"Graveside" Remarks for Harvey G. Honsinger

These are remarks I prepared to be delivered at the burial of my father, Harvey G. Honsinger, at the Mont Belvieu Methodist Cemetary at Mont Belvieu, Texas (also known as Barber's Hill).  Due to the threat of rain, the graveside ceremony was moved inside, to the Fisher Chapel of the Mont Belvieu United Methodist Church.  The text here is what I wrote for delivery at the graveside--obviously I changed what I actually said slightly to take the new venue into account.  


The chapel was a very fitting site--it is a beautiful white frame church with a beam ceiling and lovely stained glass windows, many bearing inscriptions showing they were donated by Harvey's ancestors and other relatives.  


Graveside Remarks for Harvey Honsinger

April 2, 2012

Good afternoon.  Thank you for coming.

For those of you who don’t know me, I am Harvey Paul Honsinger, everyone calls me Paul, and I am Harvey’s son.  

   

I feel certain that my father is pleased that you are here, each of you, because everyone here is special to him.  I know my father’s mind and his heart well enough to believe that he is especially happy to see the faces of his brother, Brian, of the folks he called “the Cousins,” that is the grandchildren of Q.K. and Clara Jane Barber who used to spend summers at the Bay together, along with Cousin Bruzzie—because from what I hear, you folks were in many ways more like brothers and sisters than cousins—plus his dear friend and hunting companion Bruce Jester, as well as all the other family, friends, and anyone here who grew up with him here or who knew him as a young man.  He loved you.  All of you.

I am confident, too, that Harvey is pleased that this place, of all the places on this Earth, is where he is being laid to rest, and that is not just because he left written instructions to that effect. For, even though he lived from 1958 until last Friday in Louisiana, he always considered himself a Texan. And, not just a Texan, but someone with a particular connection to this community, this town, this place.

Barber’s Hill was much more than just a place he was from.  He cherished growing up here, in this town, where everyone knew everyone else, where people looked out for one another, and where the town was, in many ways, simply an extension of the families of which it was made.   

He also valued very highly that he had deep roots here—that his ancestors had come here before the Texas Revolution and built their homes, and helped build this town, the schools, and the church that stood here, creating a community of families and fellowship and faith, where once there was nothing but a gentle hill surrounded by a sea of grass.

In fact, this spot is practically in the back yard of the very home in which he grew up.  It stood right over there, just yards away.  “Spittin’ distance,” you might say.  This place is so close that a pecan that fell from that tree right there—the same one in Harvey’s yard that he and his brother used to climb, the same one that made the nuts from which his mother, Vera, baked cookies and cakes could—almost—roll over here and come to rest against his headstone.

And the church that stood on this spot was important, too him, too.  Not just because his forebears donated the land and helped build the chapel with their own hands, but also because generation after generation worshipped here, received the Good News of our Lord here, were baptized here, were married here, and found their final rest here.

And, finally, I know it is of deep meaning to him that he will find his eternal rest here, surrounded by his parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, other family members and friends, many of him he has missed so keenly these past few years.

  

Indeed, this spot, this very spot, is what we might call a “spot of his childhood.”   At the memorial service held for him at Lake Charles, Louisiana, yesterday, we sang, according to one of Harvey’s final wishes, the old hymn—“The Church in the Wildwood.”  This was, I think, a very meaningful choice, and a choice made with this final resting place in mind, because here are the last words of the last verse, right out of the old Cokesbury Hymnal:

“When day fades away into night,

I would fain from this spot of my childhood

Wing my way to the mansions of light.”

The unchained soul of Harvey Honsinger has found his way, from this spot of his childhood, to the mansions of light.  We commit to the soil of Texas the body of this proud Son of Texas.  And, we ask that God accept Harvey’s loving spirit to wait with Him—to wait until Harvey can be joined there by all of those who knew and loved him and we are, all of us, joyfully reunited--reunited in the mansions of light.  

Eulogy for Harvey G. Honsinger

My father passed away from liver cancer at about 10 PM last Friday.  Here is the text of the eulogy I prepared for his memorial service.  I deviated from the prepared text slightly in a few places, but this is pretty close.  Perhaps some of the friends and family who were not at the service may wish to be able to read these words.

Memorial Remarks for Harvey Honsinger

Delivered by Paul Honsinger at Lake Charles, Louisiana on April 1, 2012

Good afternoon. Thank you, all of you, for coming here today.

Summing up the life of a man in a few minutes, particularly when that man is your own father, and even more when that man is someone as multifaceted as Harvey Honsinger, is not easy. It is like trying to tell a relative what the Grand Canyon is like by talking to him about it over your cell phone, or describing a beautiful symphony by just humming a few bars. Nothing I say will do justice to the man. So, please bear with me while I try as best I can to hum a just few bars of the symphony that was Harvey Honsinger. If the way I do it sounds a little strange to you, I’m a lawyer. I can’t help it. Consider it a handicap.


