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Before I get started I’ll give you a little background information on me to put the whole thing into context. I am a law student working for a small law firm in Vancouver. The two partners are both general practitioners who do mainly commercial litigation. This means they do legal work primarily for small and medium sized companies including (but not limited to) company start-up, corporate structuring, financing, general advising, and dispute resolution.
An interesting phenomenon occurred, however. A person came to the firm seeking a commercial litigator to be her lawyer in her divorce case. Divorce, you say? Why wouldn’t you go to a family law lawyer for your divorce? Well, apparently she had gone to a family law lawyer first...but she had to fire him because he wasn’t able to properly advise her with respect to the $200,000,000 company that her husband had sold and reinvested into over 100 different investment accounts around the world.
I won’t get into details, but it was a huge learning experience for everyone involved and gave those of us who worked on it some knowledge of the area of family law...just enough experience for the partners to feel comfortable accepting family law cases of all kinds. And guess what they do when they take on low-budget family law cases? They off-load them onto the summer students. So I am a summer student working for a commercial litigation firm, and ironically I do pretty much solely family law.
Now, if you had asked me a year ago what areas of law I wanted to get into, I would have told you “anything but criminal law and family law”. The reason I never wanted to do family law is because there is no area of law that has more emotional clients that are under such financial strain.
Emotionally speaking, not only do the couples often hate one another, but when you throw into the mix financial stress, child custody battles, in-laws getting involved, embarrassment, etc. you get people who do things they wouldn’t normally do – and it often makes the situation far worse.
Financially speaking, a divorce means that anything the couple shared before that cannot be split has to be repurchased twice. If the wife keeps the house, then the husband has to buy a new one. If the family only has 1 car, then they have to buy a new one. The result is that people are trying to adjust to a lower living standard, need every penny they can get, and become even more desperate.
So with that said, on to the problem:
I have been assigned to a case that, from an emotional standpoint, is the most difficult I have had to work yet. The reason is that the children – who are both very young (under 10) – have been manipulated by one parent to hate the other. This is something that is unfortunately common in child custody cases. However, one thing that is unique about this case is the degree to which they have been manipulated, that the manipulation was intentional, and that I have had to watch and study it helplessly as it developed over the last few months. At one point the children would play with both parents happily, write valentines and birthday cards, etc. However, as the divorce ran on the children began to slowly turn on the parent they were spending less time with. At first it was just little things – but eventually it turned into huge fights every time the one parent picked up the children from the other, birthday letters turned into hate letters, and now the children are starting to claim abuse despite all evidence pointing to the contrary. The children, with their limited ability to understand what abuse is, actually believe they were abused when they weren’t. Therapists have said that the children are so far gone that they do not believe it possible for the father to ever have a relationship with them again.
It is so painful to read these hundreds of emails (since the children won’t even talk to the parent on the phone) of the parent asking their children what they can do together that will be fun, only to get these vicious responses – if responses at all. It is made worse since the alienation is being intentionally perpetrated and supported by one of the parents, who is even going so far as to get her lawyer to try to delay the trial for as long as possible so that further alienation can be caused prior to a decision for custody.
Parental Alienation
Parental alienation is something that everyone should be aware of. Until I got into law, I had never even heard of it, and while I knew that this sort of thing probably happened, I never understood it properly. Many of us have had parents go through divorce and, like it or not, many of us are going to go through a divorce after we have had kids so this is relevant for most, if not all of us.
Parental alienation from Wikipedia:
+ Show Spoiler +Parental alienation is a social dynamic, generally occurring due to divorce or separation, when a child expresses unjustified hatred or unreasonably strong dislike of one parent, making access by the rejected parent difficult or impossible. These feelings may be influenced by negative comments by the other parent and by the characteristics, such as lack of empathy and warmth, of the rejected parent. The term does not apply in cases of actual child abuse, when the child rejects the abusing parent to protect themselves. Parental alienation is controversial in legal and mental health professions, both generally and in specific situations.
It is important to emphasize that you can inflict parental alienation, and have it inflicted on you, even if the parents did not intend to - and it happens frequently. For instance, seeing one of your parents particularly emotionally wrought due to the divorce may make you want to blame the other parent - but that may not be fair.
I’m not sure exactly what I’m looking for in writing about this, it feels like a small stab in the dark against an area of the law that I feel doesn't come close to rectifying the injustices which are inflicted. If you murder someone's parent, you get thrown in jail and justice is served. If you alienate someone's parent to the point that they can no longer have a functioning relationship and essentially lose a parent...there's nothing they can do. I just have a feeling that if I write it down perhaps the knowledge will help someone realize that they are a victim of this psychological effect with respect to one of their own parents and take steps to fix their relationship. The knowledge that people can eventually overcome alienation of this sort would be nice, since the many court decisions I’ve had to read always end right when the relationships are at their worst, and I will have left my current case behind long before any sort of relationship rectification occurs. Even more, if you know someone who is going through a divorce, and is alienating their kids from their former spouse...if you know them well enough that they will listen to you, try to talk some sense into them. The kids essentially lose a parent, and are burdened with some serious emotional baggage. Never mind that the victimized parent essentially loses a kid.
