The Kids are Alright

I have a friend who while raising her children on her own, used to look longingly at families with both a mom and a dad, thinking that the children in these “intact families” were doing better than her own. Along the way she woke up and realized lots of children in lots of kinds of families, had issues, and that her own children were managing just fine with her love and support.

I mention this to introduce an article I saw today by Michele Weldon about single mothers, an article that bucks some of the bad raps they tend to get. I post the article to encourage those parents out there doing it on their own. Don’t have time to comment, but there is much food for thought here.

It is Mother’s Day, and let us celebrate single-mother households — not as half empty, but as half full of strong women. It is a good time to encourage children raised by women to see themselves as resilient, not doomed. And it is time, today and every day, for our culture to stop assigning blame and start offering help.

The 19.7 million children in this country with delinquent or absent fathers are not all headed for lives of crime, drugs, poverty and prison. To begin: Single moms have given us Olympian Michael Phelps, comedian Bill Cosby, Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.

I can name many more, from my own life, and I’ll bet you can from yours. My sons’ good friend, Ellis Coleman, for example — the 20-year-old superstar also headed for the London Olympics for the U.S., the wrestler recognized worldwide as the originator of the “flying squirrel” takedown. The proud son of a single mom.

Freedom from Fear

Some of the people I have represented over the years are an incredible source of strength and inspiration. It’s a privilege to be a part of a process wherein the first time a woman walks into your office she can barely lift her head and look you in the eye she has been so cowered by her mate, and a few years later you watch in admiration as you see how she has overcome her fears and pulled her life together.

Recently a client with whom I worked for a number of years sent me an article she wrote about the legal process and overcoming fears of her highly abusive ex-husband. With her permission I am posting it here, and of course, all of the names have been changed.

The Only Thing We Have To Fear Is Fear Itself

By Leah Lyon

“I’m sorry, Sharon, but I just don’t know if I can keep going on with this,” I sobbed. My temples were throbbing, and I felt slightly sick. Sharon didn’t answer, but looked towards me silently and I could see the compassion in her eyes. She waited patiently, her fingers resting on the keyboard. She knew that I would continue when I was ready.

I had spent the last two or three years trying to get away from the painful memories of a long and abusive marriage. I was doing therapy, and everyone around me told me that “I was doing so well.” Gradually, solidly, moving one step at a time, I was beginning to redefine myself. At my own pace, I was starting to create my own identity away from being an Abused Wife. With great Siyatta DiShmaya*, I had built up a career, was successfully supporting my children, and had found some wonderfully supportive friends.

(*Help from Heaven)

But I knew that the pain was still there. I have often referred to it as the “war wound.” It’s that huge scar that sits silently inside your heart, weighing you down. It usually won’t bother you when you are doing the shopping, picking up your kids from school, or while you are immersed in your work at the office. But like any old war wound, there are times when it gives you pain, when it reopens and bleeds all over again. It happens when you are finding it hard to sleep, when you hear a certain piece of music, or you overhear a conversation between two other people that reminds you of when he …

Only in Israel

Today as I was scanning some recent court decisions, I came across a decision by Judge Sari Jayyoussi of the Nazareth Family Court that made me look twice. When I started reading it, I just had to chuckle, it was such an “only in Israel” moment.

The plaintiff asked the court to formally recognize – and register – his daughter, as such. Strange request. Not if you consider that the man  is Israeli, and his wife a Syrian citizen whom he married in Jordan. The mother and daughter are currently in Jordan.

The father petitioned to perform genetic testing in accordance with the Law of Genetic Information, 5761- 2000, in order to register his daughter with government agencies, and ultimately it seems from the case, apply for her to receive Israeli citizenship.

The catch? The mother can’t come to Israel with the daughter to perform the genetic testing because of her Syrian citizenship. (We don’t have diplomatic relations with them; a bit of an understatement).

The State’s representative in the proceedings (the State is always a respondent petitions to do in genetic testing of minors) agreed to the petition on the condition that the saliva sample be taken from the mother and daughter at the Israeli diplomatic mission in Jordan. (We still have diplomatic relations with them.) The State also wanted that genetic testing to be done for the mother, in addition to the father and daughter.

The father asked that the mother not be tested, since if Syrian authorities discovered that she went into an Israeli diplomatic mission, they might make things difficult for her in her home country. The judge felt that the father’s claim was patently reasonable, and exempted the mother from testing.

In addition, the State had wanted the mother to sign her consent to the process before an Israeli consular representative in Israel. Once again, the judge concurred that this could endanger the mother, and made do with a handwritten declaration from her.

The judge went on to argue that the plaintiff had a constitutional right as a citizen of the state to clarify the matter of his daughter’s patrimony, so that he could fulfill his right as a citizen to apply for citizenship for her. Therefore, he could not accept the State’s demand that the process be executed in such a way that was not feasible for the mother, and would frustrate  the entire process.

The judge ordered that the father go to Jordan, accompany the girl to the Israeli mission to do the saliva sample (apparently there is some procedure in place for this), and bring the sample back to the lab in Israel.

Maybe stuff like this happens elsewhere, but it seemed to me to be yet another illustration of what makes our lives so interesting.

Try It On My Own

Contrary to what non-lawyers might assume, some of the trickiest – and often most unpleasant – cases to handle are those in which the other party to the dispute represents themselves, without benefit of legal counsel. The term for this is a pro se litigant, meaning represented by him/herself.

