring any staff, and the practice has grown to a team of 15 over the last three years.

On how he earns a family’s trust, Mark said it comes down to honesty, not persuasion. His intake team’s job is to figure out what’s actually going on and what options genuinely exist, and sometimes there isn’t a good one. 

He tells families upfront when a case is weak, or when they aren’t ready to take a legal, adversarial position against someone they love. People don’t call a lawyer because they’re comfortable, he said. They call because they’re nearly out of options, and respecting that discomfort is part of the job.

On families whose loved one refuses help, Mark said the hardest thing to accept is that you cannot wait for a light bulb moment. 

Somewhere along the way, the person’s mind gets hijacked by the disease, and expecting them to wake up one day and choose recovery on their own usually doesn’t happen. That leaves three options: do nothing, wait for the state to step in through the criminal justice or mental health systems, or have the family step in directly. In his experience, the state does a poor job either way, which is exactly why the family’s own legal options exist.

He described three Florida tools families can use to get court-ordered authority over an out-of-control situation: an order to pick someone up and get them assessed and stabilized for a few days, an initial treatment order that runs up to 90 days, and, depending on what a family actually needs, broader control over finances, travel, a driver’s license, or where someone lives. The scope of the order depends entirely on what the family is dealing with.

Much of the conversation centered on the Baker Act, Florida’s law allowing emergency custody of someone believed to be a danger to themselves or others, without a court order. Mark was direct about its biggest misconception: it is not a treatment statute. It exists only to assess, stabilize, and release, not to guarantee anyone gets ongoing care. 

Once a person is Baker Acted, custody effectively passes to the state, which can override even a family’s existing healthcare proxy or power of attorney. The two most common outcomes, release within 72 hours or, in more serious cases, up to six months in a state facility, often fail to solve the problem a family called about in the first place.

Mark said veterans are hit especially hard by this gap. Multiple veterans he has represented went to the VA for help and ended up Baker Acted instead, including cases where they were detained inside a federal facility. 

He pointed to two structural problems: Baker Act holds aren’t required to be reported anywhere, and the facilities carrying them out, as state actors, generally cannot be sued over how they’re handled, in his professional experience. 

Between those two things, he said, there’s very little accountability if something goes wrong. He estimated he has filed more than a thousand cases over the last five years to get people, veterans and minors included, released from Baker Act holds that shouldn’t have happened.

Asked what he’d change about the law, Mark pointed to the Marchman Act’s enforcement gap rather than the Baker Act. When someone under a Marchman Act treatment order walks out of treatment, getting them back in front of a judge currently requires a motion for contempt and a new hearing, a slower process than how police can already act on a violated restraining order. 

He’d give law enforcement the authority to detain someone who leaves court-ordered treatment and place them somewhere secure right away, rather than waiting on the contempt process while the person is at risk on the street.

On what actually drives these cases, Mark said trauma comes up more than anything else, and it can’t be treated with medication alone. He tied that directly to how veterans get treated after combat, and mentioned his own recent experience declining opioids after three elbow surgeries, knowing firsthand what that medication can turn into.

On when a family should actually call an attorney, Mark’s answer was that it depends. Once someone acknowledges there’s a real problem and still won’t engage with it, that’s the point where a conversation about legal options makes sense, not necessarily the point where legal action itself is the right move. 

He pointed people toward his firm’s free resources first: a nine-chapter book on the Marchman Act and roughly 1,200 free videos on his YouTube channel, plus a no-cost intake consultation. Sometimes, he said, the right answer is a professionally run intervention instead of court, and he tells families directly when he doesn’t think they need him.

He was equally direct that the loved one has to be the one who decides they’re done, not the family and not their attorney. Waiting for someone to hit rock bottom on their own carries real risk, since rock bottom can mean death, which is part of why he tells families it’s their own readiness to act, not their loved one’s, that determines when to call.

Looking back over his career, Mark said the biggest shift has been treating addiction and mental illness as a disease rather than a moral failure, which finally opened the door to treating it like one. He pointed to ongoing research, including early results using GLP-1 weight loss medications to help curb cocaine and alcohol cravings, as a sign the science keeps evolving. The bigger unsolved problem, he said, is access: quality treatment is still concentrated wherever someone has the financial resources or insurance to get it.

The conversation closed with a rapid-fire round covering everything from Mark’s morning coffee habit to his one-word definition of hope: love. 

Asked for the best advice he’s ever received, he offered a line about the difference between a wise person and a fool: a fool learns only from his own mistakes, while a wise person learns from everyone else’s too. Asked to finish the sentence “Families should never ___,” his answer was simple: lose hope.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

KEY LEGAL TERMS REFERENCES IN THIS SEGMENT

Baker Act (Florida Mental Health Act): Florida’s law allowing emergency examination of someone believed, due to mental illness, to pose a danger to themselves or others. It excludes substance use disorder alone as a qualifying basis. (Fla. Stat. §§ 394.451, 394.453, 394.463)

Marchman Act: Florida’s law allowing families to petition a court for involuntary assessment and treatment of a loved one with a substance use disorder, including an initial treatment order of up to 90 days. (Fla. Stat. § 397.675; initial order duration, § 397.697)

Guardianship (used for behavioral health cases): A court process giving a designated person legal authority to make decisions for someone who can’t make them safely on their own, used in this practice area alongside the Marchman Act and Baker Act.

Ex parte order: A court order granted after hearing from only one side, typically used for emergency situations where there isn’t time for a full hearing first.

Sovereign immunity: A legal doctrine limiting when a government or its agents can be sued. Mark described Baker Act receiving facilities as generally protected by this doctrine when acting as agents of the state’s mental health system, based on his own courtroom experience.

Motion for contempt: A request asking a court to enforce a prior order by holding someone accountable for violating it, the mechanism Mark said currently has to be used when someone walks out of Marchman Act treatment.

Power of attorney / healthcare proxy: Legal documents that let a designated person make decisions, including medical decisions, on someone else’s behalf. Mark noted a Baker Act hold can effectively override these.

Probable cause: The legal standard requiring a reasonable basis to believe something is true before certain government action can be taken, the term Mark named in the closing lightning round as the one every family should understand.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Mark built Astor Simovitch Law and Baker Act Attorneys after leaving prosecution and years of personal setbacks, growing from a solo practice in 2016 to a team of 15.
• The Baker Act is an emergency assessment tool, not a treatment statute, and using it can strip a family’s existing legal authority over a loved one’s care.
• Veterans face particular risk under the Baker Act, since holds aren’t publicly reported and the facilities involved generally can’t be sued, in Mark’s experience.
• Families, not the person in crisis, have to decide when they’re done waiting, since waiting for someone to hit rock bottom carries real risk.
• Mark’s top proposed fix is closing the Marchman Act’s enforcement gap: giving police the same authority to detain someone who leaves treatment as they already have for a violated restraining order.
• Free resources, Mark’s Marchman Act book and roughly 1,200 YouTube videos, are available before anyone needs to book a paid consultation.