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Very interesting read, as the child of divorced parents.
5/5, though I cannot rate right now because I'm on my phone. As I formulate some questions and response to your blog I'll be sure to post again.
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Anyone who thinks that children are never used as weapons in divorce situations is naive.
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Great blog and an eye opener. I've divorced parents and I'm thankful that I didn't have to suffer or inflict parental alienation.
I've heard cases where the justice system sides with one party and many people get desperate and do stupid things. It's one of the worse things in the world when a parent uses a child in order to inflict damage on their ex.
I hope that when the children in your case grow up, they will eventually realise what happened and how they were manipulated.
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On June 23 2011 03:20 Azzur wrote:
Great blog and an eye opener. I've divorced parents and I'm thankful that I didn't have to suffer or inflict parental alienation.
I've heard cases where the justice system sides with one party and many people get desperate and do stupid things. It's one of the worse things in the world when a parent uses a child in order to inflict damage on their ex.
I hope that when the children in your case grow up, they will eventually realise what happened and how they were manipulated.
Yeah. The other hope is that the parent doesn't give up trying after 10 years.
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Such sad, sad truths. For someone to spread their hatred of a spouse to a child like that is just depressing. One of the darkest aspects of human nature.
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Now, if you had asked me a year ago what areas of law I wanted to get into, I would have told you “anything but criminal law and family law”. The reason I never wanted to do family law is because there is no area of law that has more emotional clients that are under such financial strain.
You said this, but I didn't really read a follow up to it in the rest. Do you wish to go into family law now? It seems like the type of thing that would be very challenging, yet could be incredibly rewarding on a personal level if you work out a particularly difficult case (such as the one you described) in a satisfactory manner. I guess there is a fine line to be tread between getting too involved, and not getting involved enough.
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This happened to me somewhat, but not at the initial divorce. Some complications came up in my relationship with both my parents, some due to money some due to supposed debts, etc. etc.
Basically my mom and dad were telling me stuff about the divorce agreement to me, and how it should have worked. Both of them had completely different stories of the agreement. So I found the divorce agreement for some reason, and I read the entire thing, and both of them were lieing to me, and trying to manipulate my opinion of their ex.
It was pretty fucking pathetic, and i still hold it against both of them.
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I just feel so bad for the children in these cases. They can do absolutely nothing but suffer.
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It's a sad story that you tell. But what do you mean that it's "something everyone should know?" Are you saying "don't get divorced," or maybe even "don't get married in the first place?"
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Our society places no monetary worth on familial relationships, spirituality and doesn't care whether you are a good or bad person. Divorce is treated only in terms of money and assets. This isn't the only situation where people are treated inhumanely and I wonder if we're going to wake up one day and realize that our natural environment is gone, that there are no sacred, common places for us to congregate, and no common morality which guides us to be anything more than money-loving schills.
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On June 23 2011 04:23 ~ava wrote:
Divorce is treated only in terms of money and assets.
This has to be true under the law, because the emotional side is beyond the law's reach. That doesn't mean that that's the only meaning divorce has to the participants.
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My mom attempted to and successfully pulled this over me during the many times when she and my dad were considering divorce. She would take me along on shopping trips and tell me 'true stories' of what my dad did.
In hindsight I can't really blame her since she is very emotionally and possibly mentally unstable due to constant fighting in their relationship. In the end, I just think she could not bear to lose custody after all she has lost over her life. I'm not sure to what extent she consciously knew what she was doing, but there were long periods of time where I could not forgive my dad for anything he did. It's interesting, because it definitely worked. Before the alienation or whatever, I would always have considered myself closer to my dad. I eventually saw my mom as the victim when she probably instigated just as many fights as my dad (if not more).
On the other hand, my dad was doing somewhat of the same thing, except instead of telling me outright lies, he would simply complain about how pitiful my mom is.
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This is very sad. I think the message here is not only can divorce hurt families, but maybe people should consider better evaluating their partners beforehand so that they don't end up in marriages doomed to self-destruct.
[Precursor: There are always exceptions to the rule in my following discussion.]
As a Roman Catholic my faith is strongly against divorce, and as an individual having seen multiple situations where divorce takes place in my community, I can tell you that I agree with that sentiment. I especially agree in cases where the couple already has children.
