The Brockovich Report

I'm not giving legal advice. I can't. I'm not a lawyer. All I can do is speak from the heart.

And sometimes what I say is heart-rending. There are no easy answers.

I frequently get mail from broken families. Sometimes the source of the mail is the mother; sometimes the father. This one is begging for equal rights, that one is begging for money, time, shared responsibility, or input. Each story is completely unique, and yet no matter how you interpret them, they are all the same.

In all of these stories, there are victims--and those victims are not the parents.

Mel went to court, and now he blames the court for holding him away from his daughter. I don't know the details--perhaps he didn't or couldn't pay the child support. Perhaps his wages were garnisheed. Now he blames the court for separating him from his daughter and writes me for help.

Michelle is raising her three children. Her rent is seven hundred dollars a month, the same amount her ex-husband is supposed to provide, only he hasn't sent anything for the past year. Maybe he was laid off, she doesn't know. Fortunately the utilities are included, and her mother has moved in with her to help defray the bills. Her secretarial job brings in $2000 a month, but there are medical bills to pay, clothes for her children, not to mention school expenses--she hasn't saved a penny for their college educations, living from paycheck to paycheck. Her youngest daughter--who does not even remember her father--has taken a job, but the cost of car insurance, gas and the extra car is far more than her daughter makes. Michelle can barely cover her own car insurance, and the cost of the gas to go back and forth to work has her serving ramen noodles for lunch and dinner several nights a week. She writes me for help.

Jeremy is the gay parent of an adopted child. Or he used to be. His deceased life-partner--the child's actual birth father--died of aplastic anemia after his bone marrow transplant failed. Already bereft from his loss, Jeremy also lost custody of his adopted son to his deceased partner's parents who are in their fifties and in the eyes of the court, will provide a better home for the child. Admittedly, Jeremy doesn't make that much money but he has been the child's parent for the last five years. But the grandparents have a big house in a settled neighborhood; they can afford private schools. And they are good people. But Jeremy loves his child, and wants more than the occasional visitation the court allows. He writes me for recourse--what can he do?

What can any of us do? We're the adults here. We can cope. Children are the victims.

Don't always blame the court first. The court didn't bring you to this situation, or break up your marriage. We all have a degree of personal responsibility.

All I can say to every parent out there is please...consider the welfare of your child first.

Consider it before you consider yourself. Make your adult choices with the welfare of your child being the foremost thing in your personal agenda. The choices are difficult if not impossible to decide. Do you take the better job so you can be the better provider or do you take the lesser job which provides you quality time at home? Do you suck in your anger at your former spouse, and respect your child's innate need for the other half of the parenting team? Do you go to the trouble of working out supervised visits so that your child can enjoy the legal right to their other parent--without being exposed to the alcoholism (or irresponsibility or manic depression or ________fill in the blank with your family's own personal horrorscape.) Do you go the extra mile to do the right thing, and not simply the thing you want to do?

Just remember that children are not weapons to be used in vicious court battles as one parent tries to destroy another.