The hymn just sung, “The Church in the Wildwood,” was one of his favorite hymns, and it says a lot about him. It’s about a simple country church remembered from childhood. He loved it because, even though he was highly intelligent, well-educated, and widely read, he was, in many, many ways a simple, old fashioned man, marked by simple, old fashioned virtues. He loved, was faithful to, and cherished very deeply his wife and family. He was a caring and involved father to my sister Kathlene and me, and was very devoted to his grandson, Austin, and granddaughter, Sarah. He worked hard. He paid his bills and saved his money. He had strong faith. He was scrupulously honest and honorable in his dealings with everyone. He was unfailingly courteous. He said “please” and “thank you” and even called seventeen year old waitresses “ma’am.”

He was, in every way, a gentleman. I hear everywhere that chivalry is dead and that gentlemen are out of style, but that never stopped Harvey Honsinger from being that way.

You can’t talk about Harvey Honsinger without talking about his fifty-three year marriage to the love of his life, my mother, Judy Honsinger. They met on a blind date in 1958. He was working at Channel 10 in Lafayette and had noticed her when she had visited the station with a boyfriend that she was breaking up with. On the day of the visit, Harvey looked scruffy and Judy was NOT impressed. He, though, had been very taken with her from the beginning. The ex boyfriend called my mother on behalf of dad and said something about going out, meaning going out with my father. She misunderstood him, thinking that the soon to be ex was asking her out himself, and she said that she would go out with anyone but the boyfriend. So, he said that he had a friend named Harvey who thought she was nice looking and wanted to go out with her. Well, mom had kind of painted herself into a corner and even though she wasn’t really hot on the idea about going out with this Harvey guy, she reluctantly said yes.
       
But, aha, Judy had a plan. Yes, she was going to go to a movie with this Harvey guy, but her younger sister, Norma, was going to go to the same movie and sit in the back. If he so much as held her hand, she was going to go home with Norma and that would be that.

My father, however, had a different—and better--plan. At the appointed hour, he showed up at Judy’s door in Lafayette, immaculately groomed, surrounded by the aroma of cologne, wearing a suit and tie, complete with a French cuff dress shirt and silver cufflinks.
       
Judy still has the tie.

Harvey asked her to go dancing with him. In Abbeville. Judy, who was a bit weak in the knees at this point, forgot completely about her sister Norma back at the movie theater, and floated out the door with him. To his dying day, Harvey remembered exactly how Judy looked and what she wore that night. It was a blue taffeta dress.

She still has the dress.

When my mother described that night to me, she sounded as though she felt she was flying. Maybe she was. In fifty three years of marriage, the air might have occasionally been turbulent, but the plane never landed.

Harvey and Judy were deeply and passionately in love from that night until death parted them. He treated her with unfailing and consistent gentleness, honor, respect, and love every day of his life, and he never stopped telling my sister and myself how lucky he was to be married to such a beautiful and patient woman. He cherished and adored her every day, and there was love and adoration in his eyes for her until the very, very last moment. She was his beloved, his treasure, his heart of hearts.

He was a big man, always larger than life in the minds and hearts of so many who knew him. He was big, not just in physical dimensions, but in every other way. He had a loud, warm, boisterous laugh, a strong, commanding presence, a resolute will, firm opinions, and a big, booming voice. Stage performers they talk about an actor “filling up his space.” Harvey Honsinger filled a lot of space. His departure leaves a huge, cavernous void. The passing of his voice and his of his laughter leaves an eerie stillness.

Speaking of his laughter, it would be a great injustice to talk about my father without talking about his sense of humor. In particular, he had a fine sense of how to bamboozle the credulous. When my sister bought her first car, a Mazda with a transverse drive train—you know, the kind where the drive shaft goes from left to right instead of from front to back--she proudly lifted the hood to show him the engine. He immediately pointed out to her how the engine was aligned and he told her “little girl, they put your engine in sideways.”

My bright, accomplished, beautiful sister was the apple of his eye, but she occasionally can be a tiny bit gullible and so, she was a frequent target for this kind of humor. One time when she was about ten, he had been fishing, and he put a little croaker, a fish that makes a distinctive noise, in his shirt pocket, and said to her, “Kathlene, listen to my heart.” She put her head right by the fish, which went “bwaaaap.” She nearly passed out.
       
In case you think that he was anything but soft hearted about his little girl, you should know one amazing thing that he did out of his feeling for her. When Kathlene was about five, America finally woke up to the fact that cigarette smoking caused cancer. Dad was a smoker. I don’t mean he smoked cigarettes, I mean he was a smoker—nicotine had its claws deep, deep into him. One day, she came to him crying inconsolably. When she could finally talk, she said something like, “I don’t know what I would do if my daddy died of cancer.”

That day, he flushed every cigarette he owned down the toilet and quit cold turkey. Forever. On the first try. This was before nicotine patches. Before nicotine gum. Before pills to help with the cravings. He did it with nothing but Tootsie Pops and iron determination. For his little girl.

Back to his sense of humor, he loved duck hunting, and often hunted with his brother and Mark Baker, an outstanding gentleman who is in all but name the adopted son of dad’s brother Brian. Dad and Mark often disagreed over which of them had killed a particular duck. Dad told Mark that he had solved that problem by buying for Mark special shotgun shells: according to Harvey, the pellets were coated with a high-tech concentrated dye that would color green the blood of any duck hit with them. So, if the blood was not green, then Mark had not hit the duck. Obviously, there was no such thing as the special marker shotgun shells.