To maliciously manipulate other individuals to do harm to themselves or other people is evil. This is not a morally ambiguous thing to me: it's evil. The tendency to do something like this is almost sociopathic in nature, because any sane individual should know that it is wrong, and yet they are so selfish that they do it anyways. Divorce with children involved in and of itself is selfish, because it means that you are willing to put your happiness above that of your partner or your children. You do not care about them. You are remorseless. You are apathetic.
Obviously people need to wait longer and really determine if the person that they want to marry is really good enough to be their partner. People are fallible, but what you really have to know is if the person you want to marry is incorrigible. Can this person change their bad behaviour or will they repeat the same errors of the past that are making this relationship crap for me? If the answer is no, marriage should be an impossibility.
I really pity children that are the product of bad parenting and/or divorce. You can see it right from the start and there is nothing you can do to stop it. You just know that the child you're looking up is doomed, and the saddest thing is that it is likely they will grow up to make the same mistakes as their parents. At that point they're part of the problem again, and the cycle continues.
If only people TRIED more in life, they'd solve a lot of their own problems.
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OP - You have a lot more strength than I do since I would have probably quit or taken to calling friends and family constantly if I had to deal with that much emotional strain. I wish you the best in making it through the job...
Anyway, divorce is hard enough as it is and I can't imagine what those poor kids are going through. My parents got divorced when I was 20 and despite my age it still flipped my world upside down. Thankfully my parents remain good friends and devoted to giving their children a good environment. Otherwise I think I'd still be going through issues being away from home...
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5/5.
Also I think lawyers should be the last resort, as mediation is definitely less painful (in many ways) and less costly.
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On June 23 2011 03:49 emperorchampion wrote:Show nested quote +Now, if you had asked me a year ago what areas of law I wanted to get into, I would have told you “anything but criminal law and family law”. The reason I never wanted to do family law is because there is no area of law that has more emotional clients that are under such financial strain. You said this, but I didn't really read a follow up to it in the rest. Do you wish to go into family law now? It seems like the type of thing that would be very challenging, yet could be incredibly rewarding on a personal level if you work out a particularly difficult case (such as the one you described) in a satisfactory manner. I guess there is a fine line to be tread between getting too involved, and not getting involved enough.
I didn't think to follow it up, partially because I don't really know the answer and partially it wasn't the point I was trying to get across. There are so many things to take into account.
The greatest legal experience I have had to date was sifting through thousands of financial statements trying to uncover secret or hidden bank accounts and tracking suspicious money transfers - it was like detective work, and every dollar I found meant my client would get X% more money that they deserved. I took over a boardroom in the office for over a month and had charts and everything strewn all over the place. When it came down to examinations for discovery I had more knowledge of the guy's finances than he or his lawyers did, and all the work I had done had an immediate and substantial effect on the settlement agreement - it was really satisfying. I feel really comfortable with balance sheets, financial statements and numbers. I don't get the same feeling - and really just get uncomfortable dealing with some of these more emotional issues. Perhaps it is because I cannot really relate to what they are going through in any way - or perhaps it is just really hard to do no matter how you go about it and I just haven't built up the internal defenses yet.
Family law just didn't feel like a good fit before I starting doing it, and now that I've started doing it it isn't so bad - but I think other areas could are a better fit at this stage in my life.
On June 23 2011 04:03 Lysenko wrote:
It's a sad story that you tell. But what do you mean that it's "something everyone should know?" Are you saying "don't get divorced," or maybe even "don't get married in the first place?"
I am certainly not trying to say that, I apologize if it came across that way.
I hope that awareness will give people a different perspective that could help people prevent/overcome parental alienation. I know just the knowledge of this effect, and seeing how frequently it happens, has given me a different perspective on these issues.
For instance, if you have a good friend getting divorced and you notice that they always have a really negative tone and posture when talking about their ex-spouse in front of their kid, you can let them know that this could have some serious consequences for their kid's relationship with the other parent.
Or perhaps someone on TL really doesn't get along with one of their parents due to alienation, and knowledge of this effect might help them gradually get over it.
I'm not trying to make any sweeping statements about marriage or divorce - but rather just deal with one issue which comes up in separations that I feel is inadequately resolved in the current system we have.
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5/5
Really interesting read.
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Solid, informative read. it is a bit of an eye opener, at least to some extent. I always knew that parents try to sway their kids towards their side in times of distress, but I never knew that people would take it to such an extent as to totally warp their child's perspective with respect to the other parent. I've had this happen to me in small doses when my parents argued, but fortunately I was old enough to see it as them being stressed and never took any of it to heart. I feel sorry for the kids that are too young to not recognize that they are being influenced to the point that they hate one of their parents.
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EPT
