Mon Apr 18, 2011
By Laurel Hudson,
Barrister & Solicitor
In my work as family law counsel I frequently encounter clients, usually but not exclusively women who have primary care of their children, who have, with their children, been abandoned by their former spouses.
This abandonment can come in the form of physical, emotional, and financial abandonment, and often two or more of these factors are at play at once.
Family law lawyers are not trained to act as counselors, nor are we necessarily emotionally equipped to give the advice required by particular clients about how to address their abandonment related realities and grief, though of course most of us do our best.
My best advice for my clients as they struggle with feelings of abandonment in the wake of their relationship breakdowns is the following:
First, litigants in this situation should take care of themselves, so that they can continue to function and care for their children.
Second, I recommend that litigants continue or begin to access counseling services, including family counseling if it is available, and I of course do not necessarily refer to family counseling that involves the ex-spouse. Often family counseling, in situations involving abandonment, is most effective when the abandoning, ex-spouse is not involved, or at least not involved unless and until the children, my client, and the family counselor agree it’s a healthy, good next step.
Third, self-care also involves my clients’ spending time with friends and loved ones, doing things they enjoy like watching movies, going out to dinner, walking the dog, enjoying worship activities, and having a laugh.
Fourth, I also highly recommend that my clients partake in regular, at-least-three-times-per-week exercise, which helps to reduce their stress levels, including by providing an outlet for the anger that usually and understandably accompanies abandonment by a former spouse.
Fifth, litigants who feel financially abandoned by their ex-spouses, particularly when the litigants have primary care of the children involved, are wisest to retain a lawyer to assist them to handle the related issues, including sometimes urgent, interim applications for child maintenance and spousal maintenance.
In my experience as counsel financial abandonment by a non-primary resident parent is often linked to that parent’s emotional response to the marital breakdown. It can also be linked to the abandoning parent’s mental health, emotional, and/or substance abuse related issues.
Unfortunately an abandoning parent’s refusal to honour his or her financial commitments to the children and ex-spouse involved will often not be remedied until that parent is faced with the potential legal repercussions of what he or she has chosen to do.
I therefore recommend that my potential primary resident clients retain a family lawyer, be it me or someone else, in order to help them address the financial and other post-abandonment issues they face.
I recommend this because among other things usually clients in this position feel vulnerable, frightened, and anything but strong. They are also usually non-lawyers and necessarily not objective about their situations. This means turning over the issues to a family law lawyer who is objective about the situation is the wisest move.
Sixth, litigants who watch their ex’s emotional and even physical abandonment of the parties’ children, in particular, are also best advised to take the long view of things, and thereby increase their ability to keep the abandonment in perspective.
Specifically such litigants are wisest to remember that in the end, their ex-spouses’ abandonment of them and their children will (a) Possibly end in the near future, depending upon the ex-spouse’s emotional, physical, and even medical state, and assuming he or she has a legal entitlement to contact with the children; and (b) More tragically, likely come to be one of the greatest losses and regrets of their ex-spouse’s life.
Seventh, obviously if a non-primary resident parent who has abandoned his or her children is not legally permitted to have contact with children a result of a criminal court and/or family court restraining order, that is a different situation from the norm.
In such cases I advise my family law clients not to interfere with the police/Court’s imposition of no-contact conditions upon their ex-spouses, lest my clients be seen to be (a) facilitating their ex-spouse’s breach of court order(s); and/or (b) most significantly, exposing their children to harm or the risk of harm.
The physical and emotional abandonment situations to which I refer three paragraphs above as, “Possibly end[ing] in the near future” are therefore situations in which there are no criminal court or family court restraining orders in place.
I would add that in such situations primary resident parents are often placed into the position in which they must literally choose between their spouses and their children. This is the worst possible situation in which a primary resident parent can find herself, and, really, it is not a choice at all.
I say it is “not a choice at all,” because without exception I advise my clients who are in this situation to choose their children over their spouses, period. That is what the family court expects of them, and it is the morally correct course of action in this situation.
Mothers – and I speak from my professional experience almost exclusively of mothers – simply must choose their children over their spouses, in the event that the police or the criminal or family court has imposed no-contact conditions upon the children’s other parent.
Eighth, primary resident parents whose ex-spouses have abandoned their children and them in any fashion are also best advised to obtain individual counseling for the children, and the sooner the better.
Children who have been abandoned by one parent, regardless of the quality of that parent’s parenting or the circumstances surrounding the abandonment, will be understandably grieving the loss of that parent, regardless of how short term in nature that loss might turn out to be.
It’s best to locate and access counselors who are trained to offer counseling to children. When in doubt primary resident parents seeking recommendations and even referrals to these counselors are best advised to discuss the issue with either (a) their own counselors, or (b) their family doctors.
Ninth, as hard as it might be I also advise my family law clients, as much as possible, not to speak ill of the children’s other parent to the children.
Ultimately the children love their other parent, and are made up, one half’s worth, of him or her. That means that any negative comments the children might hear from my clients regarding the other parent will necessarily harm the children, however unintentionally my clients might make such comments.
Tenth, primary resident parents should not discuss family or criminal court matters, or out-of-court negotiations, with the children. It’s best to permit children to be children, and live as much as possible free from adult worries.
Eleventh, little ears don’t miss much and little hearts are vulnerable & tender. I therefore advise my clients, and then advise them again, to take the high road as they deal with their ex-spouses.
My clients’ taking the high road as they navigate their legal matters increases the chances of (a) their situation’s improvement, which doesn’t necessarily mean a reconciliation, but can mean the ex-spouse’s improved treatment of the children and my client; and (b) a reduction to potential emotional harm to the children, which is, of course, the most important thing.
I’ll blog again soon.
The views expressed in this article are those of Laurel Hudson only and are not intended to be, nor should they be construed to constitute, legal advice.
Laurel Hudson is a family law, criminal defence, and civil litigation lawyer based in Smithers, B.C., Canada. She is also a writer, the mother of several children, and an animal foster parent, posting daily blog entries and legal articles to the Hudson Law website and Tumblr.com and distributing them daily via Twitter.
Daily blog, website & legal articles: www.hudsonlaw.ca
‘Tumblr’ website daily blog & thoughts: http://laurelhudsonlaw.tumblr.com/
‘Twitter,’ for daily links to daily blog & legal articles: http://twitter.com/laurelhudsonlaw
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