Kent County Terminated Thomas Siver’s Indigent Defense Contracts for Cause. He Is Now on the Ballot for District Judge.

Four bodies of records spanning eleven years bear on the fitness question in Allegan County’s 57th District Court race. They include government records, sworn filings, and source-provided workplace communications. None has previously been assembled for voters.

What Kent County Put in Writing

On March 8, 2023, the administrator of Kent County’s indigent defense program sent Thomas Siver a letter at his office at Siver & Associates PLLC in Grand Rapids. It terminated two contracts, one for felony representation and one for misdemeanor representation, for cause and effective immediately, invoking the termination-with-reasonable-cause provision contained in each agreement.

The letter did not hedge. It identified four categories of failure. Siver had not completed services within the time requirements the contracts specified. He had repeatedly failed to appear at court on time, and on at least two occasions had not appeared at all, leaving clients without counsel. He had not regularly submitted the monthly reconciliations the contracts required. And the county’s office had received complaints about his professionalism, his punctuality, and, in the letter’s words, “obscene language used by you in front of and directed at your clients”.

The letter states that each of these grounds independently constituted reasonable cause for termination, and that taken together they could not be excused. It directed that all of his current appointed cases be reassigned immediately, that he cease communication with appointed clients that day, and that he transfer discovery materials and client files to substitute counsel within two business days under Michigan Rule of Professional Conduct 1.16(d). It warned that failure to comply would result in the matter being referred to the State Bar of Michigan. Copies went to Kent County corporate counsel and to the county purchasing manager.

The category that matters most for a district court bench is the non-appearance finding. District courts are where the overwhelming majority of Michigan residents encounter the legal system, and they run on volume. Arraignments, pretrials, probation violations, and preliminary examinations move in blocks. When appointed counsel does not appear, the person sitting in custody does not get a lawyer, and the docket absorbs the delay. A candidate whose contracts were terminated in part for that failure is asking to preside over the same docket he is documented as having missed.

The November 2023 Police Encounter

Wyoming Police Department produced body-camera footage in response to a Freedom of Information Act request concerning a November 14, 2023 encounter. The recording is labeled as a welfare check. It shows officers taking Siver into custody and transporting him for a mental-health evaluation.

Concerns described inside the workplace

Former colleagues and staff who provided private workplace communications described concerns about volatility, severe stress, abrupt changes in tone, and the effect those episodes had on employees and operation of the law office. Their names are omitted because they are not public figures and identifying them is unnecessary to report the substance of their concerns.

The messages themselves show Siver telling staff that he was being admitted to a hospital, was under significant medication, was highly stressed, and had experienced a difficult day at the office. In the same body of communications, he used repeated profanity toward staff, told employees to decide whether they wanted to remain, later apologized, and attributed his conduct to stress and illness. Other messages acknowledge that multiple staff members had left and describe him as devastated by the departures.

Former colleagues also told Clutch Justice that Siver directed them to appear before judges after he had failed to attend hearings or had missed filing deadlines. They described being placed in the position of answering for matters they had not caused and receiving the court’s criticism in his place. Clutch Justice is withholding their names. These accounts are attributed statements from former colleagues, not judicial findings; the materials reviewed for this article do not independently establish each hearing or deadline they described.

A separately published recording provides a public example of Siver being questioned about delay in a case. A 13-minute edited YouTube video from Court Nerds reproduces portions of a Zoom eviction hearing before Judge Kristen D. Simmons of Lansing’s 54-A District Court in Case No. 20-01399-LTE, RE Edgewood Villas v Bentley & Sasser. In the exchange, Siver offered explanations for why the matter had taken as long as it had and attributed part of the delay to the court and its scheduling. Judge Simmons rejected that characterization and challenged his account of the case’s history. The exchange does not establish the former colleagues’ separate allegations, but it documents Siver publicly offering explanations for delay and directing some responsibility toward the judge.

Judge Simmons was appointed to the 54-A District Court by Governor Gretchen Whitmer in September 2019 and remains one of the court’s sitting judges. She later received national attention for her September 9, 2025 decision, after preliminary examinations, not to bind over 15 defendants charged in Michigan’s 2020 false-electors prosecution. The charges were dismissed. That ruling was not a finding of guilt or innocence, and the Michigan Attorney General announced in March 2026 that the state would not appeal.

The 2015 Closing, and the 911 Call

Eight years before the Kent County letter, Siver was practicing at his father’s firm and representing the plaintiff in a long-running Allegan County divorce. On July 20, 2015, an attorney for the opposing party swore out a supplemental affidavit in support of a contempt motion. The affidavit was filed in Allegan County Circuit Court under case numbers 09-44909-DO and 14-54316-DO, and it was notarized in Ottawa County.

The affidavit describes a July 15, 2015 closing at the Grandville office of a title agency. Original vehicle titles for two antique automobiles had been on the closing agenda since mid-June, and the plan was for one party to sign off on one title and receive the other. According to the affidavit, the plaintiff refused to sign, and Siver then took both titles and put them in his coat pocket. The affiant states he told Siver that if his client was not signing, the title had to be returned. Siver declined. The affidavit says the affiant warned that he would call the police and report the titles as stolen, that Siver told him to go ahead, and that he then called 911 and requested assistance.

What the affidavit describes next is the detail that makes the account unusual. Siver got his father on speakerphone. The affiant explained the situation directly to him, and the affidavit states that the father instructed Siver to return the title, which he did. The affiant then went outside to tell the responding officer the title had been returned.

