‘Marriage Story’: Checking the facts

Noah Baumbach's excellent new movie "Marriage Story" is in fact an end-of-marriage story centered on a nasty child custody dispute (in our specialized argot, a "bi-coastal move-way"). All the legal stuff occurs in the Los Angeles family law legal community and the Los Angeles County Superior Court. Baumbach got a lot right but a few things wrong. Let's fact check four of them.

Assertion # 1: Normal people once deeply in love but whose marriage is crumbling can go from zero to 60 in seven seconds and find themselves screaming, wishing the other dead and punching holes in the wall.

Fact check: True

CEOs, teachers, police officers, elected officials and everyone else can be swept up in tsunamis of rage, terror and hatred when a marriage is breaking up and they can do remarkably vile things to one another in consequence. A common quip among judges is that in criminal court we see bad people on their best behavior while in family court we see good people on their worst. A family judge's first job is to protect the minor children from that maelstrom.

Assertion #2: the parties' past conduct (e.g., infidelities, inept parenting, excessive drinking) leading to the divorce will be dissected in detail in court hearings.

Fact check: Mostly false

California is a no-fault state which means the reasons why a spouse believes that the marriage is totally broken and cannot be fixed are not relevant. We do not explore salacious details of betrayal and broken promises. As my Russian grandmother used to say, "what was, was!" This is a good three-word explanation of no-fault divorce in California. But a family court judge will explore in depth past conduct that might inform a child custody determination. So, marital infidelity involving a co-worker? Probably not. Excessive drinking causing tipsiness during child care time? For sure.

Assertion #3: California family courts "are a disaster."

Fact check: False

I recognize that Baumbach needed the line for a plot point to humanize the only actually helpful lawyer, Bert (played by Alan Alda). But the truth is that the 68 smart, very hard-working, empathetic judicial officers in our court's Family Law Division are on the front line every day of averting or mitigating disasters, not causing them. Our court handles each year about 32,500 marital dissolution, 8,000 parentage (formerly "paternity"); 18,500 child support and 21,500 domestic violence restraining order cases in our sprawling, 10+ million person county. We provide mandatory mediation services in every disputed child custody case by well-trained (all Masters or Ph.D. level) mental health professionals with expertise in child development. This enables parents to solve their own child custody and visitation disputes without going before a judge. And we do all this with about 75% of our family law litigants being self-represented (no lawyers at all!) and about 40% speaking little or no English. Our court operates self-help centers to assist tens of thousands of litigants navigate the foreign terrain of family court and we employ hundreds of foreign language interpreters. Also (mostly) false is the portrayal of our family law bar as win-at-any-cost sharks. In fact, the family law bar in our community is tight-knit and ethical, and understands that "winning" in family court means "win-win" especially where children are involved.

Assertion # 4: Post-divorce, parents interact constructively in raising their common child.

Fact check: No hard and fast rule

Baumbach's movie portrays textbook, child-centric, effective post-divorce "co-parenting." These parents are no longer overwhelmed by their hurt and anger but are focused only on the future. They have redefined their relationship from former lovers and life partners to members of a joint venture solely dedicated to the raising of their child into a healthy and happy adult. This is a divorce movie's version of "they lived happily ever after." It is very often not that pretty. 