For years, if there was a question about who had killed the duck, they would cut into it and Dad would say, “no green, Mark, it must be my duck.”
       
When we were little, one time after it had been raining a lot, there were lots of mushrooms popping up in the yards of our neighborhood in Oak Park. Mom noticed the neighborhood kids peering carefully and minutely under every single mushroom. When she wondered aloud to Dad what they were doing, he told her that he had told the kids that the mushrooms were fairy umbrellas and they were all trying to find the fairies.

My father is probably best known here in Lake Charles for the 20 years he worked at KPLC. He had many professional accomplishments there, but I like to remember him as Santa Claus. Every year around Christmas, in the afternoons the station had a Santa Claus show where, sandwiched between the regular programming, they would feature Santa with local children. Dad got the part because, well, he looked the part.

Anyway, Harvey’s Santa was jolly and warm, but with a stern side. Sure, he asked the children what they wanted for Christmas, and had a merry HO HO HO but he didn’t just take their word on whether they had been naughty or nice. Oh, no. Instead, he asked them if they helped their parents with chores around the house, what those chores were, and whether they did them right away or whether they had to be asked again and again. He asked whether they did their homework and if they were kind to their younger brothers and sisters. Whether they fed their pets. Whether they were respectful to their teachers. Santa was tough. And he had an agenda.

For years he directed a program called the Lee Janot show. As many of you remember, Lee Janot was a local personality who had a powerful ego and who considered herself very much the star of local television. Well, she may have been the star, but Harvey Honsinger was the Director, charged under FCC regulations and station policy with full and absolute responsibility for everything that went out over the air during his shift. It was inevitable that they would butt heads.

It was a live show and the program had to be planned in a fair degree of detail. Lee was a free-wheeling soul, and liked to do things out of order or to improvise, which was not acceptable to my father. Finally, he put his chips on the table and told her he was in charge and she would have to stick to the script. Lee raised. “What are you going to do, Harvey,” she said, “cut me off and show a test pattern.”

“No,” he replied, upping the ante, “I’ll cut you off and for the rest of the time slot I’ll run Deputy Dog cartoons.” (Y’all remember Deputy Dog, right?).

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Just try me.”

Well, one day, thinking she was calling his bluff, she went way way off the script. Bam. Harvey punched the button killing the show. Whack. He punched the button to start the film running and Zoom, out over the air waves went Deputy Dog.

From that point on, they had a friendly, respectful relationship. If you remember the show, you may remember Lee asking frequently, “Harvey, is it OK if we do whatever?” “Harvey, can we do this, that, or the other thing?” She knew to ask, because if she didn’t there was a Deputy Dog cartoon set to roll on a moment’s notice.

[Addendum:  Since the service, I have been reliably informed that the correct spelling of this particular cartoon is actually "Deputy Dawg" not "Deputy Dog."  Of course, where I grew up, the difference in spelling was NOT audible.]

After KPLC he had a second career as a Probation and Parole agent, later supervisor, later District Manager/Administrator for one fifth of the entire state. It was a major change but he didn’t seem to have any trouble. When the man who was doing the hiring at Probation and Parole called one of my dad’s references, a man who used to work with him at the TV Station, the supervisor asked this man whether he thought my father could do the job. He replied, “did Harvey say he could do it?” The caller told him yes. “Well, if Harvey Honsinger said he could do it, you can bet your last dollar that he can do it.” He was very happy in his second career as a law enforcement officer and was very, very proud to carry the badge.

And, after his retirement in 2002, he devoted much of his time to writing. Finally, in October of last year, he was published. Firehair: A Novel of the West by Harvey Honsinger is available for sale worldwide. In his last days, he delivered another manuscript, which will be published and available in a few months. As his editor, I can tell you that he was a gifted storyteller, he had an ear for dialogue, and a marvelous ability to bring to life the way people lived their daily lives in a bygone era. He was an extraordinarily talented novelist.

He wrote those books on the same computer that I used to write these remarks. He loved what the computer allowed him to do, but had many frustrating hours trying to get it to do his will. It was a love/hate relationship, and somewhere in the stratosphere over Moss Bluff, there still is a cloud of ozone and thunder from his battles with the evil forces that lurked inside that machine. He is getting the last laugh now.

There is so much more that could be said about him and so much more that deserves to be said. But, he left specific, written instructions that the remarks at his service be brief. I am very concerned that if I go on too long, he will find a way to make me go away and put Deputy Dog in my place. So, I think it appropriate to leave you with this.

He was a good man. He loved his wife, his family, and his country. He strove every day of his life to do the right thing, and to do injury to no one. And, when he learned that the end was coming, he faced it with absolute courage and determination. He made his final arrangements, saw that his beloved Judy was provided for, and went gently, quietly, and without complaint.

God has now unchained Harvey’s spirit from the weight of his earthly body. Tomorrow, he will be laid in the soil of his beloved Texas, at the site of the church built by his family and where they worshipped for more than a hundred years, just yards from the house in which he grew up, and surrounded by the departed family members he has lately missed so much.

That place is a “spot of his childhood.” And, I think that maybe he had that somewhere in mind when he picked the “Church in the Wildwood” hymn to be sung today, because here is the end of the last verse:

“When day fades away into night,
 I would fain from this spot of my childhood
 Wing my way to the mansions of light.”
       
