Custody court is a funny little cross section of society. On the one hand you have infuriated rich people who want the judge to decide who has won this round of bitter battles. On the other hand you have confused poor people who don’t know who is whose daddy, all trying to trick each other into paying for the paternity test first. And you have a few normal people – but their cases are really short because they’re in court for formality, usually having dealt with their personal lives themselves.
On two occasions I’ve been lucky to observe extreme pettiness in action (while waiting for our clients’ hearings.)
In DC Superior Court, everyone is told to show up at 10am and the judge calls them up one at a time. On this day, a wealthy family was up first – counsel on my case guessed upper Georgetown. The stodgy-suited father appeared to be about twenty years older than the yacht-ready mother; his expression matched his suit. The mother’s new partner sat in the back wearing khaki pants, a blue blazer, and Prada loafer – no socks.
Obvious from their expressions, the parents were too bitter to speak, which led to the appointment of a “parent coordinator” to do the talking for them. She was the subject of this particular hearing – she wanted off the case. With hair a mess and bags under her eyes she explained that the child was taking her and his parents for a ride – making demands, pitting them against each other, and being falsely entitled in general. The parent coordinator’s only hesitation in leaving the case was the message it would send the boy, letting him “win.”
“I want to talk to the boy,” the judge ordered. “Everybody out. I’ll be brief.”
As we exited we passed “the boy.” He looked 17 years old, wore his prep school blazer and khaki pants. He handed 1776, which he had brought to read, to his also yacht-ready grandparents who sat with him in the hallway. The judge was not brief. As we waited, the maternal grandmother loudly exclaimed “they’re just jealous!” several times in a shrill voice. What perfect fodder for making up stories about strangers!
The second occasion was a trial (FYI most law suits don’t get to trial) over at which expensive preschool to enroll the 3-year old son of the plaintiff and defendant. The judge prefaced this amazing litigation with “you know, you should really figure out how to make decisions for your son without getting a third party stranger involved.” Amen. The defense spent twenty minutes interrogating the prosecution’s expert witness, a child psychiatrist, trying to prove that he wasn’t an expert in preschools.
But the really poetry came when the father took the stand. He testified that he wasn’t aware in which states he paid taxes because that’s his accountant’s job. He also went on to badger the mother’s attorney, the father being an attorney himself.
This trial caused several hearings to be bumped from the day’s docket. Does one even send a 3-year old to preschool? Isn’t that like day care? And we wonder where the court’s resources go…
Take home message: people look ugly when they look angry. Note to self: when upset, relax facial muscles…
