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Ontario Court Judge Sheilagh O’Connell delivered her exquisitely fair decision in the decade-long and “very high-conflict” child custody case on Dec. 22.

Then, inshallah, perhaps for the holidays she was able to retreat into the zany confines of a ordinarily dysfunctional family, if not her own, then a rented one.

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The case is called D.J. and S.F. The litigation is, like the child at the centre of it, more than 11 years old; it began when he was but a baby of a few weeks.

In the end, and this isn’t intended to diminish the wisdom of the judge’s decision but rather to illuminate the sheer lunacy that is the norm in the family courts, she concluded, guess what?

Neither parent is perfect. Both have “parenting deficits”.

In the modern lexicon, she saw them as they really are.

The artist/musician father is a little haphazard and sometimes downright irresponsible, but fun and spontaneous. The successful mother is highly structured and tightly controlling, but reliable and dependable. A kid needs some of both; this boy loves both of them, different as they are.