The Divorce So Bad it Made the Family Judge Flip Out – TIME Healthland
Spending days ringside to other people's parents bickering and arguing and general dysfunction takes a soul strong of stomach and long on patience, which is why only a hardy few to be a family court judge. But it doesn't mean they're not funny. Either that, or one Canadian justice found an unusual way to vent. Sick of the shenanigans of a couple from, ironically, the honeymoon capital of Niagara, he ruled that the wife should have full custody of their 13-year-old daughter but that the father should only pay $1 (and that's a Canadian dollar) a month in child support. But it was the way he ruled that has everyone talking.Ontario Superior Court Judge Joseph Quinn's 31-page December decision—which made the local papers and is still doing the rounds of legal circles on the internet—is filled with the kind of black humor and derision one would imagine is usually kept for close be-robed colleagues only. He chided the couple for "marinating in a mutual hatred so intense as to surely amount to a personality disorder," and said the chances of amicable resolution were "laughable." The wife had poisoned their daughter "irreparably" against the father who, the judge admitted, had "a near-empty parenting tool box." (More on TIME.com: 5 New Reasons to Get or Stay Married This Year)
Quinn mocked the couple's habit of sending abusive, vulgarity-laced texts to each other and their inability to be civil at their children's sporting events. On one occasion apparently, Catherine, the wife, had tried to run Larry over with her car — "always a telltale sign that a husband and wife are drifting apart," the judge noted. [...]
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On the other hand I know a lovely lady whose divorce was described as the friendliest her lawyer had ever seen. This is one of the problems I see as arising out of the monogamist facade our and some other societies put on. In order to justify a divorce in a culture in which one is told to marry once and forever, there has to be a real problem. It can't just be, "Ya know what, we aren't fulfilling our respective potentials together as well as we would apart, for ourselves or those who rely on us. As adults we choose to dissolve our household, portion it up, and figure out how each of us can and will contribute to the well-being of our kids."
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