A Maryland father committed suicide after killing the family court judge that denied him a relationship with his four children. While this murder like every murder is tragic, the larger tragedy is that the investigation of “why” will likely end with the simple explanation that an abusive man was denied custody. That explanation falls far short of the true root cause, our broken family courts.
Murder and suicide have long been a result of the failures of family court. Family court is notorious for destroying families, exacerbating family violence, and breaking good parents to the point of murder and suicide. It’s easy to presume the father was a bad guy because he was alleged to be a perpetrator of domestic violence and that the judge was right in denying him custody. But, because false allegations of DV and child abuse are standard operating procedure in family court, we’ll never know.
What we do know is that family court is broken. Because of the policies and practices in family court, good parents, moms and dads, are pitted against one another to win custody. Because of broken family courts, good moms and good dads, along with their children, have their families destroyed and lives cut short. As children are thrust into the middle of their parents’ conflict, they are abused as prizes, pawns, and weapons in unnecessary and high conflict custody battles. Custody battles brought on by bad actor parents and often bad actor lawyers.
The larger tragedy of a judge being murdered is that our broken family courts will disavow any culpability or complicity in his death. Family courts don’t think they have any accountability in his death nor the thousands of others that die every year as a direct outcome of its failure. Kind of like the dumbass argument of ”guns don’t kill people, people do”.
We have known family courts are broken for over 30 years yet nothing has changed. Instead, we get lip service. We get fanciful mission statements and millions, probably billions, of dollars spent on initiatives that have little to no material benefit for the moms, dads, and children who have been sucked into the system. We’re told “we’re trying to do better” but it’s very much the blind leading the blind because the system is governed by those who profit from the status quo, bureaucrats with bureaucratic blinders, and judges who seem immune to our pleas and incapable of problem solving.
A litigated divorce and custody battle is at best, a crap shoot. Family court is an administrative court where judges have broad discretion, little training, and no accountability to the families they serve. While I personally believe in the altruism of most judges wanting the best for families and that the system is broken, I am in the minority of those with lived experience. Many if not most others believe that judges and the system are entirely corrupt. But still, nothing changes.
Regardless of perspective, the underlying problem remains the same: Family court destroys families, exacerbates family violence including child abuse, and too often leads to murder and suicide. And family courts, more specifically the judicial bureaucracies that operate family courts, seem indifferent to the death, family destruction, and child abuse it fosters.
Family court is a $50B industry where lawyers, custody evaluators, and many others profit from family conflict. An adversarial arena driven by more than just money. In custody battles, parents are incentivized to win, not only for more money, but for power and control (and often revenge and hatred).
In the policy arena (ie. passing legislation), fixing family courts is complicated by lobbyist for the special interest groups of family court lawyers and organized misandrists. Lawyers are trying to protect their revenue and misandrists want to legitimize false allegations of DV and child abuse. The motivation for both groups is easy to understand. For lawyers, it’s money. For misandrists, think “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”. (Misandrists and how they underly much of the problem will be for another post.)
But at the end of the day, it’s not the legislature that has the ability or responsibility to fix family courts, it’s the judiciary. The judiciary already has most if not all the statutory authority it needs to fix itself. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t seem to have the will or capability.
The judiciary is a closed bureaucratic ecosystem that is virtually immune to innovation, problem solving or doing the right thing. It’s governed by judges with bureaucratic and legal blinders, lawyers and custody evaluators who profit from it, and well-meaning bureaucrats whose heart is in the right place but just don’t have a clue. The result is a court system that offers lip service but consistently fails to deliver improvements that benefit children or their parents.
The broken family court system promotes (causes, creates, exacerbates, motivates or whatever other word you might want to use) family destruction, family violence, murder and suicide. Period. Full Stop.
Knowing this, the question is….Can family court be fixed to protect child safety and well-being instead of exacerbating family violence? My answer is…who knows? There are millions with lived experience who want it to change but our pleas seem to fall on the deaf ears of an indifferent bureaucracy. But as advocates, we have to have hope and keep trying.
Personally, I have presented twice to Colorado’s Supreme Court Standing Committee on Family Issues. Once in January 2022 on a concept of passive compliance enforcement that would slash court dockets on most disclosure/discovery related issues and save families millions. Then again in September 2023 on an Early Intervention & Rapid Resolution program that would resolve most contested custody cases in 30 days. Together, these programs would not only slash family court dockets by half or more, but they would save families Billions, and better protect the health, safety, and well-being of children. Know what happened next? Nothing but crickets.
But I am the eternal optimist (certainly a little thick in the skull) and I keep hope alive and keep pushing because it’s the right thing to do.
