January 29, 2025
In 1997, Guam enacted a law authorizing no-fault divorce (P.L. 24-134). The legislative intent was “to reduce the pains that such turbulence causes in the lives of our people, especially our children.” In other words, if we let couples divorce more easily then we will have less conflict and healthier children.
The opposite has happened. Just read the news. Busted families and damaged children abound, with much of the burden falling to schools and teachers to try to put children back together again before they are able to teach them anything.
While I can’t prove causation, there is at least a demonstrable correlation between the rate of family fragmentation and the increasing number of children diagnosed with an ever widening array of dysfunctional behaviors and developmental disorders.
Since the legislature is never going to rescind the sacred cow of no-fault divorce (aka “irreconcilable differences”), there is something the legislature can and should do to address at least part of the fallout: expedite divorce cases involving minor children.
Right now, the only thing expedited is child support - wherein one parent is forced to pay the other simply because “the other” has the kids.
Because our society assumes that Mommy has the kids because Daddy left, our system has no problem immediately punishing Daddy. However, statistics from Divorce.com show that women initiate 69% of divorces, and in cases where a parent makes off with the children, MissingKids.com says that “mothers are the most common abductors.”
Contrary to common opinion, stealing your own children is not a crime if there is no custody order. A parent can simply pack up the children, abandon the marriage, file for divorce, and hold the children hostage.
Once divorce is filed, the child support law is mobilized and the parent without the kids is forced to pay the parent with the kids regardless of why the other parent has the kids in the first place.
The abandoned parent can fight to get his or her kids back, but that fight - usually an expensive one - is fought in the divorce court, not the child support court. And because the divorce is not expedited (as is child support), it can take months or even years for final custody to be determined.
It is ironic that among the stated purposes of our current Child Support Guidelines there is this:
“To eliminate the animosity associated with financial incentives to take sole custody of children (and) to prevent the Guidelines from being misconstrued as an income redistribution tool.”
It’s ironic because this is precisely what the Guidelines inadvertently encourage. Because the law immediately penalizes the abandoned parent and rewards the abandoning/"kidnapping" parent before any fault is determined, there exists the incentive for the abandoning parent to financially punish the abandoned parent so that he/she runs out of money and is unable to pursue the actual case.
Add to this the constant pressure by both attorneys and the courts to “settle,” and the abandoned parent is on a fast track to giving up - which is usually what the abandoning parent wants.
We already have a law on the books which mandates the best possible legal recourse in such sad situations. 19GCA§8404 requires “that children spend as much time with each of their parents as possible, when the parents are not living together.”
However, we first have to get into court to get the order, and as already mentioned, this can take a long time - precious time for a child whose psyche is being damaged by the day.
To make things even worse for an already traumatized child, in cases of parental “kidnapping,” there is usually also the manipulation of the child by the “kidnapper” parent to despise or even forget the other parent - otherwise known as “parental alienation.”
This happens, as one expert says, “when a parent hates the other parent more than he or she loves the child.” The more time the alienating parent has to do this, the more the child will be alienated from the abandoned parent, and, given the aforementioned correlation, the child becomes increasingly prone to developing dysfunctional behaviors and developmental disorders.
In “the best interest of the child” - a judicial mantra, the only way forward at this point, given the irreversible damage permitted by our divorce laws, is to expedite divorce cases involving minor children so that the child - as the law already requires - “can spend as much time with each parent as possible” - and as soon as possible.