I’ve heard it said many times that children whose parents divorced come from a “broken home.” The insinuation being that divorce causes the breakdown of the household and leads to a breakdown of the family/parent-child relationships. While it is true that the practical circumstances of divorce leads to a breaking or separation of the children’s home from one home to two homes, it does not necessarily mean that they have to come from a “broken home.” Instead, where I see the parent-child relationship breakdown most often taking place is in those divorces where there is a high level of conflict between the parents. It is the conflict that creates the “broken home”.
Unfortunately, in my twenty-plus years of experience as a divorce litigator, the litigation of custody/parenting issues in court was most responsible for the higher conflict levels between the parties and the feelings of brokenness felt by many children of divorcing parents who litigated their cases in court. The pain caused by parents telling their children they were going to court to argue over custody of them is immeasurable. I can cite countless instances of parents speaking in a derogatory fashion to their children about the other parent and/or inappropriately discussing issues in their divorce and custody cases with the children. The results were often much worse when parents brought their children into court to testify or be interviewed about which parent they preferred to be with and why.