I was at a meeting with some lawyers last night planning the bi-annual Family Law Dinner for the San Diego Certified Specialists Committee. We generally unload on lawyers, clerks, and judges with great abandon - sort of a roast, but of a lot of people. Searching for ideas for skits, one friend told us a story about a judge's recent decision - the type about which you want to make jokes.
It started out with the friend saying a judge had named a child after her - another commented he didn't think the judge had children that young. Curious, we needed to hear the whole story.
The friend was minor's counsel for a nine month old child - for the sake of humor, I'll call my friend Sophia: Minor's counsel are appointed by the court to make recommendations about custody, and exercise certain rights of the child such as whether to disclose confidential records.
A couple of weeks ago, the parents in her case were in court arguing about the name for the child. Now in most cases where there is a fight over the child's name, its over whether the child takes the last name of the mother, or that of the father.
Not this time, that would be too easy. The parties, their two expensive lawyers, minor's counsel, and a Superior Court judge were involved in a dispute over the first name of the child, let's say Jennifer and Julia. You can imagine the cost of that proceeding.
In true Solomonic style, after hearing the arguments of the cast of characters, she named the child "Sophia" after minor's counsel [remember, not actually Sophia, but we're changing names to protect the innocent].
Now if that isn't a good enough example for why you should stay out of court, I don't know what is. It's bad enough that you might not get what you want, but to get a result no one wants? Even "Sophia" thought it was a bad idea. What's the point of that. Maybe the judge needs a break. Maybe the parents could have compromised: "Junnifer", "Jelia", or something neutral like "Mary."
Now, preparing for appeal, we can question whether the court had the power to make that order. If not a judge because the parent's are too immature to flip a coin, then who?
