It is universal

I relate the stories that come through my office, the cases I've litigated, the successes and tragedies my clients have lived through.  Those stories are universal, they are experienced by everyone on some level, at some time. But the family law stories are not confined to my practice...

Yesterday I was at the gym, a place I visit far too infrequently, when I overheard a conversation between two gentlemen of moderate age.  Before you think I was eavesdropping, guys in a gym don't tend to share secrets as they pump iron, rather what they discuss they broadcast in semi-boisterous tones without regard, or sometimes with regard, for whether the nearby weight-lifters can listen in on the conversations.  It doesn't matter whether it is politics, sex (a frequent subject) or, pertinent to my story tonight, family.

What really captured my attention was that they were talking about their sons.  Having three myself, the subject is near and dear to my heart. Their sons were now grown.  The men had both been divorced when their sons were young.  The men related how they had gone through great difficulty with their sons, but with the passing of time, things were made right.

The first man was talking, "my wife and I split up when my boy was seven.  My wife was in a bad way at the time.  I got custody. Things were rocky, hard to manage, we got by I think mostly because I ran such a tight ship, tried to make it like clockwork. I think that kept me from going crazy in those days."

After awhile, my ex pretty much got her life back together.  She finally stayed in one place for longer than six months and found a job.  My boy and I were arguing more, he didn't like my rules, like, 'do your homework,' 'clean your room,' 'be back home by 9:00' kind of stuff.  So, when he was old enough, he decided to move to his mom's.  Broke my heart.  I mean, I shouldn't have minded so much since I'd had him for seven years but it broke my heart.  And he decided right after a big argument about whether he could stay out all night with a bunch of friends, including his little girl friend.  I said no.  His mom said she didn't see a problem with it and there you go, next thing you know, my boy's living with his mom. 

"We went through a few months where I couldn't look at him, it pissed me off so much.  Then it got better, he started coming over every now and then.  I kept up with him to see how he was doing in school.  Of course his grades were tanking, but then he was in ninth grade.  Anyway, two years pass, its the summer before he's a junior and he calls me up, asks me if we could have dinner together.  At dinner he says, 'I need to be a success, and I'm just not going to be a success at mom's house.  It's too disorganized.'  You could have floored me.  I felt like I was grinning all over my face.  He moved back in about two weeks before school started.  His mom thought that was probably best, too."

Then the other man shared, "my son's momma would fuss and cuss every time it was my weekend.  She'd come up with some excuse to keep him from me like, 'he's gotta study today' or 'he's gotta mow the lawn' or some such #&*%!."  (Talk runs like that at the gym.) "Got to where I couldn't break through, I couldn't keep her back long enough to see him when I was supposed to.

"Then he became a teenager and it got even worse.  He got all angry, sullen, accusing me of ditching his momma when it was she that filed for divorce.  Got to where he wouldn't even talk to me anymore, said he was too busy.  I never really lost track of him, I just barely saw him.  It became usual to where a few months would pass when I wouldn't see him.  That became the way it was.  So he drifted away from me.

"But now he's 22, a young man.  He's got a good girlfriend.  He's finished school.  And he wants to hang out with me.  Can you beat that?  He wants to hang out with me.  He was over the other day, I had my dad there too, and my son says to my dad, Grandpa, you raised a pretty good son.  I got so choked up I gave him another beer."

Time passes, wounds heal, wisdom grows.  At least it can.

Families are a fundamental reality, they are universal and their stories, our stories, are universal.  Good or bad they are a treasure for they are the stuff from which our riches are made.  There's a blog that's getting underway, The Twisted Family at  http://www.thetwistedfamily.com/2011_01_01_archive.html  It is about blended, no twisted, families, our families.  Real people.  Real stories.  Our stories.  Check it out.

Full disclosure: my wife writes it.  Look out, she might write about our family from time to time. Enjoy.

Michael Manely
http://www.allfamilylaw.com/CM/Custom/Attorneys.asp

"What do you think I owe you?"

When a marriage ends at one party's request, it is often hard to perceive how the party who wants to leave has any claim to the future work of the party who gets left. 

Tonight's topic: alimony.