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

This transcript begins after the show’s opening theme song, which is paraphrased rather than reproduced here. Speaker labels reflect the two identifiable voices: the show’s announcer, the host (referred to as Stephen throughout the interview, though introduced on air by his show name, Kagny), and Mark Astor. See editor notes at the end of this document for the full transcript correction log.

Announcer: [Show theme song plays.] Misfit Nation, are you ready? What a week it’s been. Just days ago, Americans from coast to coast gathered with family and friends to celebrate 250 years of freedom, sacrifice, and the enduring American spirit. For two and a half centuries, generations answered the call: soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, coast guardsmen, guardians, first responders, and everyday Americans who’ve proven that freedom isn’t inherited, it’s protected. Tonight, we honor that legacy the best way we know how, by showing up, by lifting each other up, by telling stories that matter, by refusing to quit, because that’s what the Misfit Nation is all about. Now, the crew may look a little different tonight. Kagny is flying solo. But around here, we know something about stepping up when your team needs you. We know that leadership isn’t about the number of people on stage. It’s about the size of the heart behind the microphone. So tonight, we’re not slowing down. We’re turning the volume up. We’re bringing out the laughs. We’re bringing the conversation. We’re bringing the energy. And we’re proving once again that the spirit of the Tuesday Crew isn’t measured by who’s sitting in the chair. It’s measured by the community that shows up every single week. So, Misfit Nation, I need you loud tonight. Fill up that chat. Show Kagny some love. Let’s remind the world why this is one of the greatest communities anywhere on the internet. Now, make some noise for the man carrying the crew flag tonight. It’s Kagny.

Stephen: Good evening, everybody. How is everything going? It’s a beautiful Tuesday. Nice long weekend. Actually took yesterday off because I wasn’t feeling great after the weekend, all the heat around here. So it’s nice and calm and relaxed, and here we are getting ready for another show. Jake’s on the road, so, if you want, I’ll have like a statue of him with me so it looks like two of us are in the studio. It’s up to you. If not, hey, let’s do this. Good evening. Welcome to another episode of the Tuesday Crew. Tonight, we’re diving into one of the most important conversations we’ve ever had, where mental health, addiction, family, and the legal system all intersect. Our guest has spent decades in courtrooms fighting for justice. But today, his passion is helping families facing some of life’s hardest moments. Whether it’s substance abuse, mental illness, or navigating the Baker Act, he’s become a voice for people who often don’t know where to turn. Mark Astor began his career as a prosecutor, handling thousands of cases from misdemeanors to capital murder. But over the years, he saw another crisis unfolding: families struggling to save their loved ones, trapped by addiction and mental illness. That led him to found Drug and Alcohol Attorneys, co-found Astor Simovitch Law, and later establish Baker Act Attorneys, organizations dedicated to protecting the rights of vulnerable individuals while helping families navigate incredibly difficult situations. He’s helped families challenge unlawful detentions and help countless families find hope when they thought they’d run out of options. So whether you’re a parent, a spouse, a friend, a recovery advocate, or simply someone wanting a better understanding of mental health rights, tonight’s conversation is one you will not want to miss. Please help me welcome attorney Mark Astor. Welcome, Mark. Good evening, sir. How are you?

Mark Astor: Stephen, I can’t hear you. Can you hear me?

Stephen: I can hear you very well.

Mark Astor: Yeah, I can’t hear you.

Stephen: You can’t hear me?

Mark Astor: No, I heard the opening, but I couldn’t hear you.

Stephen: Okay. Mr. Producer, if you could give it a second, I’m going to back out and come back in, see what happens. Okay. All right, Mark, can you hear me? It almost sounds like you’re muted. I’m going to step out. Two seconds. Mark, can you hear me on the microphone? Mark. Mark, can you hear me now?

Mark Astor: Now I can. Thank you.

Stephen: I backed out and came back in and we are live again. I love that. All right. I’ll give a little introduction about you and your background.

Mark Astor: Thank you. Nice to see you, my friend.

Stephen: I appreciate you coming tonight. I want you to go back as far as you want and tell your story to the audience. Let them know what’s going on.

Mark Astor: Yeah. So, I’ve been a lawyer 32 years. In February of 2016, when I was flat broke and had no money, I had an idea to start a law firm where I would help people, primarily at the time with substance use. Over the last 10 years, things have changed, and the mission of the firm these days is to save families whose loved ones have substance use, mental health disorders, and failed attempts at recovery. For the first year, it was just me. For the following six years, it was me and my now wife. So we spent seven years just hustling and trying to find people that we could help. In the last three years, we’ve been able to hire staff, and now we’re a team of 15. But it’s been a long journey for me. I’ll be 60 in January, and I don’t think I really got my act together, either on a personal level or even a professional level, until about 11 or 12 years ago, when I met somebody that basically changed the direction of my life. So I started my legal career as a Palm Beach County assistant state attorney, a prosecutor, for 5 years, from ’94 to ’99. The first two years out of law school, I actually lived at home with my parents, because they don’t pay government lawyers very well, but I loved the work. I’d actually been an intern in 1993, and that was really being in the courtroom and doing trial work, an eye-opening experience for me. Because I can’t tell you, in law school I didn’t have a real passion for the law. In fact, I didn’t really understand half of the stuff they were teaching us, and I even wondered if I was going to bother to go back for the third year, because I was like, eh, you know, this didn’t really fulfill me. But then I got into the courtroom in ’93 as a second-year law student, and that ignited my passion, and all of a sudden all the legal stuff they’d been teaching started to make sense. In five years there, I tried 200 jury trials, which is an insane amount of trials in that period of time. The last year and a half I was there, I was trying nothing but first- and second-degree felonies, including murder cases. And that meant I was working late at night, working on weekends. But when you have a case where there’s a victim of a violent crime, or if it’s a murder case, the family of a decedent, that feeling, that personal satisfaction where you give the family some closure, was something I couldn’t replace. And after 5 years there I was just absolutely exhausted, and I just needed to make a change, which looking back was a mistake. I wish I’d have stayed another couple of years. But one of the other things I learned about our criminal justice system is that it was full of people with behavioral health issues, and back then we didn’t have some of the specialty courts we now have. So now we have drug courts, veterans courts, mental health court, we have a place to put people who haven’t yet committed violent felony offenses and get them the help they need. Well, back in the ’90s, we didn’t have those kinds of courts. And the mandate even today in Florida is to punish first and rehabilitate second. So if you don’t have anywhere to send these people, and the mandate is to punish, eventually if you keep coming back, they just lock you up for as long as they can, because there’s nothing else to do, and they throw away the key if they can. So really an eye-opening experience when I was a prosecutor. But I left in ’99. I did defense work for a number of years, made an absolute ton more money, and was completely miserable. I also got married at 34. I was divorced at 35. And after I got divorced, I decided, I tried to do other things other than practice law, because I really lost my passion. And in 2004, I actually left and went to Washington, D.C. for a year on my own dime, and actually went back to school for another year and got a master’s in law. Spent a year working on a presidential campaign, because I had a real yen for politics, and I really felt like if I could get involved in the government again, I could maybe make a difference and get that feeling back. But the candidate I worked for didn’t win, so I had to come home. I spent a bunch more years trying to figure things out. After the ’08 crash, I pretty much lost everything except for a few dollars that were left in an IRA, and I took what I had left from the IRA, and in, God, what was it, it would have been 2013, 2014, I ran off to California. And I mean I literally ran off to California, and I spent three years there tripping the light fantastic, doing all of the things that the material man likes to do, and in California there was plenty of that around. So that was one of my vices. I also, while I was there, took the California bar twice and failed it twice, which was a bit of a kick in the ego, because I think I studied for the Florida Bar for 3 weeks and passed the first time, and I think I spent at least nine months, the first and second time, studying for the California bar and couldn’t pass it. Anyway, I spent three years there, and I basically ran out of money, so I had to come home. And so I said, okay, I’m going to give this one more shot. So I sat down at the local library here where I live in Boca Raton, studied as hard as I could, flew back to California for I think 3 days, took the bar exam, came back, found out a couple months later that I’d failed it again. I got within a percentage point, and I said, maybe I’m just not supposed to be there. It’s as simple as that. So now a whole year had gone by studying for this ridiculous exam, and I couldn’t pass it. And then I met…

