When separated parents fight over custody in the Family Court, their children inevitably become the victims. In this three-part series, Jane Phare looks at who’s to blame, the damaging effect on young people and their parents, and what can be done to limit the trauma.
Terry’s* voice is calm when he tells his story, a nightmare that went on for 15 years, leaving him financially, emotionally and mentally drained. He spent more than $500,000 in the Family Court, trying to get access to an older child from a first, brief marriage. That daughter, now in her 20s, lives overseas and he has lost contact. In one sense, it’s in the past. But for Terry, it never will be. The battle to see his daughter spiralled into a horror story, in the process destroying his confidence, a successful career, his income and leaving his second wife Ella* traumatised.
Terry and Ella sit drinking tea, the sun pouring into their kitchen in their Auckland lifestyle property. Their home is neat, tastefully furnished, peaceful. Chickens peck outside and their children come and go in the room. They are smiley, articulate, confident and outgoing. The youngest cuts up an apple and joins us at the table with her crayons. She does a drawing, folds it, and addresses it to “Mum” with love hearts on either side.
Death by a thousand cuts
By his own admission, Terry says the court proceedings escalated “way out of control”. He stood his ground, he says, fought back, challenged decisions, laid complaints including with the Ombudsman. He claims that made him a target.
Terry, and others who have shared their stories with the Weekend Herald talk of lies, gaslighting, ruined reputations, false accusations, manipulation, child alienation, bullying, narcissistic behaviour, and personality disorders. Terry talks of psychological abuse: “It’s quite insidious because you don’t see it. It’s like death by a thousand cuts”.
He claims he became a target of ludicrous accusations that had frightening consequences for him, and his family. Is he obsessed?
“Probably … a little bit,” Ella murmurs.
Terry hesitates. “Am I obsessive about it?” Then, “I’ve not dropped the ball.” He has files, big, hefty files documenting everything. Those past years have been close to hell for the family.
Who’s to blame
The Herald set out to discover on behalf of Kiwi kids, what goes wrong when parents can’t agree amicably about how to co-parent - in cases where violence, sexual abuse or safety are not involved. We wanted to know the long-term effects on children caught in the maelstrom and what needs to be done to improve the Family Court system in order to mitigate the damage.
The views on who is to blame are as varied and vociferous as the accusations hurled in every direction by furious parents who have fought over their kids for years. Apart from the opposing parent, up for blame is a cast of court professionals - lawyers, including the court-appointed ‘lawyer-for-child’, psychologists, counsellors, mediators, social workers, even the judges, and of course the Family Court itself.
“Like a huge tanker slow to turn,” was one parent’s description, frustrated at lengthy delays between hearings.
It’s an arena that can evoke every negative emotion and reaction imaginable: anger, spite, fear, indignation, jealousy, hate, retribution. Those who feel unfairly treated are determined to get justice. They take on the system, go back to court, lodge complaints with the New Zealand Law Society, the Ministry of Justice, the Psychologists Board, the Judicial Conduct Commissioner, the Ombudsman and anyone else they can think of. They challenge judges’ rulings and when they run out of options, plot to take their case to the United Nations.
Trapped in the middle, sometimes for their entire school years, are bewildered children witnessing a destructive battle from which there is no escape as they witness two people they love spit venom at each other.
Who to believe? Dad’s story, or Mum’s? Who’s the “goody” and the “baddie” in their lives? Who should they live with? What should they tell the lawyer-for-child or the psychologist?
The heartbreak of a family at war
Family Court reporting restrictions mean the Weekend Herald can’t identify the parents and caregivers involved in this series but their stories are heartbreaking. What started off as a rush of love when a child was born - and then a second and maybe more – has ended in bitterness and resentment, with a stranger in a courtroom deciding what is best for their children. It consumes their lives, leaving family dynamics destroyed, their relationship with their children strained, and their friends and family often sick to death of hearing about it.
They fight over property settlements, litigation that can go on for years and cost enormous amounts of family income, and they fight over the children - everything from should their child be vaccinated or where they go to school, to 50/50 care and who will have her on Christmas morning. Enter step-parents and the fight can get even uglier.
The majority of couples don’t end up in court, working out the care of their children between them or with the help of a lawyer. Family mediation experts Fair Way Resolutions say more than 70 per cent of the couples who come for mediation resolve either all or most of the issues during sessions. But those who can’t agree end up in the Family Court, arguing over child-care arrangements and breaches of parenting orders. Often it’s one side being difficult; sometimes it’s both. It is a process that will inevitably consume them, rob children of a settled childhood and, in many cases, cost parents hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The gloves are off
The mother of a woman who has been embroiled in the Family Court with her children for the past four years says her daughter feels let down by a system she thought would support her. The process of fighting to stop her ex-husband getting full custody of the children - a move the daughter claims is to “punish” her for leaving what she says was an abusive marriage - has left her suffering from anxiety. Legal fees have been crippling, forcing her daughter to re-mortgage her house and accept a loan of more than $40,000 from her retired mother.
Family Court lawyers say they try to resolve issues using round-table meetings to avoid court hearings. But once it reaches court, the gloves are off. One mediator says the Family Court system isn’t geared for quick outcomes where difficult personalities are involved.
“It allows parties essentially to build a case against one another and to sling mud,” he says “And they can hide behind their lawyers and there is nothing compelling them to communicate with one another.”
