Divorce Corp - Part Four

It turns out that all four of us here in Maryland who saw Divorce Corp over the weekend were in one room last week.  One had testosterone as his main hormone and was elder enough of a statesman to remember the "tender years" doctrine, when moms were presumptively the better parent.  This individual no longer litigates (except to represent children0, but concentrates on mediation and collaboration.  Another of us is young and practices exclusively in negotiation and litigation.  Yet a third has been a law professor and not practiced law for quite some time.  Then, there's me. I practice family law in all of its forms - mediation, collaboration, negotiation and litigation.  We're a pretty diverse bunch.  Three of us teach collaborative divorce at the University of Maryland law school, and in fact, we together to plan our first class of the semester.   So, what did we think?

The law professor dismissed the movie as poorly done and not worthy of substantive discussion.   That's not surprising, given that she is used to serious and scholarly work, which this movie definitely is not.   What about the rest of us?  You already know that none of us thought the movie was a balanced picture of the family law system.  Our youngest member researched all of the litigants whose stories were shared in the movie (don't you love Imdb?).  As you might expect,  just as all those experts were misquoted in the film, so were the litigants' cases.

Beyond that, we hope that the family law community doesn't ignore this movie.  Yes, it is an inaccurate representation of us and the system.  Divorce Corp offers us here in the Trenches an opportunity to see how the public in general views us.  The scene is not pretty.  The solution is not for us to dismiss this movie as a one off and defend the way things have always been done.  Divorce Corp is a wakeup call to all of us here in the Trenches.  Why do you think the number of self represented parties increases every year?  It's not because they can't afford us - it's because they don't trust us to help them more than we help ourselves.  Sobering thought.  Here in the Trenches.