Harvey Honsinger has found his way to the mansions of light. We are left with the emptiness created by his all-too-swift departure. Yet, we who loved him and are left behind are sustained by glowing memories of his love, his humor, his almost bone-crushing bear hugs, his warm smile, and above all, his laughter.

The Perils of Social Media

If you have a pending family law case, or are expecting to be involved in one soon, especially if it involves child custody, you need to take a very close look at your Facebook and Twitter accounts, as well as any photo sharing accounts you might have.  Assume that the other side in the case is going to find those accounts, is going to go through them with a fine-toothed comb, and is going to try to use against you anything that can in any way be made in any way to look bad for you.

I had a case several months ago in which my client made a comment on Facebook that, could be taken several ways, one of which was that he and his friend were going to remove valuable parts from a boat that was going to be turned over to his ex wife.  The court read the comment in the way most damaging to my client and ruled that he had damaged the asset.

In another case, on my client's Facebook page there there were some photographs taken at a party that were not exactly flattering to my client.  Fortunately, I was able to keep them from being admitted based on the date on which they were taken and other evidence-law grounds.

On more than one occasion, in custody cases, I have found pictures of the opposing party and the children posted on line in which the other parent appeared to be drunk and in which there were beer or liquor bottles in the same frame as the children.

And, even if the pictures are posted to a password protected account for your friends and family only, don't assume that your ex or soon to be hasn't guessed or stolen or cracked your password.

It may be that in your social circle it is fashionable to post pictures of yourself drunk or drinking or groping each other or otherwise "horsing around" on camera.  It is not my place to comment on that.  However, it is my place to advise you that, if you have a family law case, you should look very critically at everything you have posted on line from the viewpoint of a fifty year old Family Court Judge who is charged by law with protecting the best interests of the children.  If in doubt, take it out.

The Myth of the Biased Judge

A few days ago, when writing about some of the things clients should do or bear in mind when working with their divorce or custody attorney, I talked about clients' often erroneous perception that the judge in their case is biased.  I mentioned that, in my experience, few judges suffer from any kind of consistent bias in favor of moms or dads or husbands or wives.  I am also strongly of the view that the overwhelming majority of judges are strictly unbiased in every conceivable respect.

The generally high ethics of our judges was driven home to me today when I received an order from a local Superior Court Judge in which he—on his own motion—decided to recuse himself from a case.  In that case, the mother is seeking to move out of state with the children so that she can attend a four-year university (which we don’t have in Mohave County, Arizona).  Under Arizona law, the father has a right to object to the move and to have the Court determine whether allowing the relocation is in the best interest of the children.  Here, the father did so object (I represent the mother); accordingly, the Court needs to determine whether the mother will be allowed to move out of town with the children.

No one had voiced the slightest concern to this judge, but he simply decided that he should not continue with the case.  I thought that the reasons he gave in his order might help the folks who read this blog understand the lengths to which judges go to be completely impartial, so I have reprinted them below.  Although the Order is a public document, out of respect for the judge, I have not included his name, and have deleted certain other information which might allow identification of the parties:

“The Court set this matter for hearing on the Petition to Prevent Relocation and then questioned itself as to the propriety of hearing this matter. For the past couple of years the Court has witnessed the parent’s interaction with the children on numerous instances, and in most particular, how well the Petitioner has conducted himself with the children, primarily at [certain sports events attended by both the judge and the parents]. In the relocation case, the Court will be called upon to make findings under both A.R.S. §§ 25-403 and 408. The Court has come to the conclusion that it would inevitably have to draw upon its personal observations with the parents of the children, and in particular, that of the Petitioner.

Therefore, in order to avoid the appearance of impropriety, the Court recuses itself in this matter.”

My files are full of orders of this kind, where a judge recuses himself because when he was a private attorney he represented the parents of one of the parties, or because the judge attends the same church as a party, or because the judge has some distant social connection with the parties, and so forth.  I once had a judge recuse himself because an expert witness—not one of the parties but simply one of the witnesses—was someone with whom the judge sometimes plays golf. 

I’m sure that there are biased trial court judges out there somewhere.  But, it has been a long time since I have tried a case in front of one. Most people who think they see evidence of bias on the part of a judge do so from their own biased perspective, or because they don't understand the law that the judge must apply to their case.

Working with Your Divorce/Custody Attorney: Part Three

Based on reader traffic, it seems that my previous posts on how to work effectively with your divorce/custody attorney have been popular.  Accordingly, and because there is always more to learn in this area, here are a few more tips that I hope some of you find helpful.

1.  Write down a list of your questions before meeting with or calling the attorney, and then write down the answers.  I can't even begin to count the number of times clients have come into my office with their mind brimming over with questions, only to find that they can only remember a few of them when it comes time to sit down with me in my conference room.  There is something about going in the attorney's office that makes some people's minds go blank, just as there is something about going in the doctor's office that makes people's blood pressure go up.  If you write your questions down, not only are you not going to forget them, you won't have to spend valuable time (for which you are paying a pretty penny!) trying to remember your questions. Rather, you can march quickly through your questions and conclude the meeting quickly and efficiently.

