Keep the lid on family conflict
With the new year, perhaps the best resolution you can make for yourself and your children is to try to eliminate as much conflict as possible with your former partner.
There is a wealth of information available on how conflict and anger affect your personal health and a large body of social science exists to establish that family conflict harms children as they try to deal with their parents’ separation/divorce. Family law judges see this played out in the cases that come before them and are very aware of the science.
In some cases, conflict is so severe that judges will restrict or eliminate one parent’s contact with the children. This is consistent with a basic principle in Canadian family law, that decisions about parenting and parental contact are to be based only on the child’s best interests.
One Nova Scotia judge said of the family before him that they were obviously locked in a war waged in the name of their child, with the real victims of the ongoing conflict and parental “one-upmanship” being the child and school officials who were doing their best to avoid being drawn into the parental drama.
Parents also sometimes unnecessarily decide to waste other public resources such as the Department of Community Services or the police by drawing them into parental disputes. Two Nova Scotia judges made pointed comments about this in 2015. One noted neither complaints to the police nor reports to Community Services led to any action on the complaints and said it might be this parent was merely attempting to “build a case” against the other. Another said involving police when there was confusion or disagreement about access should “never be encouraged” and doing so demonstrated a lack of parental judgment.
Parents should give careful consideration and in nonemergency situations get legal advice before they involve third parties. A parent who is breaching a court order or written parenting agreement by failing to return a child at the specified time is creating an important and perhaps urgent issue, but not an emergency if the child is being adequately cared for and there is no flight risk.
Parents should also be aware that our courts may consider texts, emails and social media such as Facebook postings and tweets as evidence of parental conflict or bad judgment. Remember, every email, text or social media post you send has the potential to lessen or worsen conflict and at some point may be read by a judge. It’s in your family’s best interests to think before you hit send or post.
Lawyers should encourage and assist parents to find tools to minimize conflict. Although it is impossible to list all the available resources, a good starting point is to review all the free materials at www.highconflictinstitute. com including their article on how to respond to inflammatory emails by being brief, informative, factual and, if possible, friendly.
Even when one parent persists in confrontation instead of constructive dialogue it can also be useful to obtain personal counselling to develop appropriate responses to defuse tense situations and clarify expectations and parenting approaches.
A Nova Scotia lawyer since 1986, Kay Rhodenizer grew up in Lunenburg County and recently moved to New Minas. As counsel at MDW Law, Halifax (www.mdwlaw.ca) she represents clients across Nova Scotia focusing on family law and estate dispute resolution. She can be reached at Kay@mdwlaw.ca.