Stephen: What was the major difference between the Florida and the California exams that kicked your ass, basically?

Mark Astor: So, one of the days of the California bar, I don’t remember what they call it, but basically it’s a day where they will give you a fact pattern and a bunch of case law and say write a letter to the judge, or write a brief to the court. And that sounds simple. And the first time that I took the exam, I said, well, I know how to write a brief, I know how to write a letter to the judge, so I didn’t bother to study for it, and I fell flat on my face. In fact, that’s where most people fail the California bar exam, because the other stuff, which is written essays and questions and answers, you can study for it, right? You just need to know the law. And I figured, well, I can analyze the law. I studied hard for it, because there was a lot of topics on the bar exam that I hadn’t seen in, you know, 20-plus years. I’d been out of law school a long time. I had to learn family law and civil procedure and wills and trusts and torts and all that fun stuff, contracts. So I had to learn all that stuff again. So the second time I took it more seriously and I took a course for that part of the bar exam, and I still failed it. So by that time I had to come home. The third time I took it, I also took one additional day, which was the multi-state bar exam, which the whole country takes, that one part of the bar exam. And the idea behind doing that was I figured, you know what, I’m going to have a problem with this essay part of the bar, so I’m going to take the multistate, see if I can get my score up, and just average it over, and I’ll pass it. Well, I got within a percentage point, and I said, I’m not doing this again. I’m not putting myself through this hell. Because that’s what it felt like at that point. And then, long story short, I was back home. I didn’t know what to do. I was broke. Nothing going on personally, nothing going on professionally. And then I got invited to a breakfast meeting, and I met somebody that completely changed the course of my life. There was a gentleman there giving a presentation to about 20 or 25 lawyers about the business side of practicing law, which is the one skill set they don’t teach any law student at any law school anywhere in the country. They teach you just enough black-letter law to go pass the bar exam, and then, well, then you’re on your own. And when he started talking about being an entrepreneurial lawyer, that really resonated with me, Stephen. I came from, my dad was an entrepreneur. He left school at 14, and my mom left school at 16. So it was a really big deal when I went to law school. My father cried when I passed the bar exam, because we’d never had anybody in the family that even finished high school. So I was a lawyer, I mean that was insane. And since then, actually, my brother became a doctor too, so we did okay. But my father built businesses. Some of them worked, some of them didn’t. Some of them he made money on, and some of them he really lost a lot on. And so I saw this guy speaking about practicing law and being an entrepreneur, and I begged him for a job, and he ended up hiring me. And I spent a year working for this guy. His name is RJon Robbins. His company is called How to Manage a Small Law Firm. And they teach lawyers all about the business side of practicing law. But here’s what I didn’t realize when I went to work for them. At their very core, How to Manage is a personal growth company for lawyers. RJon Robbins is, is it Tim Robbins, the personal growth guru? He’s the Tim Robbins of the legal profession. And I learned two very important lessons for the year I was working for him. Number one, I needed to take 100% responsibility for my life, both personally and professionally. And number two, I had to find a group of people that I could help, so I could get that feeling back where I would feel good about what I was doing. And I had a lot of close family members and friends who had these issues. So, in February of ’16, I went back to the very same library I’d studied for the bar exam. And I opened up my law firm. I took my laptop, I sat in the coffee shop, and I got the cheapest business cards that Vista Print can make. I got business cards made. I ran around to treatment centers introducing myself, saying, I’m here to help. I called as many people as I could fit in an Excel spreadsheet, and I had coffees and lunches, and it took 14 months before anybody called me with a behavioral health case. But in the meantime, I took other cases, because I had bills to pay and I had no money. So I think the very first case I had was a student athlete here at a university in Central Florida who got himself in a bit of hot water with a female student. If you’re familiar with the Jameis Winston case, who was a quarterback at Florida State, who also got himself in a bit of hot water with a female student, you know what I’m talking about. And I took family law cases, which I co-counseled with a friend from law school. I took criminal cases. I took anything I could to pay my bills. And 11 months in, I unexpectedly lost my dad. And two days after I buried him, I had a family member that got sucked into Florida’s mental health system. And again, I didn’t understand at the time how important that experience was going to be to me, but it turned out to be a very important experience, as I’ll explain later. So after several months, I had enough to get just a really small office in an executive suite. I think the office was just a little bit bigger than the desk that was sitting in it, so I could walk around. And then in 2017, I met my now wife. She had practiced up in Massachusetts for about 12 years when she was married to husband number one, and she had a specialty in guardianship law. And what she figured out was that we could use guardianship law, which was really traditionally used for elderly people, and we could use it for all kinds of cases. So really, for six more years, it was just the two of us doing everything: sales, marketing, meeting with clients, drafting pleadings, running to court, I mean, you name it, we did it, 8 days a week and 25 hours a day. I say that because I still typically work six or seven days a week, because I love the work that we do. And over the last three years, the business took off, we hired a bunch of staff, and she actually did not become my wife until two and a half years ago, because that part of my life, Stephen, took a little bit longer to take 100% responsibility for. But I couldn’t have done this without her. My wife is a brilliant lawyer in her own right, but she runs the staff, she takes care of the finances, and she’s an entrepreneur too. So here we are, and it’s been one hell of a ride, and yeah, I’m very blessed. I feel like a lucky guy, but maybe I made my own luck. But it’s been a long journey for me. And I’m going to be almost 60 in January, and other than a few aches and pains, and well, losing a few follicles up here, my friend, I think I’m hanging in there.

