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A
family law
lawyer from I
was finishing a very contentious collaborative
divorce. The husband and
wife
had been married almost 20 years and the marriage
ended badly with a
lot of
discord but they shared a commitment to co-parenting
their children. It
was not
the lovey-dovey case that most people imagine
collaborative divorces to
be, but
they worked very hard and we came up with a deal that
suited both of
them. We
gathered for the signing ceremony and were waiting for
the notary to
arrive.
Someone suggested that we ought to sit and have a beer
while we waited
and our
host happened to have some in the fridge. The husband
and wife decided
they
didn’t want a whole beer and decided to share one. It
was an intimate
moment
that seemed to bring back memories of many times
shared. The notary
arrived,
the papers were signed. As we stood up to leave, the
husband and wife
looked at
each other and hugged. As they held each other, he
tenderly petted her
hair and
each thanked the other for everything that had worked
in their marriage
and for
working so hard to come to agreement. For
a Springfield, Missouri, lawyer a peak experience that
came to mind was
at the
conclusion of a guardianship proceeding involving a
female patient in
the adult
psychiatric unit in a hospital that she represented: Her
partner was unable to care for her any longer, as he
was very ill. Our
patient
was not safe to leave the hospital without a guardian,
as she was
severely
mentally ill, and could not be relied upon to take her
prescribed
medications
on her own. Thankfully, the court appointed the public
administrator to
serve
as this patient’s guardian. As I was leaving the
courthouse that day,
the
patient’s long-term partner approached me with tears
in his eyes. He
was frail
and very thin, and was coughing up blood into his
handkerchief. He told
me that
he was dying of AIDS and that he could no longer take
care of his
beloved. He
had managed her medications for many years, but his
doctor told him
that he
would die very soon, so he decided it was time to find
someone else to
take
care of her. He took my hand, looked into my eyes, and
thanked me for
obtaining
a guardian for his one true love. He explained that he
could now die in
peace
because he knew she would be taken care of. |