TBI Blog

Recently I was involved in trying to mediate a custody and visitation issue between parties.  The comment was made during the session that “we can go there” if we have to.  Having conducted well over a 1,000 mediation sessions I knew what the parties were referring to: DIRTY LAUNDRY.  Both parties were willing to expose all their business about one another to “win” the child( the child is 11 months old).  I was able to separate the parties and talk to them individually.  I explained to the petitioner that although you filed paperwork to establish custody and visitation, does not mean the more “dirt” you put out there will guarantee you primary custody.  Parties were willing to discuss issues of “alleged abuse”  (drug, physical, and verbal)  against one another, inappropriate living conditions,etc. 

I  explained to the petitioner that unless these allegations can be proven (document of past photos of abuse, police reports taken, etc) it would be difficult to prove in court.  Now I would never tell a person they cannot address the issues in court, but having been around judicial officers for quite sometime, unless you have proof ” it didn’t happen”.  As well I told the petitioner the more information you try to gather to discredit the respondent, you best believe they are probably doing the same thing.  Now you have two people speaking about the other and their lack of ability to parent a child.  A good judicial officer could hear this and decide to remove the child from both parents based on the allegations they were making about the other (yes I have seen a judge remove the child from both parents, sad).   I informed  the petitioner what could potentially happened if they “decided to go there” and it became clear that was probably not the best thing to do, seeing how (in their words) neither could substantiate abuse.  I reminded parties  the importance (here come’s that phrase) of doing what’s in the best interest of the child.  Set aside the  anger, hostility, allegations, and anything else that interferes with parenting.  Remember it’s not the child’s fault (especially in this situation, he is only 11 months old), and keep them out of it.  Set aside your differences and put a plan together that is effective in raising a healthy child.

Until next,

Byron

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 17th, 2009 at 9:42 pm and is filed under Constitution. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.