MARION CAMPBELL, family lawyer, started her career with Legal Aid in 1981 and recently set up her own practice. She’s seen it all, including the negative side of house sharing from a lawyer’s perspective.
“Awful. . . intolerable,” is how she describes the experience of warring spouses sharing living space, which they may continue to do even while court proceedings are underway.
No communication, pressure-cooker tension, rostered kitchen use, and separate family outings with Mum or Dad, who have separate bedrooms – if they have they have the luxury of a spare room. Otherwise, the living room or dining room becomes a bedsit for one disaffected spouse.
Campbell sees spouses “dreaming up assault charges” against one another as they attempt to get barring orders to force the other out of the house. Usually they get “safety orders”; so when there’s a row, one or both call the gardaí in the hope of gathering evidence for an upgrade to a barring order.
Children become pawns, so “the daughter is on one side of the fence and the son is on the other”.
“The fallout is awful for the children, from the babies up to the teen years, when there’s emotional acting out with drink, self-harm and drugs,” Campbell says.
Many families cannot afford private psychological help, yet the HSE is overburdened so there’s no help there, she says. “These kids are in trouble.”
Tomorrow:
THE DAD’S DEAL
When couples split, it’s usually men who leave the family home. Are dads getting a raw deal – or is the truth more complex?
