1. How did parents ever raise children before Family Court was invented?
2. Where did they scribble their endless complaints about one another, before we gave them fill-in-the-blank forms called affidavits?
3. In Hamilton, where did angry, vengeful parents hang out on Fridays at 10:00 a.m., before the advent of “motions court”?
4. As a judicial system, we like to think we’re helping people. Sometimes we even succeed.
5. But when many of our regular customers regard repeated trips to Family Court as “no big deal”, perhaps all we’re really doing is creating lazy parents. It’s easier to dump a mess on a judge, than to grow up and raise your own children.
6. Most families come to us once, at a time of crisis. They solve their problems. And they never come back.
7. But our system is plagued by a small group of frequent flyers who keep adding new chapters to their horror story. They keep coming back because we’ve made it easy for them. And perversely, they almost seem to enjoy it.
8. There are all sorts of reasons that this has to stop.
9. As a community, we can’t afford to fund courtrooms as a playground for petulance.
10. But most importantly, these endless court cases are usually about children. And no matter how much parents pretend that each salvo is “for the sake of the child”, the reality is that endless conflict and litigation inevitably breeds family misery. And children end up being robbed of their joy and innocence.
2. Where did they scribble their endless complaints about one another, before we gave them fill-in-the-blank forms called affidavits?
3. In Hamilton, where did angry, vengeful parents hang out on Fridays at 10:00 a.m., before the advent of “motions court”?
4. As a judicial system, we like to think we’re helping people. Sometimes we even succeed.
5. But when many of our regular customers regard repeated trips to Family Court as “no big deal”, perhaps all we’re really doing is creating lazy parents. It’s easier to dump a mess on a judge, than to grow up and raise your own children.
6. Most families come to us once, at a time of crisis. They solve their problems. And they never come back.
7. But our system is plagued by a small group of frequent flyers who keep adding new chapters to their horror story. They keep coming back because we’ve made it easy for them. And perversely, they almost seem to enjoy it.
8. There are all sorts of reasons that this has to stop.
9. As a community, we can’t afford to fund courtrooms as a playground for petulance.
10. But most importantly, these endless court cases are usually about children. And no matter how much parents pretend that each salvo is “for the sake of the child”, the reality is that endless conflict and litigation inevitably breeds family misery. And children end up being robbed of their joy and innocence.
Date: 2017-10-16
Docket: 3612/14
Citation: Peters-Webb v. Cloutier, 2017 ONSC 6139 (CanLII), http://canlii.ca/t/h6mhg
Comment