Stephen: So it sounds like you were in a couple boxing matches, you know, losing your dad, then having family problems, in marriage, and now rebuilding. So you’re fighting the fight to begin with. So you figured out that law is what you wanted to do, and you stepped in and you changed from being a prosecutor to doing this, and now you’re helping people, how, you know, all transactional, just like regular business, but how do you get them to trust you to do that?

Mark Astor: Yeah. So our clients are typically moms and dads who call us because they have an adult child with a long history of drug use and mental illness, and they want us to help them solve that problem. A lot of the time, especially when I first started doing the work, I was in court all the time, and I was the one handling the cases. So they were somewhat adversarial. They weren’t jury trials like when I was a prosecutor. So it wasn’t like I was doing just filing papers, I was running to court too. And I still, every once in a while I get called into handle a case. But I think in terms of trust, I think it’s about having an honest conversation with people. We have an intake team, and their job is to figure out, number one, what’s going on, and number two, what options might be available. And sometimes there isn’t an option available. It might be we just don’t have enough evidence to prove a case. It might be that the family just isn’t able to make the commitment, for whatever reason, to go to court and take an adversarial position potentially against their own loved one. So it’s about being honest with people and understanding where they’re coming from, right, having empathy for them and understanding that by the time they come to us, they’re just about out of options. My late father, who was not an educated man, shared many words of wisdom with me, one of which was how much he hated all lawyers except for me. And I say that tongue in cheek, because what he was trying to tell me is people don’t like lawyers, and it’s not because they don’t inherently like you, it’s just that they’re not comfortable hiring one, because nobody wants to hire a lawyer, they know that potentially puts them in an adversarial position. And so when a family calls us, I appreciate that they’re uncomfortable, right, they’re about to go into the unknown, they’re about to take an adversarial position against somebody they really love and care about, and they may well have tried all kinds of different things before they got to us, including working with another lawyer, and for whatever reason things didn’t work out. And so it’s really about meeting them where they are, having empathy, but being honest enough to tell them, look, here’s a couple of options. One of those options is usually don’t do anything about this, but here’s the consequence of not doing it, right? And the consequence of not putting somebody into treatment who has a behavioral health issue is that they could die. And every year I get that phone call, or a family that decided for whatever reason not to hire us, and six months later they lose somebody. And it’s about being able to have that conversation, and for them to understand that you come from a place of love when you tell them that, and that you understand them, and that it’s a no-judgment zone. And if they decide not to do this, that’s okay. Sometimes people are just done. I know when my father passed, he was just done. He’d had a lot of medical issues and financial issues the last several years of his life, and I’m going to tell you, he was just done. So sometimes people are done, and that’s okay. But if you’re not done and you want to take another shot at trying to save this person, then that’s a conversation I want to have with you.

Stephen: But a mother and father call you, my child has this problem, they’re addicted to this, and they’ve done this and this. Yes, you want to help the parents, but how do you get into the head of the person with the addiction? I lost a friend recently within the last two years, drug problems, shoplifting, going to court and winding up in jail, and she had a good lawyer. How do you help somebody that can’t be helped, or can’t get it in their head that they want to be helped? A family can call you and say, here’s a million dollars, save my kid. But if that kid doesn’t want to be saved, how do we do that? How do you get into that head?

Mark Astor: Yeah, that’s a great question, Stephen. And for a long time I used to ask myself that very question. So let me share a couple of thoughts with you. Number one, when I first started doing this work, I said to a good friend of mine who had been a clinician doing this a long time, I said, you know what, I’m going to save everybody. And you know what she said to me? That sounds nice, but it’s not realistic. You’re not going to save everybody. And she was right, you can’t save everybody, and that’s an unfortunate consequence of what we’re dealing with. But number two, when you talk about getting in someone’s head, Stephen, and I tell this to every family, with their son or daughter, I know that it looks like, it sounds like your loved one, it looks like them, it walks like them, but it’s not them. They’re not running the show over their disease. At some point, somewhere in the past, their mind got hijacked. And so if you are expecting to one day wake up and the light bulb to go off, or the ball to drop, however you like to phrase it, in all likelihood that’s not going to happen. It doesn’t happen. So if they have a disease that renders them unable to save themselves, then what are the other options? How can we save them? Well, number one, you could do nothing. We know, as you pointed out, what one of those consequences can be. Number two, you hope the state steps in. How does the state step in? Well, there’s two ways the state can step in, either through the criminal justice system, because people with behavioral health issues unfortunately tend to get arrested, or the state steps in through the mental health system. And that’s what happened to my family member. They ended up in the state mental health system, and I’ll share that in a second. But the state can step in one of two ways. In my experience, through either the criminal justice system or the mental health system, the state, whether it’s Florida or Massachusetts or anywhere else, does a really, really lousy job of taking care of people. So if we decided that doing nothing doesn’t work, and we don’t want to wait for the state to step in, then the other option is the family has to step in. And that’s where I come in. So what we’re using is three basic statutes here in Florida that can give a family varying degrees of control over what is typically a completely out-of-control situation. Anything from, let’s get a pickup order to get them off the streets and get them somewhere for 3 days so we can at least assess and stabilize, typically followed up by some type of treatment order good for 3 months. But maybe we need more control, perhaps they have resources, perhaps there’s money we need to control, or maybe we just need to make sure that their rent and electricity bill and lease payment on the car is made, right? But maybe we also want to restrict their ability to travel so they don’t jump on a plane and leave. I’ve had that happen. Maybe we want to take a driver’s license away so they don’t drive drunk and high. Or we want to decide where they live and who they spend time with. Again, it’s what do you really want, how much control do you want, and that’s a conversation with the family. But at the end of the day, it’s the family that is best situated to make that decision that their loved one cannot make. And that means we’ve got to go to court and get you that authority. So that’s where I come in.

Stephen: As you’re talking, I’m thinking about the friend that I lost, and sorry, there are also other people, they go to rehab, they get locked up and go to rehab, and I’m better, I’m better, and three weeks later they’re back to what they’re doing. The person I lost actually worked in mental health, helping people with drug problems, and she had the problem. So was it helping other people and listening to their problems that kept kicking it in on her? My head is all screwed up now thinking about all this, because she’s a very good friend that I lost. Sorry, it’s amazing that you’re in there and you’re helping these people and you’re getting the help that they need.