The affiant, describing twenty years of practice, wrote that he had never had opposing counsel retain original documents he had provided for signature, “essentially holding them hostage to gain some type of advantage”. Supplemental affidavit, sworn July 20, 2015, Allegan County Circuit Court

The affidavit also states that Siver said afterward that he intended to file a grievance against the affiant for filing a false police report, and that when a partner from the affiant’s firm attempted to speak with Siver in person, Siver declined on the ground that a grievance might be filed against the firm. The affiant says he had not called police on another attorney in at least fifteen years.

He Asked a Court to Close His Own File

The most recent record is also the one most directly about the office Siver is seeking, and it required no source at all. It is sitting on a public register of actions.

Siver v Siver was filed in Ottawa County Circuit Court on January 31, 2024, assigned to Judge Jon A. Van Allsburg, and closed by consent judgment of divorce on August 21, 2024. Siver is the defendant. Post-judgment motion practice continued into 2026.

On December 31, 2025, Siver moved to seal the file. The opposing party filed a written response opposing the motion on January 7, 2026. At a January 14, 2026 motion hearing conducted over Zoom, with parties and counsel present, the court denied it. The register of actions records the disposition in three words. A written order memorializing the January 14 rulings entered on March 2, 2026, following a seven-day notice of presentment under Michigan Court Rule 2.602(B)(3), which indicates the parties did not agree on the form of the order.

There is a second detail on this docket worth a sentence. On May 21, 2025, Siver’s retained counsel filed an amended parenting time motion and moved to withdraw on the same day. On May 22, Thomas Daniel Siver is logged as the filing attorney on a duplicate of that motion, and he appears as counsel of record on the accompanying notice and proofs of service. A lawyer appearing on his own behalf in his own case is not misconduct, and Michigan permits it. It is noted here because it means the person who later asked to seal the file had been operating inside it as an attorney of record.

What the parenting-time filings say

The consent judgment gave both parents joint legal and joint physical custody and provided for reasonable parenting time to be arranged in the minor child’s best interests. It also directed the parents not to use the child as a messenger, not to interfere with private parent-child communications, and not to influence the child against the other parent. Those provisions were agreed to by the parties; they are not findings that either parent had violated them.

In a verified motion filed in December 2024, Siver stated that he had not exercised parenting time since March 2024 despite proposing options ranging from telephone or video contact to non-overnight visits. He attributed the impasse in part to the minor child’s reluctance and alleged that the other parent had not facilitated contact or joint counseling. He asked the court to impose a specific schedule, designate a joint counselor, and remove blocks on telephone, text, and email contact.

In a later verified response, the opposing party agreed that no parenting time had occurred since March 2024 but disputed why. The response said a February 2025 stipulated order placed parenting time in a therapeutic setting at a counselor’s discretion, and alleged that Siver continued frequent direct communications after the court had cautioned him to give the child space. It further alleged that the resulting distress was affecting the child’s schooling and physical, mental, and emotional well-being. The opposing party asked the court to deny a fixed schedule and require Siver to make progress in individual counseling before joint counseling was attempted.

What the Record Does Not Contain

Reporting on a judicial candidate requires being as precise about absence as about evidence, because absence is where inference goes to die.

There is no public attorney discipline. A search of Michigan Attorney Discipline Board public records returned nothing associated with P69751. The Attorney Grievance Commission treats grievances as confidential unless they result in formal discipline, so this establishes that Siver has never been publicly disciplined. It does not establish that no one ever complained.

There is no independent record of the 2015 police response. Clutch Justice sought the responding agency’s record of the 911 call described in the affidavit. The record has passed its retention period and no longer exists. Eleven years is longer than most Michigan law enforcement agencies retain routine call and incident records, and there is nothing improper about the destruction. The consequence is simply that the affidavit cannot be corroborated or contradicted by the agency that responded.

There is no campaign finance picture. Searches of the Michigan Bureau of Elections database for individual contributions and individual expenditures under committee 0612185 returned no records, and the search interface notes that supplemental itemizations were not included. Clutch Justice found no filings at the county level either. A candidate committee can lawfully show nothing in an itemized search for several reasons, including a reporting waiver filed by a committee that does not expect to cross the itemization threshold. Clutch Justice is reporting the search result and drawing no conclusion from it.

The Structural Problem This Race Exposes

Michigan asks almost nothing of a person who wants to be a judge. A district court candidate must be a licensed attorney, must meet residency and age requirements, and must gather signatures or pay a filing fee. There is no background review, no professional conduct screening, no requirement to disclose terminated government contracts, and no body that assembles a candidate’s record and makes it available to voters. The Judicial Tenure Commission has jurisdiction over judges, not candidates. The Attorney Grievance Commission’s files are sealed unless discipline issues. The State Court Administrative Office does not vet ballots.

The result is that a voter in Allegan County who wanted to know what is in this article would have needed to submit a public records request to a county they do not live in, obtain a 2015 filing from a closed circuit court case under a name that is not the candidate’s, and read a post-judgment register of actions from a third county. That is not a research task. That is a profession.

What Comes Next

Clutch Justice requested comment from the Siver campaign regarding the Kent County termination, the November 2023 police encounter, the 2015 affidavit, the workplace communications, the recorded eviction hearing, and the motion to seal. No response was received as of publication.

The general election is in November. Between now and then, three documents would materially change the public picture: the sealing motion itself, which states the grounds Siver argued and which is on the Ottawa County docket; any Kent County record of whether the threatened State Bar referral was made; and the campaign committee’s filed statements or reporting waiver. Clutch Justice has requests pending and will report what comes back.

None of what is documented here disqualifies anyone from anything. That is the point. Michigan has decided that voters are the only screen a judicial candidate passes through, which means the screen is only as good as the information reaching it. In Allegan County this year, that information sat in three courthouses and a county purchasing file, and no one had put it in one place until now.