COMMENT Family court’s ‘conniving’ parents
Disorganized, rude litigants routine for judge
It's not just warring spouses who wear it in family court. It is, as one lawyer says, “unforgiving for all involved.”
Pity the poor judge who has to listen to this oft-vicious drivel, often at the hands of people who have run out of dough and are representing themselves without a clue about the law but plenty thirsty for blood.
Consider Ontario Superior Court Judge Joseph Quinn's judgment in a particularly grim custody dispute before him in the fall of 2014 (and thanks to the lawyer who sent it to me). Over the years, Quinn has earned a reputation as a writer of entertaining decisions, and this one is no exception.
He began, in the style of the Academy Awards: “For best courtroom adaptation of a work of fiction, the award goes to the applicant (here he named the mother, C, but I won't, out of deference to the little girl at the centre of it all), who shamelessly feigned what she thought was necessary to convince the court to circumscribe access by the respondent to their almost sixyear-old daughter.”
Even in family court, Quinn said, one could sit for years and “not encounter such a callously conniving and mendaciously manipulative litigant.”
In the middle of the sixday trial, correctly sensing things weren't going her way, C convinced the board of directors of the housing co-op where she lived to write letters banning the father, one D, from the premises. The letters threatened that the local cops, the Niagara Regional Police, would be notified if he showed up.
That, of course, put the kibosh on D's access to the little girl: He thought he'd be arrested if he set foot on the property.
Quinn went to great efforts to find the truth: On his own, he summoned the treasurer and housing manager of C.'s co-op to court, and as it turned out, they'd been duped by C — they had relied on her word.
A lawyer for the board rescinded the letters that same day; the judge later learned that at the end of that hearing, the treasurer and manager “in a clearly classy gesture, crossed the courtroom floor and shook the hand of (D).”
C was then 46, had two university degrees and worked, a little, as an occupational therapist and psychotherapist; D was then 55, a hard-working and constantly employed realtor. They met online in 2008, and “she became pregnant during their first meeting offline.” They never lived together or married.
D was her opposite — kind, gentle, soft-spoken, an altogether “impressive witness” the judge said. “He eloquently described how the years since the birth of his daughter have been the ‘best and worst of my life.'
“When he was served with the application (C was seeking custody, child support and costs), the cruel and unfounded allegations made him weep. Yet he did not respond with vitriol, testifying ‘I am not here to trash her.' ”
He just wanted joint custody of his little girl, or failing that, overnight access — and as Quinn suspected, if C had ever once been conciliatory, “he would have been grateful to settle for generous and overnight access."
C would have none of that: She accused him of not being capable of forming a bond with his daughter; she said she suspected he had personality disorders; ultimately, testifying in court, she played the mother's big card — why, she said, she was afraid of D, and helpfully told the judge “that she was displaying the typical symptoms of a woman who had suffered psychological abuse.”
Fortunately, there are no flies on Quinn. As he noted drily, “At the conclusion of the case, I was easily satisfied otherwise.”
In the end, Quinn ruled entirely for the father; his only criticism was that he had to be better with finances: He'd had a business fail, owed Revenue Canada, and his financial disclosure was woeful. But the judge noted he'd kept working and paying child support throughout while C hadn't even tried to get a job, though the little girl was in all-day kindergarten.
Quinn awarded them joint custody, and ordered C to provide D with “a list of all places or persons to whom she applied for employment” every six months until she found full-time work. D had to pay child support of $682 a month.
A couple of general points about the searing nature of family court.
Quinn confessed that when C showed up to testify with a plastic tote bag of about 25 files, his heart filled with hope.
“I am accustomed to seeing litigants with their case in a plastic bag,” he said, “and so I viewed this as encouraging … and excitedly felt that I was about to be the beneficiary of a rarity in family court: comprehensive and organized testimony.”
His hopes were dashed by the “argumentative, flippant, acerbic and sarcastic” woman before him.
He also noted, “frankly, when a family court case reaches trial, there is almost always at least one litigant who is immune to advice or direction.”
He had no troubling determining which one.