Safety first

Related reading

• Every Word an Exhibit Courts sometimes order separated parents to communicate only through a paid co-parenting app. These products generally do what they are meant to do, and that is the problem. A record built to capture what parents write, screened for tone rather than truth, sees little of what happens at the door. And the people who order the app are often not the people who pay for it.
• The Standard Schedule A family law attorney, guardian ad litem, and visitation-center owner wins election to the bench, dies of a stroke on election night, and wakes in a place that runs on his own forms. Nobody there is cruel. They just follow the procedure he wrote. A story in the spirit of classic anthology television, followed by a plain account of what each tool in it is and how to fix it.
• The Second Arrow An imagined conversation between a Roman emperor who wrote his private notebook far from his children and a teacher who left his own son and later took him back. They do not agree on everything. They agree that a father in a long custody case cannot control the ruling, can control what he adds to it, and should not mistake surviving for surrendering.
• Splitting the Baby The most famous custody case in history was decided by a king who threatened to cut a child in half, never investigated the dead infant at the center of the dispute, and was praised because the people feared him. Family law still runs on that story's two halves: the oracle judge who sees the truth, and the settlement extracted under threat. Neither half produces findings, and children live in the gap.