Mark Astor: Yeah. And listen, don’t think that my profession is immune to this. I’ve put lawyers in treatment. I’ve represented lawyers, I’ve represented a couple of judges. They say that if you’re a lawyer, you are twice as likely to develop a substance use disorder. One of the things I’ve been proud of is my ability to give back. I put an absolute boatload of free information out on social media. I’m also a Florida Bar approved CLE provider, continuing legal education provider, and I go around the state and do presentations to lawyers. It’s a wonderful marketing tool for me. But one of the things I talk about when I talk to a room full of lawyers, whether it’s five lawyers, 10 lawyers, 60, whatever it is, is the fact that if you’ve got a problem, you need to get help. And the Florida Bar is great, the Florida Bar will bend over backwards to help a lawyer with a problem. If that lawyer has a problem and steals from his trust account, they’re going to just disbar him automatically. And every time I go, I say, listen, if you have a problem and you don’t want to call the bar, even though you can do it confidentially, you can call me, I have a ton of free resources and I’ll make myself available to help you. And every time I give a speech, somebody comes up to me or reaches out to me. These behavioral health issues, I think this is probably the number one crisis we’re going to face as a country for a few years at least, and there’s a couple of reasons for that, but you just don’t know who’s really suffering. You really don’t, because a lot of people are suffering. I had a close friend of mine who, unbeknownst to me, because he’d never told me about this, had a daughter, I think she was in her early 20s, who had, like your friend, had a substance use disorder for years, went into rehab for 30 days, came out, and overdosed and died. And I didn’t say this to him, but I said to the other friends, I don’t understand, why didn’t he call me, he knows what I do, I would have helped him. He said, you know what, he was too embarrassed to tell you, he couldn’t pick up the phone and call, he was too embarrassed.

Stephen: The monkey on their back, the shame, the guilt. Yeah, it’s terrible.

Mark Astor: He felt terrible. And sometimes that’s one of the issues we have to deal with, Stephen, because sometimes parents will call us and they feel guilty. Did they do something wrong, were they a bad parent, that school trip they canceled because the kid had bad grades, is that what did it, or was it the doctor, they allowed to medicate their kid when he was 6 years old because the doctor said he had ADD and he should take a medication, and 15 years later the kid’s a raving drug addict, I don’t know. And I say to them, look, this is not about whose fault it was. First of all, I don’t think it’s anybody’s fault unless you can tell me you abused the child, and sometimes that happens too, I’ve had that come out of the woodwork. But this is a no-judgment zone. I’m not interested in whose fault it was. I’m interested in how do we solve the problem here, because looking back at yesterday does not help anybody.

Stephen: You’ve got to look forward. I’m the ghost of Christmas future, not the ghost of Christmas past. All right, I have a question coming in. Demond and Dad wants to know, can you explain the Baker Act and how it applies to veterans?

Mark Astor: Thank you for that question. So I’m glad this came up, because it was my family that got Baker Acted too. And then during COVID, a lot of other lawyers started to call me, because their clients were getting Baker Acted. In the last five years, I’ve filed probably over a thousand cases to get people out of the Baker Act who should not be there, some of whom are veterans. So Stephen, the Baker Act is a statute here in Florida. Every state has a version of the Baker Act. It’s called the Baker Act because it’s named after somebody whose last name was Baker. And it is a statute that allows the state of Florida to basically take emergency custody of somebody without even a court order, when there’s some evidence or an allegation made that, due to some type of mental health crisis, they pose a potential threat to themselves or somebody else. Maybe they’re suicidal, or they took too much medication, whatever it is, but there’s an allegation of potential self-harm or actual self-harm. So I will tell you, my father-in-law is a veteran. And I think one of the things that really rubs me the wrong way is the shameful way that we take care of our veterans. My first associate was a longtime friend of mine, 30-plus years, he was a veteran, so was his brother. We do not take care of our veterans. And I can’t tell you how many veterans we’ve had to represent who actually went to the VA for help and ended up getting Baker Acted, so they got detained under the state statute even though they were in a federal hospital, and we had to go to court to get them out. So you’d think that we would do a better job of taking care of our veterans. We don’t. And one of the things I tell people is that the Baker Act is not designed for treatment. It is not a treatment statute. There are other options available. But what happens is people, especially during COVID, and sometimes with veterans going to the VA looking for help, right, they go in there and they’re asking for help because they don’t feel good, because we don’t take care of them, especially when they come back from combat. And then what happens? Some unscrupulous doctor says, oh, by the way, have you ever thought about harming yourself? Yeah, I have. Okay, he’s detained, we’re Baker Acting him. And the problem with the Baker Act, Stephen, is that once you are detained, nobody actually knows you’re there. And what I mean by that is that the VA, or a hospital, or even a county receiving facility, does not report to anybody. So if nobody knows you’re there, they can do whatever they want. And here’s the icing on the cake: because they’re acting as an agent of the state’s mental health system, they enjoy sovereign immunity, in my experience. So when I was a prosecutor, if I prosecuted somebody, as long as I didn’t do anything inappropriate, you couldn’t sue me for it. Now if I went out and had a car accident and hurt somebody, that’s different, right, I’m acting as a civilian. But as a state employee, as a state entity, we enjoy immunity. So these facilities, as a general rule, cannot be sued for any of this stuff. Well, if nobody knows you’re there and they can’t be sued, then you can only imagine the abuse that goes on, especially with our veterans. So that’s the Baker Act in a nutshell. I would say I’ve probably filed more cases against different facilities all over the state than any other lawyer. I’m probably the state’s leading expert at this point on the Baker Act, primarily because it happened to me. I’ve taken calls at 2, 3 in the morning. I see a lot of children getting Baker Acted too, I’ve represented a lot of minors. So that’s the long-winded tour of the Baker Act.

Stephen: Okay, well the next question, I believe you just answered it, but we’ll ask it anyway. Change the Narrative wants to know, what’s the biggest misconception families have about the Baker Act?

