QUICKSAND

When I was a kid, my parents only let us watch this battered old black and white television. I recall that I used to watch 'Time Tunnel" and FBI. Along with those, I watched movies about adventurers going on long treks through the African jungle--I remember one particularly harrowing movie where evil tribesmen tried to get an elephant to stomp on the head of one of the adventurers and squish it--the elephant refused!

 

Usually, these adventurers faced many obstacles like monsoons, or hoards of mosquitos infected with malaria (just when they ran out of quinine!), or schools of pirhanna that would eat them up in a chaos of screams, squirting blood, and churning muddy water.

 

Then there were the times when someone would step into a pool of quicksand and take at least 20 minutes of the movie slowly sinking to his death, calling out for help, clinging onto vines, desperately trying to get out.

 

When you get down to it, isn't that sometimes exactly how divorce court seems? Foolishly, you guys hired a guardian ad litem and now you can't get rid of the guy and he keeps on racking up thousands of dollars in charges.

 

Then there is the opposing attorney who keeps on accusing you of various misdeeds in highly sophisticated motions replete with references to case law and sections of the practice book and your own lawyer is tapping you on the shoulder saying he or she wants money too, or else you'll end up on the street, lose your children, and worse.

 

The road stretches out before you, one of endless toil, and visits to court, and hearings, and negotiations, and no matter how much you tell these people they have got to cut back on spending money, or just be reasonable about motions, they just keep going on while you watch the savings from your childrens' college fund shrink and disappear, your retirement go up in smoke, and start contemplating the fact that the wheels of the court machinery keep on turning, you and your family are getting ground up in them, and you are absolutely stuck.

 

There is nothing you can do to get out of the situation.

 

That my dears, to mix up the analogies, is quicksand. Pure quicksand, and you are in it. Big time. That is the situation in Connecticut with more people than you can imagine who are now in family court. So what are we going to do about it?