Divorce, the Courts and a United Authority Structure for Children
By David W. McMillan, Ph.D.
In the Beginning
In most families, conception of a child is the result of a passionate expression of love, trust, respect and commitment. This loving bond between parents, hopefully, precedes the birth of the child.
If this loving, trusting, committed, respectful, bond between parents is perpetuated, children will have the foundation for healthy development of a sense of psychological well-being. The co-parenting voices of such a union are likely to create sweet harmonious music for young ears. The main thing that such strong parental affections create for a child is a united authority structure.
A single parent can raise healthy children, sometimes much better than two parents. The reason a single parent might be better than two is because two parents can undermine each other, create loyalty battles, confuse the children, invite the children into unhealthy alliances, grant artificial power to the children that they are not mature enough to manage.
A single parent may be less likely to discordantly play authority music off key.
Divorcing parents are particularly likely to undermine one another and create a discordant authority structure.
Importance of a United Authority Structure for Children
A united family authority structure is so important to our species that all human cultures have public ceremonies consecrating the initiation of families using symbols, rituals and traditions to empower the original parent bond, which will become the basis of that family’s authority structure. These ceremonies are to protect the children conceived by such a passionate commitment.
Many families come to court in need of help to resolve family conflicts. Their expected resolution is a divorce. Their bond has been broken and they can no longer work together as a family in the same home. Remaining conjoined in the same abode is probably the worst option for everyone including the children.
Through an agreed order or a judge’s decision the couple proceeds with a plan for dividing assets and sharing parenting. Whatever decision and plan that comes from the proceedings is better than what had been. They need a judge or a legal agreement to help them move forward.
Yet, often the decision and plan to move forward is flawed and the parties and the children may have many complaints about how the plan might have been better.
Some families move on from the divorce and they use a flawed court decision to creatively build a competent united authority structure. Others don’t.
After the divorce, it really doesn’t matter whether or not the judge might have made a better decision or not. The judge has given the family a new authority structure. They can build on it, adapt it, or revise it, but it is the legal reality. And it provides the children with a new authority structure held together by the judge’s legal strength.
A New Authority Center Pole
The judge is the center pole in a new blended family tent. In reunifying families, the authority structure should be built around that center pole.
When mental health professionals participate in the litigation divorce process, they often don’t contribute to a healthy divorce or to a healthy building of a blended family.
Often each litigant hires different “experts” and consults different therapists. These therapists rarely communicate with one another or the court. They are often entrenched in their beliefs that the judge is wrong and they are right.
During, and especially after a divorce, the divorcing/divorced co-parents are best served working with the reality of the legal center pole upon which their tent, their new life, is being built. That pole once came from the strength of the parents love for one another. After the divorce is filed, that pole is replaced by the legal authority of a judge and the court orders which ensues from the divorce. Dissenting mental health professionals, no matter how well intended, no matter how smart and accurate in their assessments, are not helpful.
In several cases, judges have been successful in reuniting parent and child only to have that good work undone by alienating parents and well-intended siloed professionals who support the alienating parent’s point of view and have no other frame of reference.
Mental Health Professionals Are Often a Problem
Parental Alienation cases often become nightmares because of the way the case is conceived and the way professionals are engaged.
Typically, courts allow parties to engage their own experts and professionals. Much of the time mental health professionals are forbidden from communicating with one another or the attorneys or the courts. Often, they are hired as battling experts, jousting one another in court, while the judge, working alone, sorts through the mess.
As the reader considers this often-typical process, remember how important it is for children to have a united authority structure. Consider the benefits of a parental united authority. It prevents enmeshment, often described in the oedipal complex. Consider the universal human taboos of intimacy between parent and opposite child. There are so many ways that such parent/child alliances are not healthy for a child. A united authority structure prevents loyalty battles. It helps prevent cognitive distortions and provides strong reality testing for children. It nurtures the relationship of the children equally with both parents.
In recent a case, a mother believed her child was allergic to penicillin because she, the mother, was allergic. Medical testing of the daughter demonstrated that the child was not allergic to penicillin. The court resolved the disputes over medical decision-making granting medical decision-making authority to the father.
The judge’s decision created a singular non-confusing authority structure around medical issues and this helped this blended family move on with constructing their blended family tent around the judge’s legal center pole.
Return now to considering a way to construct a therapeutic/legal parent/child reunification process. What if prior to the employment of any mental health expert in a parent/child reunification case, the attorneys agreed or the judge ordered, the appointment of one independent objective neutral, who would be in charge of collecting information, construing a parent/child reunification process and choosing any other professionals needed in the treatment of the various parts of the treatment process. This might include a drug and alcohol therapist or program, a psychiatrist, a child therapist, therapists for the parents, etc. All of whom would consult one another. There would be no treatment silos. The team facilitator would report treatment progress to the court and take direction from the judge. The judge would be the center pole in this authority structure and the parties, the attorneys and the professionals would all be working toward the same goal, which is to support the judge and the judicial process to build a new and better united authority structure for the children in this blended family.
Litigant Mistakes
Litigants often miss the point of a divorce. In addition to terminating a painful relationship, the point of the divorce for children is to create a less fractious co-parenting relationship and a stronger united authority structure, which will help children better manage their emotions and discover how to take advantage of reality as it is rather than as they wish it was.
Instead of rebuilding a better unified authority structure for their children, divorcing parents are often more focused on winning their divorce and convincing the judge to side with them.
Most judges have a standard parenting plan that awards parenting time in predictable ways. It is usually 60/40 or 50/50. What parents should want is enough time with their children to maintain a strong parenting bond with their children. An award of 40% parenting time provides enough time with their children to maintain a strong parenting bond, especially when the 40% parenting time parent has the blessing, trust and support from the other parent. The 40% parent often feels as if they have lost, but actually they are likely to have as much or more quality time with their children as the 60% parent, less logistical parenting drudgery and more free time to pursue their own adult life.
As far as the money part of the divorce, litigants can spend their children’s college tuition on attorney’s fees and spend months or years in divorce purgatory or they can settle for something a bit less than they might get in court and start building a new life and a stronger united authority structure for the children with less acrimony and tension between co-parents.