This court-appointed “expert” – we’ll call her Christina – seemed startled and a bit put off when the mother, after offering her a cold drink, asked about her credentials. In between puffs on her cigarette she rattled off her “relevant” degrees in art history and English literature.
Noticing that Christina wasn’t wearing a wedding band, the mother asked her if she was married. No, Christina responded, she was not. The mother soon realized that this court-appointed “expert” who was to report to the judge regarding the placement of the children was a never-married, chain-smoking woman in her late 30’s with no siblings – the only child of German parents who came to America after World War II.
The young mother – the child of Holocaust survivors who had lost their entire immediate families plus most of their extended ones – needed all her self-control to keep her face expressionless as she looked at the woman in front of her and silently wondered if relatives of this daughter of the Reich had murdered hers.
Meanwhile, the court-appointed “expert” giggled as she proudly recounted how her parents would leave her behind in America each summer while they gallivanted through Europe. “I was so independent,” she brayed as she sucked on her cigarettes, using the butt of one to light up the next.
Before leaving, the “expert” shared how she had once had a Jewish boyfriend, and why even though they broke up she would grab a Jewish man in a minute – “Everyone knows they make great husbands and fathers, always paying attention to their kids and wanting to be with them.”
It was therefore no surprise, though disconcerting just the same, to the mother when Miss Court-Appointed Expert wrote in her report that the kids’ father should get primary custody. The mother made a frantic call to her lawyer, who assured her the judges never followed the recommendations of the “expert” – and that none of them took her seriously. The mother felt so much better as she wrote out a check mandated by the court to pay its “expert” for her time.
As for the custody battle, the lawyers – both hers and her ex-husband’s – managed to stretch out over several years a court case that should have been easily resolved in a couple of weeks. The legal fees amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars – a nice haul that contributed to the lavish lifestyles of these officers of the court, who routinely took overseas vacations and put their offspring through exclusive colleges. Years later, the children of the now-struggling mother had to take out student loans to pay for their educations.
The financial toll alone should give serious pause to couples unwilling or unable to pursue a “civil” divorce and resolve their issues on their own. After all, it costs hardly anything when a couple resolve their issues themselves.
I am well aware that if both spouses had the ability to compromise, capitulate and cooperate in order to emerge with an acceptable division of what is mutually theirs, they most likely wouldn’t be divorcing in the first place. If they were incapable of maintaining a “give and take” relationship while they were married, they obviously aren’t going to take on those abilities now that the marriage is coming to an end.
But all concerned should know that in an ironic kind of way a “good” divorce is as crucial for a family’s future well-being as a good marriage – maybe more so. And a good divorce means both spouses giving up, giving in and, most important, keeping third parties out of it – lawyers in particular, since it’s their job to do what’s best for their client, not what’s best for the family.