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Divorce ruins children. Failing to marry your partner ruins children. Family Court often makes a bad situation worse.
I have practiced law in the family court in Massachusetts since 1993. Other than state child protective services agencies (DCF, CPS, DYS, etc.) and the IRS, no government entity causes more problems to families than family court. Whether intentional or not, their chief function appears to be to keep children from fit fathers, and to vacuum as much wealth out of the family as possible and give it to lawyers, guardians, mothers and to the system itself.
No cynicism here, eh?
The court can't take all the blame. How about all of us who had children without getting married? How about all those of us who can't get along and go to court to ask it to divide up our families somehow? The court is left to pick up the pieces of all those messed up relationships, and it cannot reasonably do it. However, if the court is going to take responsibility for that duty, it should do it right. For a little levity on the subject, look at the great Delbert McClinton singing, "You're the Reason Our Kids Are Ugly".
It Couldn't Get Much Worse.
The system is structurally rotten, and needs to be changed from the ground up - its rules, its practices, its hours, its methods, its judges, its clerks, and especially its biases. I'll give you some examples from the Massachusetts version, which is, with certainty, just like your family court wherever you may be.
Nothing about family court makes much sense. In Massachusetts, there are 7 different sets of procedural rules used by the Court, rather than one unified family code, and who can keep all that straight?
There are almost no objective criteria for deciding issues of custody, alimony, parenting time, property division, and other ultra-critical matters. It is all just left to the whim and discretion of a judge or a court employee. Incredible, child-destroying decisions are put into the hands of people like our former Judge Beverly Boorstein, who was caught shopping when she was supposed to be judging.
The system is so old and creaking, it cannot even function. In Middlesex County in Massachusetts, files are kept in some belfry somewhere, and they have to literally walkie-talkie up to some unseen guy (probably named Igor) in the tower to fetch them, and they are fed down a chute and land on a desk. Half the time they are missing. I now have to bring duplicates of everything at hearings, because the files are more often not there.
A Nineteenth Century System for a Twentieth Century World.
The system is set up for the 19th century. They summon hundreds of people to show up at the same time, knowing they don't have the personnel to process them, and just make everyone waste all day, as though there is no cost to people for missing work. The truth is, the court wastes millions of dollars a week of the productive time of its victims.
The worst problem is that children are harmed the most. Hearings have to wait until the assigned judge gets back from vacation, and no one gives a darn if a kid can't see her daddy for a month or two. Changing a hearing date is like getting an appointment with the U.N. Secretary General.
The court acts as though it is a contest, rather than a means to ensure that children see both parents. When the court does make a decision, it is usually to perform a "father-ectomy" on a perfectly fit father, and reduce the child's opportunity to have a lifetime of love and care of his or her father. Plus, the court will usually tack on a massive carrying charge to the man, to pay the woman for deciding to end the marriage.
I couldn't finish writing today if I had to list all the substantial problems with family court. It needs a serious re-boot. It needs to start all over from the ground up and act like it is actually dealing with issues which harm kids, and stop being a third rate hackarama, in thrall to the radical elements of the feminist movement.
Until family courts are run with efficiency, and with the child's needs in mind, there will be no justice. The overarching principle must be: Children Need Both Parents. That leads to the corollary that both parents must provide for their children, not just the father. May that day arrive with haste, before any more families and children are ruined by so-called "family" courts.
Decades of lawyers and government chasing money has created a system where everything that is done is about money for them. What is best for children and families is not even considered as lawyers and judges go on about their standard procedures which ruin lives, bankrupt families and literally create the majority of 20 different social pathologies that represent most of society's problems today. Crime, drugs, teen pregnancy, gang violence, rape, school drop out rates - The majority of ALL of these can be traced directly to fatherless homes CAUSED by family court judges. Judges are the cause, not the solution. These problems all go up between 660% and 2,400% when a judge evicts dad from the life of their children! Why? Because states get $1 kickback for every $3 in child support they order! This set policies, training and incentives for all judges. This is an EVIL SYSTEM! Our family court judges will go down in history as the most prolific child abusers in history because it is scientifically provable that they are.
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