Mark Astor: Yeah, I mean the biggest misconception is that it’s a treatment statute. I can’t tell you how many calls I get, we’ll get calls from families, oh, my loved one has a drug issue, my loved one has mental health issues, and I want you to Baker Act them. Well, why do you want me to Baker Act them? Well, because I want them to go to treatment. Then don’t Baker Act them, because if you Baker Act them, you will in effect be handing them over to the state. And what does that mean? It means they become a ward of the state. The state becomes their new legal guardian. And your ability, your right, even if you were designated as a healthcare proxy or a power of attorney, your right to make medical and mental health decisions for them is effectively terminated. Their right to make decisions about their own medical and mental health care is effectively terminated. And there lies the problem. People will run to the courthouse to file a petition, they get a judge to grant an ex parte order, which is an order without a hearing, the cops come down, they pick the person up, and one or two things happen. Either they’re in and out in 72 hours, well, if someone’s been sick for a long time, that doesn’t do anything to help them, or the facility decides to file to keep them, and worst case scenario, they end up in a state mental hospital for 6 months. Neither of those two things are going to solve the problem that we’re being called about. And by the way, the Baker Act is supposed to exclude substance use, but I have seen my fair share of cases where a facility, unscrupulous in nature, figures out, hey, there’s money to be made here, so we’re going to detain them. Well, nobody knows they’re here anyway, and we can’t be sued, so who cares. So they detain them. So the Baker Act is not a treatment statute. It’s designed only for emergencies. If you would feel the need to pick up the phone and call 911 because you have an emergency, that’s what the Baker Act’s designed for, because it’s the fastest way to get somebody into a situation where they can be stabilized and secured. But it is not designed to treat anything. The idea is to assess, stabilize, and release. But all too often that does not happen, because a lot of these receivers are private for-profit entities who are licensed as agents of the state’s mental health system, which means they can lock you down and keep you and forcibly medicate you and cut you off from basically everybody else. And so that’s the misconception. It’s not designed to treat you, and if you use it like that, you’re probably going to find yourself in a bit of a sticky situation. I really tell people, we have the Marchman Act, we have guardianship, those are the two best treatment options for folks with substance use and or mental health issues, but not the Baker Act, unless it’s an emergency, in which case call 911, because the police can Baker Act too.

Stephen: Yeah, and that’s just their go-to, let’s do this and let’s just, home and, yeah.

Mark Astor: I’ve had situations where families said, we called 911, or the police came over and they wouldn’t take them. Okay, then we need to go to court and figure something out. I mean, I can typically get a court to grant even a Marchman Act emergency order, depending on the county, usually the same day, and I also have a retired cop on staff, and he’ll go out there and help law enforcement get this person picked up. So we move pretty quickly, and all our cases are typically filed as emergencies anyway. So we’re used to a fast turnaround. But if somebody’s threatening to harm themselves, pick up the phone and call 911. That’s what it’s there for.

Stephen: And we talk about getting people help with that all the time on the show. It’s a big problem, military-wise and otherwise, people starting to hurt themselves, and we need to get better help for them, is what we need to do. I have another question for you. JJ Milan, an Army National Guard veteran, had a medically induced psychotic episode, called for help, and was arrested. How can we protect veterans like JJ who become victims of new medications causing havoc?

Mark Astor: Yeah, as you said, the military, they go for help, and what does the VA do? They throw drugs at them and say, take this and everything will be better. And so we’re putting a band-aid on something that needs major surgery. I think one of the things we don’t do, and this doesn’t just apply to veterans, is we have failed as a country to make quality treatment available to everybody. If you don’t have financial resources and you don’t have good insurance, your ability to get really good quality treatment is very limited. We have county facilities, but good luck getting a bed, they’re overwhelmed. And I know there’s been some talk, and I don’t want to get into politics here, but I know that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, said, hey, we’re going to throw a bunch of money at this, they’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars being made available to help people. Unfortunately, we have seen in various states throughout the country that when money is thrown at a situation like it was during COVID, and we’ve seen this in Minnesota and in California, New York, anytime the government is throwing money at a problem, there’s always going to be somebody out there who says, I know that’s a get-rich-quick scheme and the money is going to get siphoned off. I’m not saying it’s not well-intentioned, but I’m always nervous when the government especially tries to get into the healthcare business. In terms of these medications and how we’re treating our veterans, I think for folks that feel like they’re not getting treated fairly, I would say reach out to your members of Congress, your House representative, your Senate representative, and also reach out to your local politicians, here in Florida we have state reps, state members of the Senate, call the governor’s office, call your local mayor, reach out to the county commissioners, your city commissioners. This is what these politicians are elected for, they’re supposed to be helping us. And you’ve got to raise havoc. And I’ll tell you something else, if there’s a problem with a vet, a VA, go online and complain about it and post it and say, hey, has anybody else had a problem with this, let’s shine a light on this issue. We don’t take care of veterans, we don’t take care of a lot of people, but sometimes we’re our own worst enemy too. This whole legalized marijuana thing is a problem too, and I can talk about that in a second.

Stephen: No, it’s not the solution. And we’ve had guests on the show that take vets out swimming, fishing, race cars, get their minds on something else, talk to other people and try to straighten their heads out without handing them a bag full of drugs saying, here, this will fix you. What’ll fix you is getting your mind straightened out, or opening up to somebody and realizing this is the problem, we need to fix this, it’s not drugs dulling that.

Mark Astor: Stephen, do you know what the number one cause is that I see, overwhelmingly, for folks that have substance use and mental health issues? Trauma. Some type of trauma. And you cannot treat trauma with just giving somebody a pill. And our veterans suffer trauma, and then we don’t take care of them. So that’s part of the problem. If we are not going to treat them, especially when they come back from combat, with anything other than a medication, then of course we’re going to be dealing with this on an ongoing basis. And that’s when people get Baker Acted and all kinds of other crazy stuff. So if you’re going to treat trauma, then treat it, don’t medicate it.

Stephen: Well, my friend I lost, she was in an accident and was given pain meds, and that became her addiction, and it went from pain meds to meth to this, and that monkey just got bigger and bigger, and it lasted 10 or 12 years before she finally, she actually had a life.

Mark Astor: Stephen, I’ve had three surgeries in 18 months to fix my elbows, my tricep tendon. The first two times after I had the surgery, the doctor prescribed me OxyContin, and I said, doc, you know what I do for a living? Do you honestly think I’m going to take these medications? He said, I’m giving them to you anyway, you’ll be in pain. I said, pain? I don’t care, I’m not taking this, because this stuff’s addictive, and I see what this kind of pain medication can do in my practice. To your point, my brother, when he was in med school, said to me, the hardest part of med school was learning all of the different medications we teach our doctors to prescribe, everything has a pill for it. And I’m not saying there isn’t a time and a place, but trauma needs more than a pill.

Stephen: It does. I have another question for you. At a man wants to know, at what point should people contact an attorney during a drug addiction or mental health crisis?

