Those of us who work in the area of family law all too often are seen as intentionally increasing the antagonism between the people who have come to us for help in order to line our own pockets. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Unlike the public perception of the legal profession, most of us are good and decent people, who want to do the best job we can for our clients.
However, not all lawyers know as much about family violence as they need to if their best job is to be good enough. As a result, survivors of that violence do not always get the access to justice they deserve.
Family law itself is barely hanging on to its place on the curriculum of some law schools, and specific courses that delve into the topic of family violence and its relevance to law are all but invisible. As a result, a law student can graduate with little or no knowledge about something that is almost certain to arise in their work in one way or another, unless they came into law school with background knowledge, lived experience or a personal drive to learn about the violence that happens in too many families.
Not enough opportunities to learn
Unfortunately, professional development programming on the subject is limited, which further compounds the situation. Kudos to Legal Aid Ontario’s visionary move to provide domestic violence awareness training to all those in its system, making it mandatory for family law lawyers who wish to be on the domestic violence panel.
Occasionally, the Law Society of Ontario or the Ontario Bar Association’s Family Law Section run a panel as part of a larger training seminar.
Lawyers who participate in such trainings – and I am sure there are more that I have not listed here – receive professional development credits while they increase their knowledge, which makes them a win-win for attendees as well as their clients.
But there is no over-arching, mandatory education program on family violence for all family law lawyers in the province.
It’s a prevalent problem
The World Health Organization notes that approximately 30% of women around the world are subjected to violence by their intimate partner. It is difficult to determine with complete accuracy how common family violence is in Canada, for a number of reasons. Not all women seek help or report to police, not all end their intimate relationship, and the term family violence is understood to include different things in different studies, all of which makes it difficult to come up with hard numbers. However, it is generally accepted that between 25% and 30% of women in Canada are subjected to abuse in their intimate relationship. Men, too, can be victims of intimate partner violence/abuse (IPV).
According to research conducted for the Department of Justice in 2016, judges assessed that approximately 25% of the cases coming before them involved family violence. This number may be low, because even when there has been a history of violence, it is not always raised in court documents.
Clearly, this is a topic on which all family law practitioners should be well informed if we are to provide ethically responsible services to our clients.
What lawyers need to know
For clients leaving an abusive relationship to have meaningful access to justice, their lawyer needs to understand the complex, often invisible dynamics of IPV, including the reality of ongoing post-separation abuse and legal bullying. Safety is a real and serious issue for these clients. According to Ontario’s Domestic Violence Death Review Committee, women are at highest risk of being killed by an abusive partner beginning when the abuser believes she is leaving him and continuing for at least several months after separation.
A lawyer seeing a survivor of IPV during this period of time needs to be able to identify safety risks as well as how to respond to them. This includes having a familiarity with gender-based violence services in the community so appropriate referrals can be made.
Survivors of IPV often experience trauma, which has a profound impact on their ability to engage effectively with their lawyer and their family law case. Without knowledge about how trauma can manifest itself, it is easy to misinterpret a client’s behaviours and actions in a way that does damage to their case. With education, lawyers can learn about trauma as well as gain the skills needed to bring a trauma-informed approach to their practice.
Clients leaving an abusive relationship need to be presented with legal options that will address what has happened (and, often, is continuing to happen) to them, which may be different from the legal options that make sense for other clients. In particular, these clients need parenting orders that don’t require close collaboration and communication and that allow the survivor to maintain a high level of privacy from her former partner; something that is less and less common in these days of outcomes that favour “friendly parenting.”
Decisions about the appropriate process must also be based on an understanding about IPV. While mediation may be appropriate, the impact of family violence must be carefully considered before that choice is made, and special safety planning needs to be put in place. Lawyers well informed about IPV/post-separation abuse can advise clients effectively on when an ex parte motion would be appropriate. They can ensure that adequate and relevant evidence about the history of abuse is presented to the court throughout the case.
Learning about IPV also helps family law practitioners understand the toll this work can take on them. Knowing about vicarious trauma means a lawyer can put systems in place to reduce the likelihood it will happen to them and help them know the warning signs to watch for. This will enable them to take on this work over a longer period of time, thus increasing the pool of lawyers who are family violence experts.
Clients fleeing abusive relationships turn to family law to assist them in resolving the inevitable issues that arise upon relationship breakdown, assuming that both the system and its practitioners will be able to help them. With universal standardized family violence education and training for family law lawyers, those assumptions will become a reality and these very vulnerable clients will find their access to justice is increased.
This version is adapted from an article originally published by The Lawyer’s Daily, part of LexisNexis Canada Inc.
While I think it is important to be positive in life, I think that to represent the family court as an impartial one, with a majority of lawyers willing to help is not realistic.
In my experience in both the United States and Ontario the reports are overwhelmingly against good legal care. There is simply not protection for women. In too many cases, legal care has become about winning and this has engendered false reporting by lawyers.
Even after substantial court orders that are difficult to effect, the character structures of violent parties and the lawyers they choose is to overturn the good orders which have protected.
The new Divorce Act is a powerful tool to protect women and children. It specifically has; criminally acknowledge child abduction, the right to defend oneself, and the inability of the violent parent to differentiate between the former partner and the child.
This law needs to be widely read as it comes into effect in June, 2020.
Women report not trusting their own lawyers and very often the lawyers are being paid so much to go to trial that only those who have taken money that doesn’t belong to them, financial abuse, also a statute of the new Divorce Act, can afford to hire lawyers.
Lawyers firms can have several partners and profit can become the benchmark. This is left over from the past decades.
Again, the new Divorce Act has received almost no press. The only article in the Globe and Mail gives lawyers comments, not women’s comment, not men’s comments, for the exaggeration of claims against parents is also done to men in order to ‘win’. It is simply the work of a team working to ‘win’.
Only in being outspoken will we bring the new focus on safety and health of women and children, working on having violent partners going to rehab and not voicing their rage in the home.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/401889/barbershop-movement-urges-abusive-men-to-tackle-traumatic-pasts?fbclid=IwAR1LHG-pBtvlRbsuW0B1RBqMuqw-UCTh750eB_IqxrZb8JWvQelCbhlxoYc
There are models in the world where action is moving towards change and Canada has a crisis on its hands. It is imperative that the legal channels are made wide open to safety.
N. D. A. Additionally judges must look at historical documents such as restraining orders and reports of family violence. This is much better than the idea of keeping silent. This means that the first time is the time to report.
In the past it was not safe to report because then you could lose your children, you could become the one targeted. I believe that if this act is strongly defended by lawyers who have studied it, there will be a decrease in family violence because we will have a tipping point. It will not only be the women involved, it will become a societal responsibility.
The report which talks about the changes made by the new divorce act specify that violent men cannot differentiate between women and children. It is an intelligently written document which is right in our hands.
An old paradigm needs to be left. I do believe that lawyers wish for this to change. No one can be happy practicing in this milieu.
K. Winsa