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Former Chief Justice of Georgia's Supreme Court says: Let's end disposable marriage



 
 
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Old July 5th 09, 11:19 PM posted to alt.child-support
Dusty
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Default Former Chief Justice of Georgia's Supreme Court says: Let's end disposable marriage

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/0...rce/index.html

Commentary: Let's end disposable marriage

By Leah Ward Sears

Editor's note: Leah Ward Sears stepped down this week as Chief Justice of
the Georgia Supreme Court. In 1992, she became the first woman -- and
youngest person -- appointed to Georgia's highest court.

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- After Tommy's sudden death, we found among my
brother's personal effects a questionnaire he had completed in 2005 for a
church class.

The very first question was a fill-in-the-blank that went like this: "At the
end of my life, I'd love to be able to look back and know I'd done something
about ....."
"Fathers," Tommy wrote.

When asked to identify something that angered him that could be changed,
Tommy wrote, "Re-establishment of equity and balance and sanity within the
American family."

My brother was born to be a father, and he grew into a good and loving one.
Tommy was tall and handsome, smart, witty and fun. A graduate of the Naval
Academy and a Stanford-educated lawyer, he married and fathered a little
girl and boy who were the center of his life.

Tommy felt that one of the worst problems in our country today was family
breakdown and fatherlessness. He railed against intentional unwed
childbearing and the ease with which divorce was possible. He didn't like
that we have become a society that values the rights of adults to do their
own thing over our responsibility to protect our children.

As a judge I have long held a front row seat to the wreckage left behind by
our culture of disposable marriage and casual divorce that my brother so
despised.

No-fault divorce was a response to a very real problem. The social and legal
landscape that preceded it largely prevented casual divorce, but it often
trapped people in abusive marriages. It also turned divorces into even
uglier affairs than they are today, forcing people to expose in court
damaging information about their children's other parent. That system was
intolerable, and we should never go back to that.

But no-fault divorce's broad acceptance as an unquestioned social good
helped usher in an era that fundamentally altered the seriousness with which
marriage is viewed. It effectively ended marriage as a legal contract since
either party can terminate it, with or without cause. This leaves many
people struggling to remake their lives after painful divorces that they do
not want. It also left many parents cut off from, or sidelined in, the lives
of the children they love.

When Tommy divorced, as in so many cases, a bitter struggle over resources
and the children ensued. My brother came to believe that the legal system
turned him into a mere visitor of his children.

Tommy eventually accepted a job as a lawyer for the State Department and
went to Iraq (and later to Dubai) in order to make the money needed to
support his children. Being in a war zone, under terrible conditions without
the children he loved, was unbearable to him.

On November 5, 2007, my phone rang before daybreak. A U.S. Foreign Service
officer was on the other line. Was I the sister of William Thomas Sears?

I knew before I was told what had happened. Tommy had died. But the cause
took my breath away: My brother had taken his own life.

I know I'll never understand fully all that factored into his decision to
kill himself. No doubt Tommy was wrestling with more demons than he had ever
admitted to me or knew himself. But as a divorcee myself and, for a number
of years, a single parent, I know the immense pain of divorce and its
aftermath. The limitations the law placed on Tommy's right to raise his own
children after his divorce magnified my brother's pain and was, I believe,
more than he could live with.

Tommy was only 53 when he committed suicide. That was more than a year ago,
and I am still learning to live without him and live with the fact that this
man I looked up to all my life chose to end his own life.

Tommy's loss has catapulted me even farther down a path I was already on.
This may sound like heresy, but I believe the United States and a host of
Western democracies are engaged in an unintended campaign to diminish the
importance of marriage and fatherhood. By refusing to do everything we can
to stem the rising rate of divorce and unwed childbearing, our country often
isolates fathers (and sometimes mothers) from their children and their
families.

Of course, there are occasions when divorce is necessary. And not everyone
should marry. But it has become too easy for people to walk away from their
families and commitments without a real regard for the gravity of their
decision and the consequences for other people, particularly children.

Removing no-fault divorce as a legal option may not be the right way to move
forward, and the solutions we need may not be entirely legal in nature. But
answers must be found. The coupling and uncoupling we've become accustomed
to undermines our democracy, destroys our families and devastates the lives
of our children, who are not as resilient as we may wish to think. The
one-parent norm, which is necessary and successful in many cases,
nevertheless often creates a host of other problems, from poverty to crime,
teen pregnancy and drug abuse.

The loss of my brother has changed my life, as these losses so often do to
people. This summer, after 26 years, I'm hanging up my robe as a judge to
return to private practice.

I will spend some of my time teaching a course in family law at the
University of Georgia Law School. And I have accepted a fellowship at the
Institute of American Values in New York -- a private, nonprofit,
nonpartisan organization that contributes intellectually to strengthening
families and civil society in the United States and the world.

At my request, the fellowship is named after my brother. As the William
Thomas Sears Distinguished Fellow in Family Law, perhaps now I can truly do
"something about fathers" -- a mission I'm on for Tommy and a critical
calling for all of us.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Leah Ward
Sears.

 




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