FROM A READER: "JUDICIAL DISCRETION" THE CORE OF INJUSTICE IN CT FAMILY COURT!

Trust me, as all of us know wisdom comes by such suffering and heartache that anything we can do to help the next family we should do. Recently, I talked about a family law professor that taught his class by using examples from movies.

I initially thought him to be one of those whacky professors that you hear about.  He used examples to give students a visual to equate with a concept.

For example, the blockbuster movie, "Independence Day" starring Will Smith. He told us to imagine the family court system as the enormous alien spaceship invading the world...our president sent up the best of our pilots with world class fighter jets to bring it down.

The missiles launched by thousands of planes, merely bounced off the alien spaceship's force field...completely ineffective. and when the aliens fired back our planes dropped like fireflies from the sky.

Each case that is heard in family court is on it's face, a fighter plane. While you may very well have the law on your side, as well as evidence, expert testimony, character witnesses, etc,(ie - the best weapons in the world) you get nowhere.

It's not until they realize that the infrastructure of these alien ships must be brought down, it was the only way to destroy them. At the end of the movie one man flies his fighter jet up into the infrastructure and crashes it at the power source of the mother ship, imploding it. This disables the force fields on the other alien ships around the world, and our planes missiles then are able to bring them down.

 

The force field for family court is "broad discretion". This is granted by case rulings of the Supreme Court to allow family court judges the ability to rule based on what they feel is the best interests of the child.It has backfired horrifically from the intent initially intended, and that is what we have to bring down.

 

80% of all appellate court cases arise out of family court. That figure is staggering, and yet we all know why. "Broad discretion" has to be eliminated, period.