Divorce ain’t pretty.  In fact, it can be downright ugly and painful.  Especially the way we’ve been taught that a divorce is obtained.  By hiring lawyers and going at it in court, you buy into a system that is ill-equipped to do much more than breed the ugliness and pain that can affect you and your family for years and years.  When you go to court, your most personal problems and shortcomings are made public.  In an effort to win points on certain issues like custody, support, visitation, and finances, you bring the dirty laundry out.  You attack.  But guess what?  You get attacked, as well.  The system, by its very adversarial nature, sets people up to cause emotional scarring on each other, their families, and, most particularly, their kids.

They say all’s fair in love and war.  Well, this is the war part.  Divorcing parties are pitted against one another.  Through their attorneys (who are taught to attack the opponent), they try at all cost to win, win, win.  As Judge Ross Foote of the 9th Judicial District Court says, “In over 1500 cases in which I have participated, I have never seen a winner.  Everybody loses when you go to court.  Especially the children.”

How many times have you seen a situation in which one parent or another refuses to attend an important function for one of their kids because they can’t stand to be in the same place?  How many times have you seen children caught in the middle of an argument or made to deliver bitter messages back and forth