I’m not sure if this is really a pit thread, but damn it’s depressing, and I feel like screaming but I’m too tired.
I am a cheap bastard, and I live ln a lower-end apartment complex. Tonight was the 5th time in the last 3 weeks there was a “domestic dispute” in my building. And the cops were called. And like all the rest the kids were taken outside while the cops dealt with the parents.
I’m a troll in a cave, the parents don’t know me, and the kids don’t know me, and we probably don’t even speak the same language.
Fuck the economy, fuck all the depression going around. Fuck the anger, and mostly fuck everything for the kids crying that I can’t know how to help.
Rule one for divorce lawyers – do not accept clients who like to fight but can not afford to pay to fight.
Seriously, aside from the occasional restraining order, divorce lawyers can’t do much to help folks who are into domestic disputes. Social workers, particularly crisis intervention workers based out of women’s shelters and child protection services, addiction counsellors with access to residential programs, and psychologists and psychiatrists skilled at working through combinations of mental health and addiction problems, sometimes can make a difference, but in all honesty most folk who are in domestic disputes tend to live life going from crisis to crisis, and if there isn’t a crisis handy, they’ll find one or make one.
So yes, fuck everything for the kids crying that you can’t know how to help. It’s truly heartwrenching.
Let me introduce you to one of the harsh realities of the life of the law. Among the lawyers who do represent people in divorce cases (there are some fortunate souls whose practice excluded domestic relations matters) there is an old saw:
There are three nevers in divorce practice – they are never over, they are never happy, and they never pay.
Divorces are what you do to pay the rent. Occasionally a fat hog waddles in just asking to be cut, but for the most part divorces feature people of modist means who fight about something more valuable than great wealth, usually children or self-respect. Better you should write wills for prosperous businessmen, farmers and widows and hope you out-live them.
Well I didn’t really mean a lawyer rant. Just kind of a poetic license of the only people who might possibly benefit. Kind of a “The coffin makers are making a killing”
kind of thing.
The couples you’re thinking of might well not be married, though. And it doesn’t sound like they’re divorced, though they probably should be.
Have you reported these events to your equivalent of social services, so that the family can be investigated? Over here that would usually lead to the family being given help, not the kids being immediately taken away (unless they were being really badly abused).
I know how you feel, though. I know a few kids in situations like that, and it’s sad tknowing that I can’t help. (Either social services are already involved, or the parents avoid them by changing address a lot).