Tracy* was at home one night when the police arrived to inform her of a “without notice” protection order taken out by her former husband. Suddenly the 50/50 child care agreement was on hold. She had dropped her children at their primary school that morning; she would not be able to do that for more than a year. She was accused of the most bizarre and alarming allegations, she says.
“He went to town on me. Everything that could possibly have got it across the line [the protection order] he threw in there. The things that were in it, I wouldn’t have wanted that person near my children.”
Among other things, Tracy was accused of being mentally unstable and an alcoholic. After that came a without-notice interim custody notice. She didn’t see her children for a month after the police visit, and only during very limited supervised access, with a stranger in the room, 13 months after that. The loss of her children caused her to become depressed which she says fuelled the claims that she was an unfit mother.
People around her knew, she says.
“You’re left with shame and anger and confusion. The court takes no responsibility. ”
Shortly before a hearing, the applications were suddenly withdrawn and 50/50 shared care was restored. But the wounds are still deep. Tracy says her children were left with behavioural and emotional problems, and that she suffers from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder).
‘It was quite traumatic’
For Terry, battling for access to his (then) young daughter wasn’t always a horror story. At first, he says, he saw her reasonably regularly. When Ella came on the scene his daughter spent weekends with them and came away on holiday. She got on well with her younger half-sisters.
But somewhere along the way, it started to go wrong. Access became difficult, he claims parenting orders were breached, and then the provocation and accusations started. Ella says quietly that it escalated after they got married. “What is it?” she asks. “Why can’t people just be kind to each other where children are involved?”
At one stage, in the thick of the allegations, Oranga Tamariki came to check them out. Ella recalls the terror of that.
“It was quite traumatic. All I could think of was ‘will you take my kids off me?’” She made soup and one of their daughters sang to the social workers. They went away, satisfied. Now, years later, Ella says she has flashes of PTSD and is “triggered” when she sees the name Oranga Tamariki. And she feels wary if she sees a police officer; their eldest daughter tells the Herald she does too after witnessing police visit their home.
‘The court becomes their stage’
Auckland clinical psychologist April Trenberth says an increase in special interest and advocacy groups, and a flood of information on the internet, has had both a good and bad effect.
“People are looking for help. And so they should, but they often do get pulled into more entrenched, polarised positions by that. It doesn’t help.”
The court becomes a forum for those who are already vulnerable or complicated, see the world in a conspiratorial way, or have difficult personality traits. Some have a tendency to “act out,” she says.
“So then it [the court] becomes their stage. It’s just an unfortunate by-product of our legal adversarial system.”
But it’s a necessary stage that will cost taxpayers more than $315 million to run this year, including more than $23.2m for the 64 Family Court judges’ salaries. Care of Children Act applications make up more than half of all applications before the Family Court. Of those, 70 per cent are defended, which adds to the time and cost. Those applications are usually about the care of children following a separation, rather than violence.
The Weekend Herald learned of one case that spiralled out of control for a warring couple who racked up more than $200,000 in fees from lawyers, counsellors, specialist psychologist reports and supervised contact. The lawyer-for-child bill alone was nearly $120,000. The judge ruled that the taxpayer should foot the bill after blaming neither parent for the lengthy battle. One side was obliged to defend, the other was the product of their personality which was not something they had the capacity to change, the judge said.
Fuelled by hate
Ask the professionals who have spent years representing separated couples, or acting as lawyer-for-child, and they’ll say the Family Court is overburdened and the delays, sometimes months, between hearings are too long. They also say that some judges, psychologists and lawyers are better than others, and that the court’s adversarial system doesn’t help.
But by and large, they’ll point the finger of blame at parents, saying human nature and high-end emotions get in the way of logic and, as a result, children are the losers. Covid-related issues added to the complexity, they say. “Hate, hate, hate,” says a former lawyer-for-child with 30 years’ experience when asked what fuels parents embroiled in prolonged, bitter cases.
Ask parents who have fought through the Family Court and they’ll either blame the opposing party, or the court and everyone in it, or both. Their fury that no one will understand their point of view, believe the evidence or discard accusations against them leaves them feeling powerless and frustrated. It’s a system that allows super-charged emotions to be played out in a legal setting, a system that can turn once reasonable parents into angry, disillusioned people obsessed with righting a “wrong”.
Earlier this year Family Court lawyer Brintyn Smith was violently attacked by a man in a lift at the Whangārei District Court, causing the lawyer to fear for his life and leaving him unable to return to work.
In 2015 John Beckenridge absconded with his 11-year-old stepson Mike Zhao-Beckenridge after the Queenstown Family Court ruled the boy’s mother, Fiona Lu, should have full custody. She had moved to Invercargill with a new partner. Police believe the father and stepson were involved in a murder/suicide after Beckenridge’s car was found at the bottom of a cliff in the Caitlins. Lu believes the pair are living overseas under new identities.
Tracy is frustrated that she never got her day in court, in front of a judge, to clear her name and prove that the accusations in the without-notice protection order, weren’t true. And she’s angry at a system that allowed her ex to drag out the applications for so long without accountability. However, she says despite everything she wants her children to have a strong relationship with their father. Her own parents separated when she was young and she saw little of her father.
“I don’t want that for them.”
*Names have been changed to protect identities
Read the whole series
Part One: Why the Family Court is a war zone
Part Two: Experts warn of the damage to kids
Part Three: The wish list: How to fix the Family Court
Jane Phare is a senior Auckland-based features and investigations journalist, former assistant editor of NZ Herald and former editor of Viva and the Weekend Herald.