2.  Pay careful attention to the "paperwork" you get from the attorney.  Your attorney has an obligation to send you copies of all the correspondence he receives in your case, as well as copies of everything filed with the court, both on your behalf and on behalf of the other party.  All of this stuff is important and your attorney didn't send it to you just for the purpose of killing more trees.  Rather, it was sent to you for the purpose of keeping you informed of the progress of your case.  You should do your best to read it carefully and understand it.  If there is something you don't understand, then you should call the office and ask for someone there to explain to you what it means.  You should also have a file or folder in which you keep all of these documents so that you can refer back to them later.  Every so often I get calls from clients wanting to know the "status" of their case, when they just received a mailing from my office containing a package of correspondence and pleadings that show them exactly what the "status" is.  When I ask whether they read what I sent them, they often say something like "all that legal stuff?  I just toss that in a drawer."  So, in effect, the client is paying me and my staff for the paperwork that informs them of the "status" of the case, and then is also paying me to talk to them about the same "status" that the documents they have already received have completely explained to them.  That is a waste of the client's money.

3.  Do not communicate with the other party about the substance of the case without planning those communications with your attorney and keeping the attorney informed every step of the way.  My clients often settle their own cases, and I have no problem with that.  In fact, I like it. The problems arise, however, when people go off half cocked and make offers to the other side without talking to the lawyer first. Sometimes the offer comes at a time that does not work well with the overall strategy of the case.  Sometimes what is offered is a bad idea for the client (because it has not been thought through or the client doesn't have the experience to know that some ideas that look good on paper never work out in practice). Sometimes what the client has offered is outright illegal.  If you are going to make an offer to the opposing party yourself, you need to talk it over with your lawyer before you do so to make sure that it is a good idea and is something that can be done, and then you need to keep your lawyer in the loop through the whole process so that you can get advice AND so that the lawyer doesn't take a position or do something in the case that works at cross purposes to what you are doing.  GENERALLY, negotiations should take place between the two attorneys, or--if the other party is not represented--between your attorney and the other party.  Sometimes, as described above, it is all right for the parties to do these things directly, but you should be sure to keep your attorney involved at every step.  Remember, the attorney does this for a living and has skills, knowledge, and experience in this area that can be very valuable to you.

4.  Do not rely on your "knowledge" of the law and your friends'  "advice" in place of the informed legal advice of your attorney.  There are tons of things that "everybody knows" about the law pertaining to divorce and custody. Most of them are wrong. Dozens of my clients have shot themselves in the foot by disregarding my advice and doing what they thought they were entitled to do or should do based on their own supposed knowledge of the law or the advice of well-meaning friends.  The law is complex, varies from state to state, and changes constantly.  There is a reason your attorney had to obtain a four year degree from an accredited college or university, then complete a three year course of instruction at law school (long enough to get a doctorate in many places), and then pass a rigorous bar examination in each state in which he practices.  What you and your friends "know" about the law may be what the law was ten or twenty years ago, may be the law in another state or states, or may be a distorted or over-simplified version of a subtle rule that doesn't work the way you think it works, or may just be flat out wrong.  In some cases, relying this knowledge can be so wrong as to land you in jail or cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars.  

5.  Do not believe what you hear on the "street" about your judge.  Hardly a month goes by without my getting a call from one of my clients asking me if we need to see about getting a particular judge taken off of our case because the client heard that this judge "always favors the father" or "leans toward the wife all the time."  More than once, I have heard reports of contradictory rumors about the same judge:  one client hears that "Judge Jones" leans toward men and another hearing that "Judge Jones" is biased toward women.  Such rumors are almost always untrue.  Usually, they are based on one person's experience with that judge in one case, a case which the speaker generally lost (and, very often, deserved to lose) on some issue that was important to him or her.  Human nature being what it is, the speaker cannot bring himself to believe that he lost his custody case because he was not the better parent; accordingly, it must be because the judge was biased.  Naturally, the speaker will back up his position by saying things like "you could just tell from the questions the judge was biased."  Well, I have had people bring me these cases to see if there is grounds for an appeal, and I have read the transcripts of some of these hearings, and what the client perceived as bias was simply reasonable questions that any judge would ask under the circumstances.  They just felt like the judge was against the client because they were hard questions.  In fact, often these questions brought out the reason the client deserved to lose the case.  If you think your judge may be biased, ask your attorney.  The attorney's experience with that judge typically extends far beyond a single case, and may extend to dozens of cases with that judge.  I will tell you categorically that none of the judges before whom I regularly try these cases has ever shown the slightest hint of gender bias.  I'm sure that there are some out there who do, but I have yet to encounter one.

Family law judges make hard decisions in a hard and ambiguous world.  These decisions, and the questions and procedures that Judges use in order to get to those decisions, will often feel like bias to a party or to someone with an interest in the case.  Because of their own inherent bias, and because they don't have the training to evaluate the performance of a judge, the opinion of a lay person on the bias or competence of a judge is generally next to useless.  This is absolutely a subject on which you should rely on the advice of an attorney who regularly practices before the judge in question.

Is Facebook a Marriage Killer?

