In 2021, I wrote on this blog about a case where a court delayed reunification therapy because a 12 year old child didn’t want to do it. To this day, this continues to be one of the most read posts on our blog, more than three years later. Maybe the topic of reunification therapy is one that gets a lot of people’s attention. Maybe it is because the court allowed a child to decide.
Several years ago, while handling a terrible parental alienation case, I had somewhat of epiphany that stuck with me since that time. Specifically, childhood is fleeting. While your children will always be your children, they won’t always be children. Any event, activity, game, graduation, etc. that a parent either misses voluntarily or is excluded from, for whatever reason, can never be made up. Accordingly, it stands to reason that even when that parent is at fault for the damaged relationship with the child, one wonders whether courts can and should do more to try to see to it that efforts are made to repair the relationship.
That dovetails with another issue. Specifically, are courts too slow to address parenting time issues and violations of parenting time Orders. More often than not, Courts deny Orders to Show Cause (emergent applications) dealing with parenting time violations as non-emergent. In counties where it takes several months for routine motions to be heard, the potential for continuing damage to the parent-child relationship is immense. The delay also seems contrary to the case law.
In the Parish case (which was my case), the Appellate Division bolstered the emerging body of Family Court law holding that parenting time violations pose immediate and life-long damage to children. In directing judges to exercise their parens patriae authority to prevent harm, the Appellate Division noted that:
“…interference with custody and parenting time may immediately and irreparably impact the best interests of a child and often represent classic cases necessitating court review.”
The Parish Court held that the “very nature of enforcement of parenting time does not lend itself to deferral…” or alternative dispute resolution or delay. The Court further unequivocally prohibited the abdication of such enforcement, reminding judges that, in post-Judgment matters, “Once a court has ruled, enforcement of its judgment must follow.” The dangers of the Family Court failing to enforce was addressed in Siegel v. Siegel, 241 N.J. Super 12, 15 (Ch. Div. 1990) and Bergen Cty. Bd. of Servs. v. Steinhauer, 294 N.J. Super. 507, 517 (Ch. Div. 1996). Specifically, the Siegel court held
“Courts must enter Orders which are fair and reasonable and then enforce those orders without shrinking.” …Anything less perpetuates an unfortunate myth that the Family Court is often times too impotent or too timid to deal decisively and firmly with litigants who pervert the judicial process with impunity.”
The reason that I write today is because I read another recent case where a Court allowed a teenager to refuse reunification therapy. Specifically, that case was Csaken v. Mead, an unreported (non-precedential) Appellate Division decision dated October 11, 2024.
Now that opinion was only three pages long and the appeal was ultimately dismissed for mootness because the child was over 18 by the time the case got to the Appellate Division for oral argument. As such, I am taking some poetic license and using my experience and intuition to fill in some of the blanks regarding the facts so I apologize in advance to the people involved if my speculation is incorrect.
The opinion advises that the child was nearly 15 years old when she ran away from mom’s home in February 2021. The court then granted dad, “temporary, emergency custody.” The opinion goes on to note that
“[d]uring the protracted litigation, plaintiff had only limited contact with the minor and no parenting time.
Plaintiff sought reunification therapy to restore her relationship with the minor. Defendant argued that the court should defer to the wishes of the minor, who objected to attending reunification therapy.
Now hear is what triggers my fears about justice delayed is justice denied. The plenary hearing did not take place until 2023, when the child was 17 years and 5 months old – more than 2 1/2 years after the child ran away from mom’s home. The trial court:
“found that it would not be in the child’s best interest to “force her participation” over her objections. The court noted that given the child’s age, and “what has transpired over the past two years,” reunification therapy is not a viable option because there was little chance of success.
In dismissing the appeal, the Appellate Division noted that:
“During the pendency of this appeal, the daughter turned eighteen, the age of-majority. See N.J.S.A. 9:17B-3. In that regard, at oral argument before us, counsel for plaintiff stated that the daughter had been emancipated. This appeal, therefore, is mooted by the daughter’s emancipation because the family court can no longer order reunification therapy.
Assuming arguendo that it was mom’s behavior that caused the daughter to run away in whole or in part, is the remedy really that there is no remedy? Could nothing have been done for three years? Did the system fail the mom? More importantly, if the premise that we continue to hear in support of the rationale that shared parenting is in the best interests of children, did the system fail the child? Will the child be irreparably harmed into adulthood by the fact that more wasn’t done to fix the relationship – again, even assuming for argument’s sake that mom was largely or totally at fault.
It would have been nice for the Appellate Division to raise the cautionary tale here about the delay here. It seems like they wanted to because they took the time in their very short opinion to mention the age of the child when this post-judgment litigation started and the age at oral argument. It seems like this was a missed opportunity to guide trial courts to swiftly and firmly manage these cases if we, as a system, really want to give more than just lip service to the notion of the best interests of the child.
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