question: What services does the Passaic County Legal Aid Society provide? answer: Divorce aid paragraph: For more than half a century, the Passaic County Legal Aid Society has fought on behalf of the county's poor, in disputes ranging from housing to child custody to public assistance. But for the last several years it has often done that job poorly, according to state and federal officials. And barring a long-shot legal victory, as of Jan. 1 the autonomous county office will be replaced by a new agency whose administrators will report to a director based in Jersey City. Federal legal aid officials drew up the new service area uniting Bergen, Hudson, and Passaic counties in June, insisting the change will trim administrative costs without compromising services. The Passaic County office and its supporters see it differently. They say top decision-makers will be too far from the individuals and non-profit agencies that rely on the office for help. And in a federal lawsuit, the agency's leadership argues that a merger would jeopardize its educational programs and minority hiring efforts, and that its imposition amounts to bureaucratic bullying by state and federal officials. Those same officials have repeatedly accused the Passaic County office of mismanagement. Reviews since 1995 have found evidence of shoddy accounting, poor morale, excessive staff turnover, and double counting of cases - and alleged that the office made limited efforts to rectify the problems. At times in recent years, the office has received its state and federal funding on a month-to-month basis, which one federal official called "one step short of defunding." Leaders of the county agency, which employs 14 attorneys, five paralegals, and nine support staff at offices in Paterson and Wanaque, say officials have "greatly exaggerated" the office's problems, which they call mostly bureaucratic. "Just let them argue that their [merger] plan makes sense," Maxim Thorne, the office's deputy director, said of the higher-level legal aid officials. "They could never replicate our services or equal the accumulated value of this office." Over the summer, the office reapplied for a federal grant to serve Passaic County in the coming year. But Legal Services Corp. in Washington rejected the application, saying it failed to address the service needs of the entire tri-county area - a requirement under the new rules. By mid-December, the federal body is expected to award Passaic County's federal funding - about $385,000 this year - to Northeast New Jersey Legal Services, the tri-county agency. State funds of about $1.6 million could follow, although Thorne noted the state appropriated $927,000 of that amount through June 2003. The state Treasury Department's legal services representative did not return repeated calls for comment. 