Mark Astor: Thank you for that question. I think the answer to that is, it depends, that’s a lawyer’s favorite answer when we don’t have an absolute concrete answer. I think once you know there’s a problem, there’s nothing wrong with having a conversation with somebody and saying, hey, I think you have a problem, can we talk about it. And if they’re not willing to talk about it, and they’re not willing to address it and seek help, then I think you need to say, okay, they can’t make the decision to save themselves, so do I want to have a conversation with an attorney to find out if that’s an option. Now, as I alluded to earlier, one of the things I try to do is give as much information as I can away for free. On our main website there’s a book all about the Marchman Act, it’s nine chapters, written, there’s video content, and it’s free, you just click on the link and we’ll send it to you. If you go on YouTube, I have 1,200 videos, all free, literally hundreds and hundreds of hours of information. So if you don’t want to call us and say, what are my options here, I would encourage you to go to YouTube or go to our website and download some of the information we have, because I think you’ll probably find a lot of the answers based on your particular set of circumstances. But I tell everybody, listen, you want to have a conversation, call our office, I have three amazing people in intake, you can have a consult with them, there’s no charge to do it, and I’m happy to talk to you and figure out what options are available. And look, sometimes, Stephen, the legal option is not always the right fit. I mean, forget whether or not I can prove a case, but maybe something like an intervention. I’m a big fan of interventions, if you use the right intervention, somebody who actually is trained to do it, not somebody who took an eight-hour course online and calls himself an interventionist, because there’s plenty of those people running around too.

Stephen: Oh, you mean like me filling out a form and becoming a priest to marry people, takes me two minutes.

Mark Astor: Well, listen, the second time I got married, I got married by a judge, so I’m with you, I’m good with that. The point is that sometimes you don’t always need the hammer. And I tell families, you don’t always need me. And if I don’t think you need me, I’m going to tell you, I don’t think you need me, I think there’s another option here, or maybe you’re just not quite there yet. If you can have a conversation with your loved one and they say, you know what, I’ve got a problem, I can’t stop smoking marijuana, or I can’t stop drinking, and I’m willing to get help, then maybe you don’t need me, if they’re willing to go and willing to stay long enough.

Stephen: And that’s the biggest problem, though. They have to be willing. Family can’t make them, you can’t make them, I can’t make them. They have to turn around and say, I need to end this.

Mark Astor: They have to know in their head that they want to end it. You’re not going to change that. But the question is, how far down the proverbial rabbit hole are they? Because I’ve had people that tried marijuana once and immediately experienced some type of psychosis, they were delusional, they were paranoid. At that point, they were never going to go to treatment on their own, because they’re just living in a different universe at this point, and it was the first time it happened, and I’m like, listen, we need to get them into treatment, right, because this is going to continue to get worse and worse. And it was a first-time event, and I’m like, let’s go to court, let’s get them into treatment now. But that’s not for everybody. I mean, I get eating disorder cases too, those are really challenging cases, and sometimes the family can turn it around. It really depends on your set of circumstances. There’s no, well, if this happens call me, if that doesn’t happen, don’t call me. I think a family has to say, okay, have I tried everything, am I at the point where I’m done, I can’t live like this. I don’t know the answer to that, only the family knows that. But we’re happy to have a conversation with you, and I want you to go to my YouTube channel, I want you to download the book, because there’s so much information there, and I think that’ll really help you get a grip on what’s going on and how we might be able to help you.

Stephen: Definitely. I have one more question for you. From Me Was Here wants to know, have you seen positive changes in how mental health is handled over your career?

Mark Astor: Well, certainly from my days as a prosecutor back in the ’90s. It’s interesting, I do a lot of reading about this stuff, I think this is a great question. I know that there is a lot of research ongoing in how we can help people with mental illness and substance use. For instance, GLP-1, the weight loss medication, they’re now finding that they can use that in people who have issues with cocaine and alcohol, to curb the cravings. And there’s all kinds of other work that people are doing. They’re finding connections now between the food that we eat and the water we drink and mental health issues. There’s a lot of research going on. I do think the one big step that we have made over the last few years is recognizing that it’s a disease. And that has taken away the stigma. Oh, he’s a bad person because he can’t stop drinking, he’s a bad person because he has bipolar, or he’s a bad person because he has severe anxiety. No, that person has a disease. And when you look at it and say, okay, it’s a disease, then you can say, well, the solution is they need treatment, whatever that happens to be. So I think that’s been the big leap forward. Okay, if it’s a disease, and it’s a disease of the mind, then we can figure out how do we do a better job of treating that disease. It’s not unlike cancer, you go into remission, behavioral health issues, you go into recovery, it’s a disease, and like any disease, the treatments are constantly evolving. And I do think that mental health issues are not going away anytime soon, for a myriad of reasons that I’m not going to get into, but I think that we are doing a much better job of understanding what’s going on. Now, that sort of gets us back to the question, okay, well, if we’re doing a better job, are those better options available to everybody? And again, I think it just comes down to the fact that quality, clinically appropriate treatment is not available to everybody. Look what’s happening to our veterans, but it’s not just our veterans, it’s people who live in rural communities who don’t have access to great treatment, people that may not have the financial resources or health insurance that don’t have access to great treatment. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve spoken to a family, and they have some insurance, and the facility we think is the right fit says we don’t take their insurance, okay, well then we’ve got to go to plan B. So I wish, you know, you and I could sit here for hours, Stephen, and try to solve this problem, and I’d be happy to sit and take all these questions. I think we’re doing a better job. I think we need to do a better job. And like any problem, we’re doing a better job of solving it, but I think maybe the first part of solving any problem is recognizing there’s a problem. When a family calls us and says, well, I don’t think he has a problem, well, then how can I help you? What would you like me to, how can I help you if you don’t think there’s a problem? Well, he’ll get over it, well, I’m going to wait for him to hit rock bottom. No, because his rock bottom might mean he’s dead. I want to know when you’ve hit rock bottom, because you’re going to be the one to decide when he goes to treatment. So it’s got to be you, because he’s never going to get to that point. So have you hit rock bottom yet? Are you ready to make the commitment to save him? If you are, let’s have a conversation. If you’re not, that’s fine, it’s a no-judgment zone, and I’m here to help you, I’ll give you all the resources you want, and they’re pretty much free. And as we speak, we’re on YouTube right now, we’re on Facebook, we’re on X, we’re on TikTok. There are things to search in all of those areas, and there are people out there that are willing to help. And sometimes they’ll come and pick you up and they won’t charge you, and they will try to help you. It’s not just my insurance company this and they’re this. There are people out there, military-wise and otherwise, if you find them, they’re willing to help you, they’ll bring you in and try to get you the help you need. And it’s just taking that step, and looking sometimes too. If you’ve got a substance problem, go to a meeting, I’m pretty sure you don’t have to pay to go to a meeting, there’s meetings everywhere. Even online, all you have to do is go into the search bar and search this, and I’m sure a bunch of sites will come up, oh my god, look, they help people like me. And you get in there and start talking to people, and some of them will pick you up and say, hey, come on, let me help you, or they’ll get you somebody to come and sit with you and try to get you the help you need. And it’s not always about the money, it’s not always about the insurance, it’s about getting you the help you need, some people out there are just willing to help. The other thing, Stephen, the wonderful thing about social media is there’s a support group for almost everything, I guarantee you can find a bunch of support groups just on Facebook, just do a search, 12 steps.

Stephen: I’m sure if I look for something, fat bald guy, there was help for me out there. All right, I have another question for you. At Gem Love, if you could change one law tomorrow to better help families, what would it be?

