Today is the one year anniversary of this blog. I have to say, when I started, I wasn't sure I would stay with it this long, but I've found blogging to be a terrific hobby.
Lots of blogs come and go, and I appreciate all the people who have read this one and continue to do so. I welcome any and all commenters, regardless of viewpoint, and enjoy a good debate when it presents itself. Please tell your friends and let's have even more conversations!
Recently, as many of you may have noticed, my postings have been sparser and shorter. This is because real life events have crowded out even my most cherished activities, including blogging. My father isn't in the best of health these days and I've had to deal with that. I've had to return to the world of work to supplement our household income, largely because of health care-related expenses.
Most recently, I've been locked in a legal battle with my ex-husband over my daughter. It has turned into a shockingly nightmarish situation; the sort no parent wants to find herself in.
I have always prided myself on the decisions I made on behalf of my daughter, particularly after the divorce. I tried to do all the things the court system, psychiatrists, therapists, child experts and others would tell you to do for your children after divorce. We even went so far as to move into the same subdivision as my ex-husband so that my daughter would have greater access to her father.
Unfortunately, for all my plans and work, life hasn't turned out the way I expected with regards to my daughter. Divorce is an ugly thing, and the worst part of it is what it does to children. Perhaps this is why I criticize divorce in our legal system and culture so much when I write. I've come to realize that no matter how much you try, children get broken during the divorce process and if your ex is determined to undermine you, he/she will.
I thought about all this yesterday while reading about the judge who castigated two parents for using the court system to attack each other.
A New York Family Court judge has issued an unusually blunt rebuke to two parents -- one a former doctor and the other a lawyer -- engaged in a "vitriolic and venomous" dispute over child custody and visitation.
"The parties fit the profile of that breed of litigant that the family court tends to encounter all too often; the career or habitual litigant," wrote Judge Conrad D. Singer of Nassau County. "The moving documents in this current proceeding alone dispense such vitriolic and venomous allegations as to make it clear that the parties, the parents, while each claiming to be the true protector of the children's best interests, simply appear to be using the Court as a vehicle to attack and demean one another."
Practitioners and observers say that Family Court proceedings often engender great emotion and sometimes no-holds-barred combat. Children are frequently caught in the middle.
"The adversary system doesn't fit well with the needs of children," said Andrew Schepard, who heads Hofstra Law School's child and family advocacy fellowship program and writes a column for the Law Journal. "Judges will ask each parent what role they see for the other parent in the kids' lives and often decide for the parent who is able to recognize that they can't shut the other person out."
For a legal practitioner, such cases can be extremely delicate to litigate, said Schepard.
"Lawyers are under pressure by their clients to say what their clients want them to say, when a lot of times they want to say, 'You are hurting your children, if you want me to take this position in court, I will, but the best thing to do would be to go to therapy or a parent education class,'" he said.
Sadly, I've come to believe that attacking one's ex early and often is the best course of action after divorce. I personally tried raising my daughter the way the system will tell you is best, but all it has brought is heartache and misery.
I've often told my lawyer friends that I'd like to offer a course for divorcing parents called "Don't Let This Happen to You." It would tell parents not to listen to the judge or any professionals about how to ease the pain of divorce for the children. Instead, custodial parents should do whatever they can to prevent the children from establishing great attachments to the other parent. Employ all means necessary: move to the other side of the country; don't allow calls but once a month; berate and downgrade the noncustodial parent, and so on.
Perhaps that is simply my bitterness talking. I know that, regardless of current events, I (and my husband) have always done the best we could for my daughter and this could just be one of those awkward phases teenagers go through. But regardless of the normalcy of some of what I am currently facing, it still makes it hard to accept.
Hopefully, after today, life will return to something closer resembling that normality and I can get back to skewering the stupidity and hypocrisy of liberals, both in life and politics. Again, thank you to everyone who reads my rantings. :)
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