And alimony in that particular situation, where the party seeking alimony is the one who has left yet still wants to continue a relationship with her ex spouse.  She wants that kind of relationship where she has no responsibilities but he will continue to support her.  It seems the height of cynicism. 

"I don't want to live with you anymore.  I don't want to share meals with you anymore.  I don't want to have Christmas with you anymore.  Oh, but I still want you to take care of me." 

I don't think that position works.  I don't think you can sell that position.  I think there is no market for that position.

If you want out, fine.  But don't expect others to keep picking up your tab.  It doesn't tend to work that way.

Put yourself in the juror's shoes, a relatively randomly chosen group of 12 regular folks, folks you might pass  in the grocery store.  Not your grocery store, but some other grocery store somewhere in your county.  You're going to tell those jurors, those strangers, that you just want the allowance without the chores.  You want the cake, you just don't want to have to bake it.  You want the reward without the work.  I can't think of a more spoiled meme. 

And the jury never buys it.

Sure, you can think of circumstances where this scenario would work: spousal abuse, habitual adultery (on the non-leaving party's part), incurable alcohol addiction.  But that doesn't happen often.  That is not the norm.  There's a reason why that's called the exception.  And it is the exception that proves the rule.  The rest of the time, the leaving party just wants out, wants to move on, wants to see other people, wants to have her own life. 

She's more than entitled to have her own life.  She just has to fund it.

But the jury will tell her that.  Lord knows her attorney won't.  There's too much money to be made until the verdict.

Michael Manely

Child Appropriate Killing

The other night, I was asking my 21 year old about whether he would recommend "Iron Man" for family viewing.  Our family includes our seven year old.  "Sure," he replied, "I mean, its got some violence but only child appropriate killing."

That phrase immediately struck me.  What does that mean?  It means what it says, "Child Appropriate Killing." 

We didn't rent that movie. 

A few days later, our seven year old was watching a movie we purchased for him some months before.  He'd seen it several times.  I stopped to watch a few minutes as I passed through the den.  It was "Spy Next Door" with Jackie Chan.  In the scenes I saw, some bad guy had Chan and some children tied up.  He was pointing a gun at Chan's head threatening to kill them all.  Chan got loose and beat up the bad guys.  Just a few scenes later, another bad guy had a gun pointed a Chan's head telling him that the bad guy will do Chan a favor;  the bad guy will kill Chan first so that Chan doesn't have to watch the bad guy killing the kids.

This is supposed to be a kids' movie.  It was marketed as a kids' movie.  And our kids are supposed to process bad guys killing them?  Is that child appropriate killing?

Some folks will certainly argue that I'm getting all worked up over some harmless violence.  (Now there's an oxymoron if every I heard one.)  That a little dramatic killing or threats of killing doesn't harm anyone. 

There's enough bad stuff in real life that I have no idea why we want to fantasize about more bad stuff.  Is this thanatos at work?  Is this our collective death wish?  Certainly, all our exposure to fantasy violence over the years has not made the crime rate get any better.  Maybe we ought to explore our seemingly constant flirtation with the dark side and give it a long rest, starting with the children.

I'm not asserting "the innocence of child hood."  I'm not saying that the children have to be protected from bad things.  As parents, we do our level best to protect our children from bad things happening to them.  But I am not an advocate of sugar coating the world for the kiddies.  The Gulf Oil Spill?  Bad.  War? Bad.  Murder? Bad.  Not nonexistent, but existent and bad.  And kids have a need and a right to know about that.

I'm not even an advocate of sparing the children of the news of divorce and the particulars as it relates to them.  Many children grow up under far worse conditions.  And the divorce should actually make life better, no more fighting, or just about as brutal,  deathly silence in the home. 

I'm a straight out advocate for sharing reality.

But this fantasy we have, this license we allow to expose ourselves and our children to to mock violence borders on the pornographic.  Our culture is saturated in fantasy violence and plenty to go around for the children, safely rated in the PG variety.  For me, I cannot fathom anything that would constitute child appropriate killing.

Now, enough of tonight's rant.  Me and the family have to get back to watching "Avatar."

Michael Manely