Family Court is a business and political operation. It is not governmental. It is not altruistic. It is not concerned with the administration of justice. Not even slightly.
Not understanding this will lead to disastrous results.
The governor, state legislators, family court administrators, judges, and vendors – attorneys, GALs, therapists, custody evaluators, parental visitation supervisors, social workers, social service bureaucracies, not-for-profit, and advocacy groups – derive their living or preserve their positions and funding through family conflict.
To earn more income, vendors can exacerbate problems. To make less, they can solve problems quickly.
Judges depend on legislators and the governor for appointments and reappointment. Likewise, the governor and legislators depend on financial and political support from the robust legal, mental health, and child advocacy world.
Family Courts operate primarily to support the financial and political self-interests of those who support and are supported by Family Court.
It can be considered primarily a local, county-based business with some state-wide political interests.
The business that is Family Court will be in conflict with what is best for its commodity — children and parents – since common sense solutions do not require the intervention of vendors and the adversarial system.
Take the word “family” out of Family Court and substitute the word “commodity” and the word “Inc.” at the end, and you will begin to understand it.
Commodity Court Inc.
The adversarial system benefits vendors but is in contravention to everything that must form the genesis of a family, and the salvation of a family, now in strife in its division.
An effort to return the members of a family to peace, and friendly in division is inimical to the proficuous needs of the vendors.
They live with this conflict always.
Because the people are not involved in the decision-making for the resolution, because there is no jury, judges have unlimited discretion. Because judges are of the professional governing class and were often vendors [attorneys and GALs] in the Family Court Inc. racket before a governor nominated them and a legislature approved it, their position in the business is like a well-paid upper-level management position.
Without the jury, which could be likened to a regulatory body, and the only checks and balances to monitor the professional adversarial and profiteering class, the Family Court business has removed any unpredictability as to results. Everyone in the decision-making process is paid, and conflict produces better than harmony.
In a good business, the needs of the “management” supersede the needs of the commodity – the family.
To expect a grocer to put the needs of a tomato above his own is preposterous. To expect a family lawyer to put the needs of his client above his own is naive.
Once you learn that, you will understand family court. If one crate of tomatoes goes bad, there is another crate. The family in the family court is not the customer. The vendors are the customers.
The attorneys [not the parents] are the customers of the guardian ad litem. The GAL is the customer of the custody evaluator, and the therapists are the customers of all three. And the customer is always right.
Parents, or rather their assets, are the commodities. Children are the tools to leverage those assets from the family to family court vendors.
Tomatoes are to be divided based on the needs of the various customers, the lawyers, the GAL, the custody evaluator, and the therapist. All eat. Their mouths are red with tomatoes.
Remember it.
A Critical Assessment of Child Custody Evaluations; Limited Science and a Flawed System by Robert E. Emery, Randy K. Otto, and William T. O’Donohue’s supports the theory developed at the Frank Report.
“Sadly, we find that:
(a) tests specifically developed to assess questions relevant to custody are completely inadequate on scientific grounds;
(b) the claims of some anointed experts about their favorite constructs (e.g., ‘‘parent alienation syndrome’’) are equally hollow when subjected to scientific scrutiny;
(c) evaluators should question the use even of well-established psychological measures (e.g., measures of intelligence, personality, psychopathology, and academic achievement) because of their often limited relevance to the questions before the court; and
(d) little empirical data exist regarding other important and controversial issues (e.g., whether evaluators should solicit children’s wishes about custody; whether infants and toddlers are harmed or helped by overnight visits), suggesting a need for further scientific investigation.
We see the system for resolving custody disputes as deeply flawed, for reasons that go beyond the problem of limited science.
The coupling of the vague ‘‘best interests of the child’’ test with the American adversary system of justice puts judges in the position of trying to perform an impossible task, and it exacerbates parental conflict and problems in parenting and coparenting, which psychological science clearly shows to be key factors predicting children’s psychological difficulties in response to their parents’ separation and divorce.”
