A Custody Battle: Just What Your Children Don't Need
If you were to write a story from a child’s perspective about the worst divorce imaginable, you’d write about a custody battle. Children need certain things from their divorcing parents. A “Kids’ Top Four List” of divorce needs would read something like this:
- An end to their parents’ fighting
- An end to uncertainty about where and with whom they will be living
- A return to some degree of normalcy
- Security in knowing that their parents will continue to love and care for them
Custody battles put children at risk for emotional harm because they delay or prevent children from getting the very things they need most during divorce. When parents go to court over child related issues, the level of their conflict increases. That’s due in part to the “adversary system” that our courts use to resolve disputes. The theory of the adversary system is that the truth will emerge from a battle between two foes. Thus the system relies upon conflict between combatants rather than cooperation between co-parents— hardly an ideal way to resolve family issues. Custody battles also require children to suffer through evaluation procedures that frighten, humiliate and compromise them. Custody evaluations add months to divorces, which prolongs the children’s anxiety and delays any return to normalcy. Worse still is the manner in which custody battles damage or even destroy the prospects for post divorce co-parenting. Bruising, absurdly expensive custody trials typically leave parents hostile to each other for years. Even children who receive assurances of their parents’ love may question why that love isn’t strong enough to replace hostility with cooperative parenting. So perhaps the first question to ask yourself if you are considering a custody battle is this: Do you love your children enough not to fight over them? Visit www.ChildCustodyFilm.com to learn more about protecting children in high conflict divorces, and to preview the Telly Award-winning film, Talk to Strangers. Like us at www.facebook.com/ChildCustodyFilm