There is a lot of talk right now on the Internet, in news articles, even from church pulpits, about the social networking site, Facebook, being a “Marriage Killer.”  Some lawyers are saying that Facebook is a major factor in one in five divorces.  I haven't seen that in my practice, but my we may just be behind the times here in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, which--while lovely--is often not the trendiest of places.  Other lawyers will tell you that Facebook accounts are a major source of information that they mine to get dirt on cheating spouses. There are preachers telling their congregations that, if they value their marriages, they will go home right after the service and cancel their Facebook accounts.  You can find some of that discussion in the articles linked here.  If you want more, just Google “facebook marriage killer” and you will have reading material for a week.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1334482/The-marriage-killer-One-American-divorces-involve-Facebook.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1334482/The-marriage-killer-One-American-divorces-involve-Facebook.html

http://business.ezinemark.com/facebook-has-become-a-virtual-marriage-killer-3192fd81c35.html

For the record, I am not a member of Facebook or any other social networking site.  I don't have anything against them, they just seem to soak up a lot of time that I need to spend on other things.

My wife, Kathy, and I are co-authors of the book How to Save Your Marriage from 12 Top Marriage Killers.  Facebook is not one of the marriage killers we list.  But, since the phrase “marriage killers” in the title, I feel compelled to put in my oar and, as a person with a naturally contrarian and argumentative personality, I am going to voice an opinion that on the subject that appears to be a minority view.

My position is simply this:  Facebook is not a marriage killer.  Or, at least, it is no more a marriage killer than the telephone, the automobile, women working outside the home, the social acceptability of men and women mixing socially without their spouses, cell phones, email, internet chat rooms, instant messaging, and text messaging—all of which were derided as greased poles to the perdition of adultery in their time.  The real marriage killers at work here are the same ones that have been at work since the beginning of time, Lack of Commitment, Boredom, and so on. 

These situations and technologies merely provide means and opportunity for adultery.  They are not the cause.  Let’s be honest.  When you “friend” an old flame on Facebook, maybe it is just for the purpose of getting caught up and talking about old times.  These are certainly reasonable and innocent objectives, if those are really what you have in mind.  On the other hand, if what you are really going for is a little excitement—not an affair mind you—just a little excitement, some flirtatious banter, a little whiff of the heady powder smoke of danger, then we are talking about something entirely different.  You are turning to someone outside the marriage for something that you should be finding inside the marriage.  Your interest is sexual.  It may not be overtly sexual.  It may not be intensely sexual.  But, it is sexual nonetheless. 

When you turn outside the marriage to a live person for some kind of sexual excitement or gratification, you are (1) showing that there is something lacking in your marriage and (2) putting your marriage in danger.  (See my post to this blog on April 7, 2007 on Infidelity for a discussion of how “innocent” flirtations can sink a marriage).  Plus, you are taking the first step down the road toward having sex with someone who is not your spouse.  In the real world, most people who stray usually do so by baby steps.  They don’t just wake up one day and decide, “Hey, I’m going to start screwing around.  What a great idea!”  Rather, they gravitate into a relationship with another person that gradually becomes more intense until it escalates into having sex with that person.  These things all start somewhere, and--apparently--Facebook is one such place.  

Better to avoid that path entirely. 

Accordingly, I don’t think that, to preserve your marriage, you need to log in right this moment and cancel your Facebook account or never join in the first place.  From what I hear, Facebook is a valuable and fun social tool that can be a real help in keeping in touch with friends, reconnecting with people from your past, and maintaining relationships with distant friends and family.  If you do have a Facebook account, however, I would strongly recommend that you carefully and objectively review your “friends” list.  Take a hard look at everyone on that list who is a credible adultery partner for you and ask yourself honestly both what your true reasons are for being in contact with that person and what is really going on in all of your communications with that person.   

You know whether what is going in is pure friendship or whether something sexual is happening.  If the latter, you need to cut it off immediately.  The dangers are too high, and the temptations are too great.  Don’t tell yourself that “it is just an innocent flirtation.”  That doesn’t work any more than, “I’m just going to eat one cookie.”  Plus, as I mentioned in my post on adultery here back in 2007, even the “innocent flirtation” takes energy away from the marriage that may be necessary to sustain it.  That excitement and sexuality needs to be channeled into your marriage, not drained into the dead end of an extramarital relationship, even if that relationship never becomes overtly sexual. 

Facebook is a mere instrumentality.  In a murder, the responsibility does not lie with the tool, it lies with the murderer.  Same with marriage. BUT, just because the responsibility for the shooting does not lie with the gun, that doesn't mean you want to play with a loaded revolver, much less point it at your own head.

For more information or to order our book about marriage killers, go to our web site http://www.honsingerbooks.com.  

Why So Many Divorces?

The statisticians tell us that about half of all marriages end in divorce.  As do most people who work in family law, though, my wife Kathy and I often wonder why there are SO MANY divorces, and why divorce is so much more frequent now than it was only a few decades ago.  Here are my, distinctly unscientific, theories on the subject.

