On behalf of Gary Kirk of Kirk Montoute Dawson LLP posted in Family Law on Monday, November 21, 2016.
When parents divorce, sometimes it is the children who suffer the most. If custody and visitation arrangements cannot be agreed upon, it may be up to the Alberta courts to enforce a solution. In a bizarre recent example of what can happen when a child custody battle gets out of hand, innocent children ended up being treated like criminals.
A man and woman from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, have been embroiled in a dispute over their children since divorcing more than five years ago. The former husband and wife are the parents of three children, all of whom are still minors. In 2015, the children were brought before a judge after refusing to attend a lunch with their father.
The judge made the decision to order all three children be sent to a juvenile detention center and had them taken out of the courtroom in handcuffs. They spent two weeks at the facility, at which point the judge changed her order and had them moved to a summer camp. A complaint was filed against the judge, and her case was to be heard on Oct. 10, 2016.
While this is an extreme and unusual example, it clearly shows that a courtroom is not a place most parents would want their children to be. For parents who are getting divorced in Alberta, it is probably in their best interest to consult with a family law firm for help. There may be alternatives to litigation that can be utilized, and if a child custody dispute in the courts cannot be avoided, having a knowledgeable representative on one’s side may make the proceedings easier to bear.
Source: Bloomfield, MI Patch, “Judge Who Detained Kids for Missing Lunch with Dad Faces Hearing“, Beth Dalbey, Oct. 10, 2016
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