- Aristotle once said that our children hold our future in their hands.
- For this reason, society has given wide discretion to the Courts to intervene on the childrens’ behalf to ensure that their needs are being met through child support (financial) and custody (non-financial).
- Children, as with adults, are complex multi-dimensional beings. Researchers like Abraham Maslow created models like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to understand the inter-dependency between the various types of needs. He defined five tiers (Physiological, Safety (Financial and Emotional), Belongingness and Love, Esteem, and Self-Actualization.
- For children, it is even more important that their needs at various tiers are met because the abundance of one need (like financial) cannot offset the lack of another need (like emotional). Therefore, it is very important to evaluate the needs of children them in that context.
- Children rely upon the healthy and stable relationships with their parents in order to adjust to changes. When these relationships are disrupted because the parents are unable to adjust to the changes in family dynamics like divorce, the consequences on the children can last a lifetime. There have been multiple articles written about the effects of divorce on children.