1.  The family is no longer the primary economic unit of society.  Back in the days of my grandparents and grandparents, most Americans lived on farms or worked in small, family-owned businesses.  Mom, dad, and the kids all worked together tending fields, herding cattle, or stocking the shelves.  My great-grandfather, Q.K. Barber, was a cattleman on the prairie between Baytown and Liberty, Texas, and he worked all day on his own land within a several hundred yards of his wife and daughters, and within a few miles of similar spreads run by his brothers and sisters.  The family was together, or at least close to one another, all day, almost every day.  Shared work, shared hardship, shared triumphs, shared experiences bound husband, wife, and children together into family units that were much tighter than are most families today, in which husband and wife go off to their own jobs, kids are off doing their own thing, and folks are lucky to see each other over dinner a few nights a week.

2.  The family is a far less important social unit of society.  In our rural, agrarian past, the husband and wife typically did not have circles of friends with whom they would go out drinking or for card night or game night or girl's night out or whatever. Husband and wife were each other's best friends and were each other's primary social outlet.  Not only were there fewer opportunities to stray, this relationship was just one more set of ties, one more layer of glue, that held husband and wife together.  These two factors, husband and wife working apart from one another and then doing much of their playing apart from one another, cannot help but lessen the number and the force of the bonds that hold them together. I am convinced that one of the things that has held my marriage to Kathy together through some of the tough times has been that we work together and are each other main source of friendship and companionship.  We spend almost all of our time together.  Sure, sometimes we rub each other the wrong way, but mostly this fact means that we have so many bonds, so many shared experiences, so much that we do together, that it would take a nuclear device to drive us apart.

3.  Popular culture does not foster realistic expectations of love and marriage.  The love stories that we see on movies and on TV, that we read about in books, and--as a result--that we imagine for ourselves these days, are full of the mythos and magic of love and nearly devoid of sweat and tears that it takes to make a marriage work. The song says that "Love Will Keep Us Together," when, in reality, love will only bring us together; it takes commitment, courtesy, caring, and communication to make it stick. People think that once love has brought them together, some sort of ethereal magic will ward off all of the evil forces that might serve to drive them apart. To the contrary, the world is full of forces that strive to drive the couple apart and that, if not actively fought against by the couple almost every day, will certainly succeed, if not in causing them to divorce, at least will serve to make them unhappy.

4.  Popular culture does not praise and reinforce the traits of character and conduct that make marriages strong.  There was a time when adults in our culture were portrayed as mature grown ups, committed to their families, and bearing adult responsibilities.  Whatever their dramatic deficiencies, television programs like Leave it to Beaver and The Brady Bunch showed Ward and June and Mike and Carol holding down professional positions, making sure that the house was clean and meals prepared, providing structure and discipline for children, paying the bills, and generally getting the job done.  Adults in family sitcoms now are generally immature, incompetent, disorganized, histrionic, and in most cases indistinguishable in their level of gravitas from the children in the show.  Indeed, much of the comedy in many of these programs is derived from the unflattering contrast between the maturity and sensibility of the children relative to the childishness of the adults.  This is not to say that TV writers can or should reset the clock to 1969, but perhaps we would all be better off of television and movies that portray families would contain more examples of adults who have their acts together and who act their age.  Many young people, particularly young men, seem to aspire to a protracted--if not eternal--adolescence (only with more money) in which they hang out with their friends, drive cool cars and buy neat stuff (the guys in these movies and shows tend to live in pads that have basketball hoops, pinball machines, sports posters, and other teenage trappings writ larger and more expensively), even if they are married and have kids.  I have heard the term "family man" spoken on these shows often with derision, rather than respect.  The prototypical sitcom husband and father of 2011 is not Ward Cleaver, but Homer Simpson.

5.  Not only does our culture not reinforce marriage, there is much in our society that seems actively dedicated to destroying it.  The media portray adultery, if not with approval, then at least in many cases without strong condemnation.  Many parts of our society wink at affairs (a trait once seen only in the very rich).  The gals in Sex and the City (I am told) bounced into and out of the beds of the married and single alike. In fact, there is even a well-financed, widely advertised dating service the explicit purpose of which is to help people tie up for extramarital sex.  No, I won't post the link or give their name here, but their motto is "Life is short.  Have an affair."  The company web site boasts offers an "affair guarantee" and touts the company as "the most recognized name in infidility . . . . We are the most recognized and reputable extramarital affair company. . . . We are the most successful website for finding cheating partners."  The website says the company has over nine million clients.  Makes me want to barf.  No, my sexual conduct has not always been the most praiseworthy (although, in all of my three marriages, I never cheated on a spouse), but the idea of a company actually being in the business of facilitating a kind of conduct that is not only illegal in many states, but that is also enormously destructive emotionally, socially, and economically just plain blows my mind.  The difference between that company and a dealer in illegal drugs is one only of degree.

In America of the Twenty-first Century, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that marriage is under attack on many fronts.  If you want your marriage to endure, you must defend it.  Our book, How to Save Your Marriage from 12 Top Marriage Killers, puts in your hands some very simple, robust, and powerful weapons for doing so.

Overall, we need to recognize that, these days, the seed of marriage does not fall on the fertile soil that was there to receive it a generation or two ago.  That does not mean, however, that the seed is destined to die.  Rather, it means that, if the seed is to grow, WE must nurture and water and fertilize it ourselves.  Now, more than ever, each marriage stands on its own, to flourish or perish based on the individual efforts of its members. If you are married, you must remember that society will not sustain your marriage, popular culture will not sustain your marriage, government will not sustain your marriage.  If marriage in America is going to be saved, it will be saved one couple at a time.  As with so many other things in our society, we need to build from the bottom up.  The strength of the building comes from the foundation in the ground, not the satellite antenna on the roof.  Saving your marriage is up to you.

