Very few who have spent any amount of time in Family Court would debate the idea that it is a place of tremendous suffering. There is scarcely any type of case that is handled there that does not have as its genesis some form of profound suffering. Child abuse and neglect, termination of parental rights, juvenile delinquency, custody and visitation, orders of protection and even child support cases rightly invoke the images of a family that has been fractured and that the familiar places to which we instinctively retreat for safety, our homes, have been torn asunder. In this void, suffering steps in and can overwhelm us. It lays bare deep personal and emotional wounds that, unfortunately, may never heal.
David Brooks, a columnist for the New York Times, has crafted a beautiful essay that explores the purpose and result of suffering. The article can be found here. Mr. Brooks poses the question we have all considered at times in our lives which is: what is the point of my suffering.
Sadly, much of the suffering endured in the Family Court is self-inflicted. Parents who have come to despise one another inflict lifelong wounds on their children by continuing a battle for custody. Indeed, in just about every case pending in Family Court, it is the children who simultaneously suffer the most and have the least ability to address the causes. And so their suffering is without purpose, without end and without justification. And the repercussions of this suffering are far too wide ranging to address here. Suffice to say, litigants in Family Court will not, as Mr. Brooks suggests, find the suffering they and their families endure there to be ennobling in any way. And this is why it is often safest and in the best interests of their families to put an end to it with all due haste.
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