Many people don’t know the real importance of marriage even before planning the wedding. Divorce is not the solution to the problems of many couples having their difficulties, they should put in their mind that they should save the relationship. Children are the number one reason to keep the family together and bravely face all the problems. In 1991, only 50.8% of American children were living with a mother and father. The number has worsened since that study.
Family lawyers are fond of saying “litigation is recreation for divorced parents.” There are ugly e-mails, violent phone calls, and frequent trips to family court. Big threatening judges in dark robes take preteens into small rooms and ask them who they want to live with. “Choose your mother or father.” It is an injustice to think this doesn’t impact children. Be serious, children suffer. Over 8% of children in America live with their father and without the mother.
According to marriage researchers Drs. Linda J. Waite and Maggie Gallagher, “Divorcing individuals would need more than a 30% increase in income, on average, to maintain the same standard of living they had prior to their divorce. About one in five women fall into poverty as a result of divorce. As a marriage dissolves, some parents find themselves asking questions like, “Should we stay together for the kids?” Other parents find divorce is their only option. Divorce rates have climbed across the globe over the past few decades. It’s estimated that 48 percent of American and British children live in divorced single-parent homes by age 16.
A bad marriage is a terrible example for kids, so it stands to reason that removing that example would be good for kids. Statistics show that when parents have a “high conflict” marriage their children “fared better in adult relationships if their parents got a divorce.” After all, kids are very aware when there is a problem in the home. When those issues are resolved through a divorce, they see firsthand how to handle the stress and anger. Some experts agree that divorce doesn’t have to harm kids. In fact, there are ways kids of divorce actually benefit from having parents who decide to go their separate ways.
This paper has attempted to discuss high-conflict divorce in all its aspects. It has examined, in part, the harmful effects of high-conflict divorce on children, theories about what causes high-conflict divorce, the use of external markers to identify high-conflict divorce, and the legal response in other jurisdictions to high-conflict divorce situations. It proposes options for consideration ranging from moderate to radical, with the full understanding that progress in this area of law can only be achieved through cooperation among all levels of government in a manner respectful of each government’s jurisdiction. It is hoped that this paper will contribute to a thorough debate by all stakeholders about the ways in which our present legal system should be changed to prevent or minimize the harmful effects of high-conflict divorce.
