To act or not to act, that is really the question. One of the first decisions to be made when it comes to anything of importance is whether or not to act at all. In most areas of life, ignoring a problem sometimes helps. Even many diseases go away, with time, without the assistance of a doctor. You can often wait out the stock market until your investments climb again. But ignorning the problem seldom works in family law. If anything, things tend to get worse. It’s like a damaged roof that way, the only answer to deterioration is action.
Because divorce can be, as I often say, a high stakes game of Monopoly with someone you now hate, the key element is leverage. Acting first can often provide a tactical advantage. The best defense is a good offense, as the old sports cliché goes. Or to quote Sun Tzu’s the Art of War, “Whoever is first in the field and awaits the coming of the enemy, will be fresh for the fight; whoever is second in the field and has to hasten to battle will arrive exhausted.”
It took me several years in this field to realize that problems rarely go away on their own. Parental alienation will only continue, if not brought to light. Same thing with abuse, or financial malfeasance. Ignoring problems does not often work in family law. And when I was younger, I used to wish ignoring certain issues would make them go away, as every solution costs clients’ money they may not have. That does not mean you need to go thermonuclear over every issue. I still believe that the path of least resistance is important for purposes of efficiency.
If you can accomplish with a phone call or a letter what would cost 20x more to achieve with a motion then it makes sense to attempt the most efficient route first. I just no longer believe, in 99 out of 100 occasions, that doing nothing at all is the answer. There is too much at stake in a divorce, too much emotion wrapped up in these important realms of finance and family. I wish it were not so, even if that meant less business for my firm. I wish that problems could sometimes go away on their own in family law.
The trouble is, they don’t.
That is not to say there are not some issues that a client defines as “problems” that may fall outside the purview of family law. Not every problem is big enough to require an action. For instance, if a client insists they want to spend thousands of dollars to fight over a jar of change with $50.00 in it, then ignoring the problem will not make it go away, but it’s not a sufficiently large enough problem to tackle in the world of a divorce lawyer. At least not one that prides himself or herself on efficiency.
But the parent who does not contribute to daycare in February is unlikely to contribute in March or April if they think they are getting away with the non-payment. And as a court of equity, New Jersey family courts may even apply the doctrine of “laches” to a case. That means that if you sit on a right long enough, you lose it.
The ‘ignore’ problem is particularly problematic in matters of custody. And let’s ignore for a moment all the financial issues in a divorce. All the valuation and technical discussions do not matter in the realm of custody and parenting time. Which is to say, whether you are a humble school bus driver or the owner of a multi-million dollar company, issues of custody and parenting time are mostly addressed in the same manner.
Parental alienation, the creation of a status quo not in your favor, losing contact with your children, these are all problems that will not be swiftly remedied. I have worked with some clients who are “masters of the universe types” with huge jobs in industry, people who can solve almost any issue, except for how their ex was able to turn their own children against them. People who could convince almost anyone of anything, except when it came to a judge in family court. So much of what works in other avenues in life does not work in New Jersey’s family law courts, which are counter-intuitive, at best, to the uninitiated.
These types of issues are like teeth in need of a root canal, black mold spreading through a dampened wall, a compulsive gambler itching for a game. There needs to be an intervention. There needs to be action.
Ignoring the problem will not make it go away.
Partner with Carl Taylor, Esq.
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