Working with Your Divorce/Custody Attorney: Part Two

As my earlier post on this subject is one of the most widely read in the history of this blog, and as there is a lot more to say on this subject, I thought a few more pointers on how to work effectively with your attorney in your divorce or custody matter might be in order:

1.  Be HONEST with the attorney.  Surprises are bad.  Very bad.  I remember one custody case in which the father of the child showed up at the custody trial with his nose the size of Montana and the color of Barney the Dinosaur.  It turned out that, four days before the trial, my client (the mother) had slugged Dad WHILE HE WAS HOLDING THEIR BABY, knocking him flat on his back.  Luckily, an aunt caught the baby while dad was going down.  My client had not bothered to tell me this in advance.  In fact, I learned of the event only during the father's testimony on direct examination from her attorney.  The look of horror on the judge's face on hearing about these events was priceless (even as it made my heart sink).  Needless to say, my client had her head handed to her.  Had I known of this event in advance, I would at least have been prepared for it and might have moved for a continuance or done something else to lessen the impact.  As it was, I was caught with my guard completely down and could do nothing except try to keep my face from conveying to the judge the surprise and shock I felt.  You can tell your attorney anything that relates to your case:  it will remain a secret that the attorney will take to the grave, and the attorney will not judge/condemn/or work less hard for you because you have told the truth.  Those are the obligations of our profession.  It is far better to endure the embarrassment of telling damaging facts to your attorney in the privacy of the office than to have them come out as a surprise in an open courtroom.

2.  Remember that "no contact" means "no contact."  If there is a protective order or injunctive decree that tells you to have "no contact" with the opposing party in the case, the court means what it says.  No letters.  No emails.  No phone calls.  No St. Crispin's day cards.  Nothing.  I just had a client arrested and booked for sending his soon to be ex spouse a non-threatening letter about some basic family business.  He had to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, surrender his firearm, and pay a fairly hefty fine.  Now he has a criminal record.  If you have doubts about whether you can send a particular communication, ask your attorney.  These issues can also work against you in your case, particularly if it is a custody matter.  When the judge determines which parent the child will live with, part of that decision hinges on which parent the judge believes will do the best job of FOLLOWING THE COURT'S ORDERS.  If you get convicted for violating a court's no contact order, it should be no surprise to learn that this fact will work against you.

3.  Understand that litigation takes a long time.  If your case is going to court, don't expect it all to be wrapped up in a month, or two, or even six or seven.  It is not unusual for a contested domestic relations case to take more than a year from Petition to Decree, even if all the attorneys and parties are doing their jobs diligently.  Between the procedural delays imposed by the court rules, and the congested dockets of many courts, it just plain takes that long.

4.  Comply promptly with all requests for information.  If your lawyer asks for a particular document or some piece of information, it is because he or she needs it to do what he or she is doing.  Every day you delay responding to the request delays your case.  It is not unusual for a client to take two weeks to get me the information I request, and then email me the next week berating me for how "everything is taking so long."

5.  Recognize that the Court is there to decide the case, not provide you with emotional vindication.  Courts exist to resolve disputes.  In a domestic relations case, the Court's job is to grant the divorce, divide the property and the debt, determine who gets alimony and how much, decide the custody issues, set up a visitation schedule, and award child support.  It is not the job of the court to punish your ex for being a drunken, verbally abusive, lazy, slovenly lout who ignored your emotional needs.  Alimony and child support are awarded based on need, not as damages for being married to a jerk.  Property and debt are generally divided in more or less equal fashion between the spouses, not based on which spouse was nice and which was naughty.  Maybe it used to be that way, but it is not any more.  Yes, if one spouse actively stole community assets, gambled away thousands of dollars, or spent huge sums on illegal drugs or to stay drunk all the time, there ARE often remedies to the "victim spouse" in terms of property distribution, but this does not happen very often.  Most often, the property and debt are split down the middle, even of one spouse directly caused the divorce by having a notorious sexual affair.  Sorry.  Courts do not rule based on which side is morally superior; they decide cases based on the facts and law.

Web Page Issues

Those of you who browse with Safari or Chrome, or who browse from mobile devices, might have not been able to see most of the text on the web page we created for our book How to Save Your Marriage From 12 Top Marriage Killers. By the time you read this post, the problem should be corrected.  We apologize for any confusion, consternation, conflusteration, or any other negative "con" word that might come to mind.

The site is http://www.honsingerbooks.com/, and is pretty basic now.  More content and features are on their way.

The Book Has a New Web Site

We have just put up a web site for our book How to Save Your Marriage from 12 Top Marriage Killers (by "we" I mean "Kathy" who, in addition to being a brilliant writer is a talented web designer) which can be found at www.honsingerbooks.com.  There is not much there at present, but we will be beefing it up over the next several days to contain more information about the book, news about events relating to its promotion and availability, and additional tips on saving your marriage, and related information.  There is also an email link for readers to communicate with us (honsingerbooks@gmail.com).