Has the American Family Court System Become Totalitarian?
Chase Gallenger
Has the American Family Court System Become Totalitarian?
by Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D.
IN 2007, THE MEDIA HAD A FEEDING FRENZY around a voice-mail message
actor Alec Baldwin left his daughter. He screamed at her for not
answering her phone. The public was shocked: many assumed that he was
yet another self-absorbed celebrity, with neither control over himself
nor regard for his daughter. But in fact, Baldwin had been caught in
the web of the totalitarian nightmare known as the American family
court system. His book, A Promise to Ourselves, tells his particular
story, while Stephen Baskerville's book, Taken Into Custody, presents
the general problem of which Baldwin’s story is a particular case.
Alec Baldwin is a divorced father, who had been fighting for six years
to have some semblance of a normal relationship with his child.
Baldwin's estranged wife, actress Kim Basinger, had been using the
family court system to prevent him from doing what most fathers take
for granted: seeing his child, talking with his child, and watching
her grow up. A Promise to Ourselves chronicles in sickening detail how
the court system serves the most vindictive and ruthless parent.
Even without the book, astute observers of this case realized that
something was slightly strange about the claims that Baldwin should be
denied access to his child. For instance, who released the tape of the
call to the public? None other than Basinger and her attorney, in an
attempt to smear Baldwin. What kind of mother would use her daughter
as a pawn in a spiteful power game with the child's father? And, what
was the “back story” to this particular phone call? Despite having
court authorization for phone contact with his daughter, her cell
phone would be turned off for long periods of time. On this particular
occasion, she was on spring break with her mother and her phone had
been turned off for ten days. Moreover, isn't this odd all by itself
that a father who has committed no crime has to have court permission
to speak to his own child?
Now, what the media made Baldwin out to be is conceivable: an abusive,
out-of-control father who has inflicted irreparable harm on his
daughter through verbal abuse. Yet even if the worst about Baldwin
were true (by the way, he offers no excuses for yelling at his
daughter), his portrait of the Los Angeles County Family Court remains
imminently valuable, as it reveals the extent of power that family
courts wield over ordinary citizens. His account cannot be easily
dismissed, given the extent of detail that he provides and the fact
that it accords with too many other reports of family courts. As he
tells his story, the leading character and the true villain is the Los
Angeles Family Court system, Lady Macbeth, Iago, and Shylock all
rolled into one. Even from the viewpoint of a wealthy and famous man,
Baldwin generates plenty of sympathy for the obscure and the less
wealthy of both sexes who are caught in the grip of the family court.