Maybe you’re simply a bad parent

A sizable portion of my initial consults are with parents frustrated in achieving their custody or visitation goals in the family court.  Often these parents are in the midst of custody litigation and find their current attorney ineffectual.  Other times, these parents have recently ended their custody/visitation litigation and are trying to determine why they achieved much less than they’d hoped.

Sometimes these parents are truly a victim of bad lawyering or bad luck.  But often the reason these parents didn’t achieve their goals is they committed acts or omissions as a parent that a family court judge will uniformly find problematic—and sometimes disqualifying—but no one has explained this to them in the fear of appearing “judgy.”

There are no perfect parents and family court judges are tolerant of some parental errors. But some actions can only be chalked up to one being a bad parent.  There’s the obvious bad parenting—physical and sexual abuse being examples that few parents try to excuse.  However much bad parenting is often accompanied by a parent excusing his or her bad behavior.

One might, on occasion, slap a mouthy teenager in a moment of anger; hitting that teen with sufficient force to break bones is bad parenting.  One might, on occasion, get too intoxicated to drive while one’s children are in the house; getting blackout drunk or drugged when one has responsibility for children is bad parenting.

One might allow an unruly child to stay with others while one develops a strategy for getting that child under control; abandoning that child an obviously unfit caregiver because one has given up is bad parenting. One will surely get frustrated with a co-parent who won’t accept parental responsibilities; constantly reminding the children about this co-parent’s failings is bad parenting.

No one reacts well to being called a bad parent but sometimes it’s the only way to get the attention of a parent who has a long history of excusing inexcusable behavior and then complains about a raw deal from the family court.  One can fix bad parenting—and by fixing bad parenting one will be able to achieve better results in the family court than one could otherwise.  However, if one refuses to acknowledge bad parenting, one will never fix it, and one will never achieve forward progress on custody and visitation goals.

A number of the potential custody/visitation clients I meet with are folks who continue to engage in disqualifying behavior and wonder why they don’t get good results.  They are rarely receptive to the answer but that answer is “bad parenting.”

The ability of parents to completely ignore or discount their own bad parenting decisions while complaining about their poor litigation results will never stop surprising me.  It will also keep me employed as long as I wish to practice custody law.