Love of the Law

Our wedding on Friday, May 20, 2005. Photo by Sally Steward

Today, Mark and I celebrate our twenty-first wedding anniversary. YAY, us!

Mark and I met in August 2001 in our 1L year at IU-Indianapolis (now called IU McKinney). We were in the evening program, along with a bunch of people who would become our friends, including Julie Ohl and Gil Berry, who are in the photo above (and Sally Steward, who took the photo). When we first met, Mark was married to Patrick's mother, and Pat was just over a month old.

I went to law school because I wanted an advanced degree, and "the law" was this thing that applied to everybody but was like a foreign language only understood by people with special training in it. I wanted to understand it. I was 25 years old and two years out of undergrad at Purdue. I had never been up close to the legal system, and the only lawyer I knew was Ellen Whitt, who was the director of the pre-professional office at Butler, where I worked. I had no idea what a tort or civil procedure was, although I was registered to take both, along with legal analysis, research, and communication.

That evening division class was full of interesting people who had all kinds of work, educational, and life experiences. During that first year, especially, I spent two hours a night, five days a week with this group of people. I saw them more than I saw my parents. Because we were all working during the day, the academic work was important to us, but it wasn't the only thing in our lives. "Law student" was part of my identity, not my whole identity.

I didn't love law school, but I learned to love the legal system and the people who work in it in law school. And during the spring semester of our fourth year, in a legal internship at the Indiana Senate, I found the beginning of my legal career as well as my spouse.

Part of the mandatory fun of that internship was an event that each member of the intern class was invited to attend, along with a date. Although not required, it was made clear to me that I needed to give them a name for my plus one. I was working full time and finishing up law school. Where I was I supposed to find a date?

I turned to my most trusted advisors, a wise pack of female classmates, including Julie, who said, "Hey, didn't Mark Carnell get divorced over the summer?". The trusted advisors did some recon, figured out he was single, and then got me prepped to invite him to the mandatory fun rubber chicken event.

He said yes. We were engaged by Easter, and our wedding was planned for Saturday, August 27, 2005, roughly equidistant between taking the bar exam and finding out the results.

So why were we standing in front of the Honorable Jeff Boles on Friday, May 20, 2005, at 8:00 am, getting married a few hours before my character and fitness interview for the bar exam?

Because of a parenting time dispute with Patrick's mother.

Mark was still a Guardsman, and he had drill on May 21 and 22. At this point in his career, his drill was range control at Camp Atterbury, which meant that he got up on Saturday morning, drove to Atterbury, completed his mission, and then came home that evening. He'd do the same thing on Sunday. He'd done this at least once while we were dating, and he had parenting time with Pat over the weekend. Pat was 3 and still taking a nap in the middle of the day. We'd hang out and have dinner ready for Daddy when he got home. Nobody fussed about it, until this weekend, when Mark was told that Pat was scared of me. Patrick's mother, the self-appointed boss of parenting time, said no go on Mark's parenting time.

Dear reader, I'm not necessarily proud of this, but it is the truth. I was FURIOUS, and I really HATE a bully. Good thing for us that we knew how to research the Indiana Parenting Time Guidelines and case law.

At the time, the legal analysis hinged on two issues. The first was how much time the parent or member of the household was going to actually spend with the child during the parenting time period. The idea was to prioritize parents and members of the household spending time with the child over other childcare providers, like grandparents, aunts, uncles, babysitters, etc. So, if Mark was gone to his drill 8 - 10 of the 24 hours, Patrick's mother had "right of first refusal" for that time, unless there was another qualifying household member.

The definition of "household member" included a spouse. Therefore, if I was Mark's spouse when the parenting time period began, there would be no opportunity for Patrick's mother's right of first refusal. On this occasion, the law worked in our favor.

We figured this out after class on Monday and met my parents to discuss it with them on Tuesday. On Wednesday, I talked with Sally, one of our friends and classmates, about asking her dad, Judge Boles, if he'd marry us before Friday evening at 5 pm. She connected us, and he told me he'd be happy to do it if we could be in his courtroom at 8:00 am on Friday. (He was an official at IMS, so he needed to be in Speedway at the track. Afterall, it was May in central Indiana!)

Mark and I walked to the Marion County Clerk's office over our lunch hour on Thursday and got our marriage license. (I will never forget the deputy clerk saying, "Be good to each other" as she handed us our license.)

And on Friday morning, in a ceremony that lasted a few moments, Mark and I were legally married in front of our law school classmates -- Julie, Gil, and Sally -- and my parents, brother, and sister-in-law.

On Friday at 11:00 am, I sat across from a lawyer who had reviewed my bar application and answered questions about the speeding tickets I'd collected in my youth while Mark sipped coffee in the lobby.

On Friday at 5:00 pm, we presented proof of our marriage to Patrick's mother as we picked up Pat for his weekend with us. A little after that, we arrived at Gil and Beth's for a delightful dinner that they hosted to celebrate our marriage.

All of this made possible by the legal system and everyone who works in it.

Over the past 21 years, my love for Mark has deepened, along with my respect and love for the legal system we both serve and all those who serve with us.

This is what fuels Thought Kitchen's work and why I'm passionate about sharing tools and practices to support everyone who works in the legal system. Afterall, it affects real people's lives every single day.

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