Family Court? God Save Me

I have a proposal to make. It will cost some lawyers a lot of money. And it raises grave constitutional issues. But I rely for persuasive authority on none other than Plato. As you will recall, he thought the state should raise children. It was too big a job for parents acting alone.

I say, once a couple becomes involved in divorce proceedings, remove the children from the custody of both parents. Create a rebuttable presumption that both parents are unfit to raise healthy children given the travail that is divorce. This might actually reduce needless litigation, force parents to behave well, and put the divorce bar out of work.

I am prompted to propose this after being lured into the family courts once again. I represent a father. He believes his ex-wife wants him out of her children's lives, the better to live with her new and oh-so-perfect husband.

Efforts to negotiate the father's resumed visitation fail. I ask the lawyer for the mother whether there is any conceivable situation under which the mother would agree to resumed visitation. No, is the response. So I file a motion for contempt.

The court appoints a new lawyer for the children. Suddenly, the mother's lawyer is sweet reason. Is there anything we can do, she implores, in an email sent courtesy copy to the new lawyer for the kids. There are minor children at stake, she begs.

This is a start, I reason. After a couple months in the case, she is finally willing to talk. We arrange a call. My client is sick, disturbed and the mother just wants what is best for her children, I am told. What about resumed visits with the kids? I ask. He needs to sign the release, opposing counsel responds. Huh?

My client has supervised visitation. About the time I got in the case, the supervisor got wind that trouble was in the air. He wanted my client to sign a release promising not to sue or he'd quit. Without the supervisor, apparently, there can be no visits.

I am now beyond incredulity. What has a release to do with the best interests of the children? What sort of clinician insists on a release from liability as a constructive condition of a father's seeing his child?

My adversary isn't so nice anymore. "I was hoping what everyone said about you wasn't true. I thought you'd be reasonable," she says. I just want to know what a release from suit has to do with visitation.Gibberish is the response. I try to back off. Educate me, I say. I am not a family court lawyer. What principle animates this?

If he wants to see his children all he has to do is sign the release, I am told. Just who is this lawyer representing? When I demur, she tries a new tactic. Your contempt motion is ridiculous, I am told.

I agree, it may be.Maybe I really should sue the supervisor.

You know we are all laughing at you, she tells me. Now that's a rhetorical move new in my experience. Oh, I am stung to the quick. By all means, take my client's children.

Is this what passes for lawyering in the family court? Feigned sincerity for half-an-hour or so? Then insults and ridicule?

Go ahead and laugh, I say. I sort of feel as though I just walked into a leper colony and all the residents are giggling. He looks funny, they say. I am glad I do.•

Reprinted courtesy of The Connecticut Law Tribune.

Comments

[Lear's Fool]

If we frowned on divorce as we once did, rather than giving it our imprimatur and treating it as a rite of passage, families wouldn't have to suffer the casualties of this trench warfare known as "family court". (Have I met my metaphor quota yet?)

But of course a return to that sort of family-friendly society would also "cost some lawyers a lot of money" - not to mention reversing much of the progress of parens patriae expansionists in their persistent effort to cut that Gordian knot known as the family.

Family court...Cui bono?

[Mike]

That has to be one of your best columns in a long time. When I took Family Law in college, I entitled my term paper: "Why Family Law Has Taught Me to Never Get Married." My prof for that class, a family law judge, was a good sport about it and gave me a "B."

[Aaron]

The 'family friendly society' that existed where, LF? On "Ozzie and Harriet" and in your fevered imagination?

[S.cotus]

Aaron, The truths on TV and in the imagination are the thuthiest truths of all.

[Lear's Fool]

"(M)aybe the way it's done in family court is a mess, but the solution isn't to simply trash the system and force people to stay married."

You've got it backwards, Enki: The "system" that's been trashed is the family. Divorce was sold to us as the "solution", and family court as the coliseum in which opponents would choose gladiators to "negotiate a settlement" on their behalf. (How's it working out for us?)

Wrecking families is a business. And business is booming.