I was adopted. I came as a foster child to the Hemminger family, and my luck had it that they decided to keep me. It was because of the fluid definition that my parents had of “family” that opened their hearts enough to raise more than one child that, biologically, wasn’t theirs. That fluid definition is something that my siblings and I have carried forward in our own lives.

Today, I want to talk about what we as a culture can do to put divorce lawyers out of work. By the way, I’m a divorce lawyer, and have been working in this industry for more than twenty years.

When people separate, they’ve got to figure some stuff out: how to divide their assets, child support, and spousal support to name a few. I really think you need a divorce lawyer to walk you through that stuff, but this post isn’t about that. However, a huge part of what divorce lawyers fight about is kids. In my law firm, we always believe that going to court is the last place you want to go to when it comes to children. Parents hand over to a judge, who has never met them, the power to make huge decisions about their kids.

When people separate, of course, they’re critical of their ex; if they weren’t, they’d probably still be together. But most of the time, most parents are able to say, “the other parent isn’t perfect, but I know they love my kid.” In my office, we open one to three files per week, but we only do a supreme court trial once or twice a year.

What I’ve noticed is that we have a cultural problem about families separating. People get married, we join two families together, and everything is beautiful. If the parties end up separating, which happens a lot of the time, at least one of the sides usually sees the one family now being torn apart into two different pieces. It creates tension; “now we’re at war with the other side.” At the Hemminger family, where I’m from, people don’t do this. For the most part, we know that if someone was in our family as a spouse, long-term partner, or parent, and things didn’t work out, that doesn’t mean that we must completely turn on the other person.

I was at a mediation recently and what I couldn’t figure out was why one of these parents was so upset about his ex’s family. What really landed for me during this mediation was that this guy, when he became engaged to the mother of his child, was part of a family; part of something bigger. When the relationship broke down with who he thought was going to be his wife, her family completely shut the door on his face. I’m sure they have their narrative about why that happened, but here’s the thing: these parties have now gone on and spent a bunch of money on legal fees. Finally, we ended up at a mediation where they both spent a bunch more money, but they at least have an agreement.

What ended up happening was instead of him getting to say “okay, my child is part of this other family, and you know what? My son’s going to be in really good hands.” Yes, they will do a good job, and they’re still imperfect like the rest of us are. At the same time, instead of him seeing the big picture, all he could go back to was “we’re split now. They have their troops and I have mine, and we’re going to go to war with each other.”

As a culture, it would be better if we saw separation between parties as “this family is not moving forward the way we expected it to move forward, but it is still going to move forward and we’re going to do what we can to see the good parts in others.” What do you think would happen if everyone did that? If everybody was able to open their hearts regardless of how things turned out? I think a big part of what makes divorce law seem so tense would simply lessen, and that would result in people keeping more money. Just saying.