These cases take up way too much time and energy, and can be incredibly frustrating for the lawyer. I always say that a creepy litigant without a lawyer is worse than one without. In addition, if he or she is actually represented by a lawyer with brains and integrity, that lawyer can help the other side out, in that the proceedings will move along more smoothly and efficiently. Without a lawyer – and without a judge who has backbone – the proceedings will probably drag along for far too long.

In my professional experience, it has only ever been men who decide they will go the non-lawyer route. If I would venture a guess on this, I would assume that women, particularly in family disputes, feel far too vulnerable to go without an advocate.

I think that it’s interesting to note that I have never had the reason for a party not having legal representation be financial. Parenthetically, I would note that Israel actually has a fairly extensive and competent system of Legal Aid, and those who fit the financial criteria are eligible for representation in all matters of Family Law (with the exception of those trying to milk the system while refusing to give a get.) In addition, the Israel Bar Association sponsors a pro-bono program for people with limited means who make too much money to be eligible for Legal Aid, but don’t have enough money to pay for a lawyer.

All of which is to say that even couples with little money have access to resources which can help them through the divorce process. So, though I am certain there are people out there who represent themselves because they don’t want to take advantage of the legal resources available, I find that the overriding motivation is generally some other, psychological or emotional reason.

I can’t say that I fully understand the dynamic for not using a lawyer. I’ve had cases where I sense the husband doesn’t want to bring in yet another outsider to his intimate family circle which has already been disrupted and invaded by outsiders. In others, there was a kind of arrogance “I don’t need any help dealing with this, I can do this myself.” In others, I felt that it was a way of getting back at the wife, an underlying message that in not hiring a lawyer he is expressing a desire not to cooperate with the process, or to dictate that the process runs according to his rules, not hers. Sort of like a male version of this:

Which brings me to my next point.

Lethal Narrative

There’s a very good article by Tim Stelloh in today’s online edition of The New Republic. I don’t have time to comment on the article, but it’s a thoughtful and illuminating discussion of a successful Maryland program for risk assessment of domestic violence victims. The program was initiated based on research by professor of nursing Jacquelyn Campbell who has done ground-breaking work in this field.

Jo’Anna Bird arrived at her family’s two-story, wood-frame house at about 11 p.m. on a winter night three years ago. The house sits on a quiet street in one of the poorer corners of one of America’s richest counties: New Cassel, in Nassau, on Western Long Island. Bird, 24, was a mother of two who often wore her long brown hair in a ponytail. She had worked as a school bus monitor, a medical assistant, a Walmart cashier, a supervisor at BJ’s Wholesale Club, and she now hoped to be a corrections officer. She had come to stay with her mother and stepfather because the possessiveness of her ex-boyfriend—the father of her young son—had evolved into something much more frightening, and she did not want to be alone.

Leonardo Valdez-Cruz, known to most as “Pito,” waited for Bird that night behind a row of hedges in the front yard. After she parked, he appeared and said he wanted to talk. Bird refused, went into the house, and locked the front door. “We assumed he left. We all went to bed,” says Sharon Dorsett, Bird’s mother. “The next thing we heard was her screaming.” Valdez-Cruz had broken in through the basement and tried to smother Bird, who was lying on a couch in the living room watching television, Dorsett told me. When he dashed to the kitchen and grabbed a steak knife, Bird ran to her nephew’s room. Bird’s stepfather told Valdez-Cruz to leave, which he did. A short time later, Valdez-Cruz tried climbing in through a bedroom window, but Bird’s nephew threatened to stab the intruder with a fork. Next, Valdez-Cruz tried squeezing in the bathroom window, but he couldn’t fit, although his baseball cap toppled into the tub. Bird’s stepfather called the police.

The two officers arrived sometime after midnight. As the family crowded into the living room to explain what had happened, Valdez-Cruz returned to the house and casually knocked on the front door. One of the officers let him in. Bird had two protection orders against Valdez-Cruz, but the police did not arrest him. “They said, ‘Pito, get out of here, go take a walk somewhere,’” Dorsett says. It was a response that was by now familiar to Bird. “He’s going to kill me,” Dorsett recalls her daughter saying. “I’m going to die.”

Make Me a Match

Found a great clip in The Guardian today from Simone Lia’s graphic novel about looking for a match.

Seems the British have their own kind of shidduch crisis.

Take a look and enjoy!

 

Great Judicial Policy

Judge Assaf Zagury of the Family Court in Tiberias recently gave a very good decision, which you can see, in Hebrew, here. . I think that it is significant for at least couple of reasons.

First, although it’s not the first time the courts have awarded damages for physical abuse, there aren’t that many cases where this is done. So, I hope  this is a growing trend both in terms of women filing for damages, and the courts awarding monetary damages to a woman who suffered physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her husband.

These cases are still making the news, since, as I said, they are not that common. My experience has been that many woman are reluctant to file these suits once they are out of the abusive relationship, since they don’t want to stir up the trauma. I did file – and win – one such suit which I wrote about here.

The second reason Judge Zagury’s decision is important has to do with another reason these cases are a challenge to litigate and win; in many cases it is difficult to procure the evidence necessary to substantiate the woman’s claims as to the abuse, so that it’s her word against his. In the suit which I filed, there was a criminal conviction against my client’s ex-husband, which allowed us to overcome this problem.