Mark Astor: Thank you for the question. You know what, so we have this statute here in Florida called the Marchman Act, and it’s unique to Florida, and it’s a bit like the Baker Act, but it’s designed for substance use. It’s very rarely used like the Baker Act, so normally it’s initiated by a lawyer going to court and filing something. And the idea is, Mark gets ordered to treatment for 90 days, and if Mark doesn’t do the treatment, or he leaves treatment, then the judge is going to call him back in and say, hey, Mark, we have to have a conversation, because you violated my court order. I’ve always thought that the problem with the Marchman Act is its difficulty in enforcement. What do I mean by that? So for instance, you get a Marchman Act, let’s say, up in Tallahassee, in Leon County. There’s an amazing judge up there, and if he finds out that you left treatment, he won’t set a hearing, he’ll just issue a bench warrant for your arrest and tell the cops to come get you. If it happens in the south end of Florida, and you walk out of treatment, I have to file a motion, a motion for contempt for violating the court order, and then the court sets a hearing, and I have to serve you to let you know there’s a contempt hearing going on, so that you can come in and challenge it. I’ve always thought that was a problem, because if you’ve left treatment, half the problem is I’ve got to go find you. Now I have, as I said, I have a retired cop on staff, he’s great at finding people, but the fact that I’ve got to find you, that’s time-consuming, and it can be expensive, because he’s got to be paid. In the meantime, somebody can leave the state, or something terrible happens to them. So one of the changes that we made, oh god, it was back in the ’90s, I think it was back in the ’90s, so if domestic partners take out a restraining order, husband takes out a restraining order against wife here in Florida, if the husband was to suddenly show up after he’s been served with a restraining order, or a judge has issued the restraining order telling him to stay away, the police can get called and they can detain him, they can actually arrest him. So we don’t have to run back to court and waste all that time, especially if he’s a potential threat. I think the hole in the Marchman Act is that if somebody leaves treatment, normally the police will get called, but their attitude is, well, okay, if we find them, we’ll bring him to treatment, but there’s nothing else we can do. So you’ve got somebody who’s in violation of a civil court order, like a restraining order, and the police can do nothing. I think personally the one thing that should be fixed is giving law enforcement, if they find that person, the ability to take the person. You don’t have to put them in the county jail, but we have receiving facilities with locked doors and we could put them there. At least they’re off the streets, and we don’t risk somebody doing something silly and harming themselves. And then we get the case back in front of the judge. And I’ve always felt that was a problem, that was a missing piece, not just the enforceability, but how it’s handled in different parts of the state. Some parts of the state I wouldn’t even want to file a case, because they’re just so backwards. But I think if that’s one part of the law I could change, I would change that piece. Giving our police the authority to at least detain somebody and place them somewhere secure if they leave treatment, because that’s when bad things happen.

Stephen: All right, well Mark, this hour has gone by very quickly, we’ve gotten a whole lot of information.

Mark Astor: Thank you, Stephen, for having me.

Stephen: I have your pages in the chat, your Instagram and everything, so if anybody wants to get in touch, it’s there for them. Now we’re just going to break it out, and I’m going to have a little lightning round with you and throw some questions at you.

Mark Astor: Oh, okay, great, so you want to stick around, love this.

Stephen: The first thing that comes to mind, and then we’ll end the show after this.

Mark Astor: No, I’m happy to listen, I’m having a field day. I told my wife I had a hot date, she was fine with that. I said, listen, I got a hot date with some bald guy, she’s like, go have fun.

Stephen: There you go, bald is always fun. All right, lightning round, first question. Coffee or tea?

Mark Astor: Coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon.

Stephen: Beach or mountains?

Mark Astor: Oh, that’s a toughy, my wife and I have been spending a lot of time in Utah, I think the mountains right now.

Stephen: All right, favorite courtroom movie.

Mark Astor: Actually, I just started watching the Lincoln Lawyer, the TV series, I love that show.

Stephen: Biggest myth about lawyers.

Mark Astor: We really do take offense to some of the lawyer jokes.

Stephen: All right, one word that describes hope.

Mark Astor: Love.

Stephen: A book everyone should read.

Mark Astor: Oh god, I just read this book, Who, Not How.

Stephen: Best advice you’ve ever received.

Mark Astor: I think one of the really good pieces of advice was the difference between a wise man and a fool. So a fool learns from his own mistakes, but a wise man learns from his own mistakes and everybody else’s too.

Stephen: One legal term everybody should understand.

Mark Astor: Oh my god, one legal term. You know, it’s funny, I’ve just been doing Fox Live, I did Fox Live for the Karmelo Anthony case, and I just did one for the Charlie Kirk case too. Probable cause. Probable cause.

Stephen: If you weren’t an attorney, what career would you have chosen?

Mark Astor: Oh god, I probably would have gone into real estate. I did start my career as a teenager doing a little bit of real estate.

Stephen: And the last one, finish this sentence: Families should never…

Mark Astor: Lose hope.

Stephen: Some great answers. Mark, I thank you for being on with me tonight. Another great Tuesday, another great chat. Thank you, I really appreciate you coming in. Like I said, at one point you almost had me in tears thinking about past things, but you put out a lot of helpful information. Hopefully you got something out there to help other people too. I want to thank you again for being here tonight. Misfit Nation, have a great night, we’ll see you next Tuesday.

Announcer: Thanks for checking us out and being a part of the Misfit Nation show. Don’t forget to visit our website at themisfitnation.com. Check out all our past episodes and get some of the great Misfit Nation gear for you and your family. As always, be humble, stay hungry, and keep hustling, because we are Misfit Nation.

ABOUT MARK ASTOR

Mark Astor spent the early part of his career as an Assistant State Attorney in Palm Beach County, Florida, where he prosecuted thousands of criminal cases and served as Chief of two County Court Divisions.

He brings that background into his role as a legal analyst, which is why producers at FOX News, LiveNOW from FOX, and local CBS and ABC affiliates call him when a complex criminal case needs a clear explanation.

His law practice is a different matter. Mark Astor and Astor Simovitch Law focus exclusively on behavioral health law: helping Florida families navigate Marchman Act petitions, Baker Act proceedings, and the legal intervention process when a loved one is in a mental health or addiction crisis and refuses help.

If that’s the situation you’re in, schedule a free confidential consultation or call us at 561-419-6095.

A NOTE ON MARK ASTOR’S MEDIA COMMENTARY

Mark Astor’s appearances as a legal analyst cover a wide range of legal cases in the news. This commentary draws on his background as a former prosecutor and his 30-plus years of courtroom experience.

It does not represent the services offered by Astor Simovitch Law, which does not handle criminal defense matters. For criminal defense needs, please consult an attorney who practices in that area.