ILLINOIS DIVORCE LAW BLOG

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byline: Dr. Jeff Gardere:


Divorce can be one of the most stressful events in life, second only to a spouse dying. In fact, a divorce can become such a complicated and nasty affair that many people have joked that a spouse dying is a less stressful event because at least you don’t have to fight the deceased in court!

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The point to be made here is that during this time of stress and duress we are no longer thinking with our brains, but instead with our hearts. Normally a pure heart will win the day, but a heart which is ruled by the pain, sadness and anger of a divorce will exhibit pure emotion — often in an illogical and dangerous fashion.

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Sydney Morehouse, 13, of Omaha cries in Lincoln, Neb., Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2013, as she tells the Associated Press how hard it is to only get to see her father every other weekend and Wednesday nights following her parent’s divorce.

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Omaha resident Gary Owens pounded the table and raised his voice Wednesday as he testified before Nebraska lawmakers, demanding they pass two bills that could allow him to spend more time with his son.

A coalition of fathers, doctors and family-law attorneys is asking lawmakers to change a Nebraska parental custody law that they view as unfair to men.

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Post holiday stresses can lead to divorces being initiated in the New Year. Unfortunately, for many couples that means planning separate lives. Lawyers even refer to the first working day in January as “Divorce Day” because so many people begin legal proceedings to end their marriages at this time, but ministers are urging couples to seek an alternative to “traumatic”, drawn-out and costly courtroom battles.

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They want bickering husbands and wives to consider using third-party mediators. Opting for the mediation route takes a quarter of the time that going through the divorce courts does and can be eight times cheaper, according to the Ministry of Justice.

“All too often money is wasted on expensive and traumatic court hearings that can take far too long to resolve,” said Lord McNally, the family justice minister. “And that is why we want to help people to use mediation, a quicker and simpler approach which brings better outcomes.”

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Childrensrightscouncil Illinois In fact, according to university researcher Dr. Emily Douglas, in “Mending Broken Families: social policies for divorced families”, the overwhelming majority of divorcing fathers have wanted at least equal parenting time with their children, or sole custody — and this has been consistent since the first surveys were undertaken in the early 1960s. Additionally, research by esteemed clinical psychologists like Dr. Joan B Kelly and others have substantiated that the persistence of Every Other Weekend “de-parenting” or “a-parent-dectomies” , applied almost entirely only to fathers, has resulted in children becoming emotionally detached, as ‘their fathers were turned into uncles’. In fact, it was partially due to the research of people like Dr. Kelly, that a direct link was established between the 30% detachment rate between divorced dads and their children, and the Every Other Weekend ‘visitation’ schedules.

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Parental Alienation – A Corrosive Legacy By Judge Michele Lowrance

I have been a judge on the divorce bench for 16 years, and have watched the wreckage of the corrosive legacy of parental alienation and visitation interference play out over decades. We have no statistics for measuring this group, because the victims are too vast. But the concentric circles include the children, their children and the extended family as well. The declaration of war by one parent on another creates radioactive fallout, which contaminates for generations.

The alienating parent treats the target parent like a disease in the child that must be removed. They make the child’s survival contingent upon such removal. So the child must extricate the parent without the privilege of grieving the loss. These are crippling circumstances.

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Henry Gornbein, a family lawyer in Michigan, wrote a recent article about the trauma of divorce for the Huffington Post. Gornbein discusses appropriately the ramifications of the threat of divorce and the actual divorce process. In reflecting on his article, I am brought back to the idea that divorce is appropriate and necessary in many cases, though all efforts should be made to save marriages that have a proper basis for being preserved. In the event that the marriage has broken down, the parties are no longer compatible, or there is mental illness affecting the health and safety of the spouse and children, or domestic violence, divorce can be a healthy intervention. The key to a healthy divorce in many cases is the Cooperative Divorce or a divorce that avoids the high conflict of ‘out of control divorce,’ and focuses on the emotional and financial wellbeing of the parties and the children.

“A divorce can be many things. It is a legal proceeding to end a marriage. Divorce laws differ from state to state regarding the requirements and reasons or grounds for a divorce. The mechanisms and procedures for obtaining a divorce differ from state to state as well. In every state there is a legal requirement that a divorce proceeding be filed to end the legal marriage between a couple.

A divorce is a weapon. It can be a legal weapon. It can also be a verbal weapon which too frequently is used by an unhappy spouse who will hurl a threat: “If you do not do this, I will divorce you.” This often is a means of control. It is also dirty fighting. Sometimes this threat of a divorce is a means of keeping someone in a marriage. To me, it is a statement that the marriage is in trouble and could perhaps end in a divorce unless the parties go into counseling.

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According to Alan Kemp in his book Abuse in the Family, domestic violence is defined as “A form of maltreatment perpetrated by a person with whom the victim has or had a close personal relationship.”

Says Joan T. Kloth-Zanard, RSS, LC: “This book is just one of many textbooks used to teach students and professionals about psychological maltreatment and the categories that make it up. Whether one believes in the term parental alienation or not, the following criteria helps to show that certain behavior perpetrated by a parent can cause a child to withdraw their love from the other parent. For the sake of this article, we will term this abuse as aggressive parenting.

Nine Signs of Aggressive Parenting:

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Fathers in many countries suffer the loss of their parenting rights with their children. In Illinois, we have laws and procedures that allow an aggressive lawyer to achieve full parenting rights for Fathers. No matter where a Father may be fighting for his parenting rights with his child or children, having experienced and aggressive representation is important. No Father should have to suffer what Vincent, whose story is told below, suffered with the complete loss of contact with his child.

The Hell of Japan’s Divorce Laws

10/11/2012 By Vincent Poirier

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Every so often a study or article comes along that reaffirms what my practice has known to be true for many years: there are increasing numbers of primary custodial fathers in society. I was fortunate being selected as one of the original directors of Responsible Single Fathers, a national group founded by Vince Regan to inform, educate, and be of support to single and custodial Dads. Through my divorce and custody practice, deserving Father/Clients have been awarded primary custody of their children, and in cases where is it appropriate, I fight for shared parenting orders so that my Dad clients enjoy the same rights, responsibilities and parenting time as the Moms do. Unlike some other states, Illinois has not adopted presumptive Shared Parenting, so the crux of some of my work is in achieving for my clients (both Dads and Moms) a positive custody result that the Illinois statutes don’t award.

The Single Dad is Rising Fast: by the National Post

“While eight in 10 lone-family households are headed up by women, the growth in single-households led by males was more than twice as strong between 2006 and 2011. “Men are taking on a much more intense role in child-rearing across all families, so it makes perfect sense that we’re going to see an increase in fathers as head of single-parent households” as married couples divorce or common-law couples split, said Ms. Spinks. “I think we still see that group as an anomaly,” said Janice Keefe, professor of family studies and gerontology at Mount St. Vincent University. “It’s not a huge proportion, but it’s moving up to 3.5% [of all census families].” Women, by comparison, account for 13% overall.”

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