Family Issues Friday - part 7

  With the knowledge that use of government force in family issues continues to be disastrous, let's continue to explore what "family issues" would be like without government involvement.

Divorce

There are over one million divorce cases filed annually in this country, for the purpose of dissolving a relationship. The relationship is a legal one in most cases, even if the couple didn't take any steps to formally marry. I could discuss whether there should be any such thing as a "legal" marriage, but as long as the courts can become involved in dissolving even an informal marriage, that discussion is beside the point.

It has been my experience that most of us who choose to make a life as a couple do so with splendid, even idealistic, intentions. We intend to stay together "till death do us part" and love and nurture each other. It's not my intent here to analyze why those good intentions fail, or to place blame. The reasons are enormously complex, not the least of which is that each of us changes over time, leaving a once-compatible couple as a very different pair of "players". Whatever the underlying reasons are, dissolving such a relationship, is, in most cases, a very serious act that can often have disastrous effects on all involved. Divorce naturally calls great emotion into play.

Having worked together to construct a lifestyle, with long-range plans and sincere effort, the decision to tear it apart... to declare our intentions as irreconcilably failed, and to change to a very different lifestyle, evokes emotions of all kinds, and often at a fever pitch. If children are involved, the complexity and alternatives become magnified even more.

Given the emotional and physical destruction divorcing couples are faced with, it's a tribute that so many can separate as amicably as they do. Amid financial worries, raw emotions, and destruction of dreams they were invested in, many couples, will, as a final act of working together, find a way to make the best of a terrible situation... at least until they take legal action.

Divorce wars

All too often, an amicable breakup is drastically changed once the legal system becomes involved. Our justice system is adversarial... a battle by definition. Divorce attorneys can ethically only serve one party of a divorce, and their job is to advocate for that one person. Pit two divorce attorneys against each other, each trying to achieve the best results for their client, and the formerly amicable couple can quickly find themselves in a legal war against each other. It pits husband against wife, mother against father, and hostility escalates into the ultimate war, the trial. Add in the formality of court proceedings, and the original participants often find that their relationship and their intentions are no longer very significant. Like all wars, the divorce seems to take on a runaway life of it's own, throwing the couple, now opponents, into a tailspin and obliterating most of what they had sensibly agreed upon.

In addition to intensifying opposition, bringing legal assistance to a divorce is quite expensive, and those expenses come at a time when they are least affordable. Divorce, even without legal expenses, is terribly expensive; a family that shared housing, food, furnishings, and perhaps two incomes, now has to revert to roughly double the living expenses. Again, if children are involved, those expenses become magnified.

I would be remiss if I didn't include here the fact that Family Courts are unique, and that family court judges can do almost anything they choose once a case comes before them. Family court judgements, even seemingly outrageous or even unconstitutional ones, are rarely reviewed by higher courts, and judges are rarely criticised or replaced. By entering family court, you are putting yourselves into the hands of one person, and trusting in that person, who is often severely overworked, to understand a complex situation and to rule without bias. It's a government system in which satisfactory results are extremely unlikely... for any of the participants. The inclusion of governmental legal involvement in a divorce is probably the worst alternative available to a couple divorcing. A legal battle should be considered a last resort, and even those who are part of the legal system would agree with that evaluation.

Like most governmental systems, family court is based on edict, backed by force... and all such systems are destructive by their very nature. The participants in such systems are usually not evil, but the system itself is.

There is no shortage of horror stories about the results of divorce cases from family court. Many family court judges tend to be paternalistic men who render judgements often obscenely in favor of wives/mothers. Those results can take what was once a loving family and turn it into a disastrous legal mess, destroying lives in the process. Biased court results can become an open invitation to more of the same... to angry wives taking advantage of a bias in order to inflict pain, not only on the man they're angry at, but on their children as well. (There have been past periods when judges were just as biased in favor of men as they now are against them). Decisions made out of anger or spite are almost always destructive, but are even more so when they're part of a divorce.

Mediation

The use of professional mediators instead of resorting to the court system is a preferable alternative. Mediation is a no-force alternative to the forced edict of a court. The difference in approach is so potentially significant that some governmental judicial systems press hard for its use instead of court. The following is from the Rhode Island Judiciary Family Court website:

Mediation is a way of settling disagreements about the care of children following separation and divorce without a courtroom battle. The process helps both parents find a resolution of the problems they may face during separation and divorce. Through mediation the rights and responsibilities of each parent are identified. The goal is to reorganize the family, not to "award" custody to one parent and make a "visitor" of the other.

With the assistance of trained mediators, parents meet together in an informal setting to decide on a parenting plan for the future which best meets their individual needs and the needs of their children. The mediators are neutral and objective; their role is to help parents work cooperatively in resolving their disputes so they can carry on with the task of parenting their children.

The Bottom Line

As in so many other areas, many of us have been convinced to think of government as the solution to our divorce problems... call an attorney and aim for court. We seem so eager to dismiss our own considerable abilities, throw up our hands and let someone else work it out, that we choose the convenient "big brother" approach. There is nothing simple or pleasant about breaking up a marriage, but both parties would do well to put a supreme personal effort into cooperating just one more time, because the results can easily change the rest of your lives.

There is a LOT of help available that can keep you out of divorce court... private solutions to what should be the private problem of divorce. A search of the internet can bring you an amazing array of information, unique to your local situation:

The law in Minnesota presumes that is in the best interest of the children that the parents have joint legal custody, unless a strong showing can be made why it is not in the children's best interests.

Almost any Minnesota divorce case can be resolved through administrative Court review of the dissolution documents without Court appearances, except that a brief hearing is required when the parties have minor children and one of the parties is not represented by an attorney.

Like all other private solutions to problems, in order to divorce without destroying lives, we must make some effort to deal with our own problems rather than resorting to government force. The alternative of force is often temptingly easy to choose, but it's inevitably disastrous for all participants. That is simply a natural result of the use of force.