Gardner v. Gardner

This is an unhappy twist on Dickens’ Christmas Carol. As in Dickens’ story, the worst victims are innocent children. Unlike Dickens’ story, this one has a perverse, insensitive, harsh ending.

The protagonist is Dr. Gardner, a cardiovascular surgeon in West Palm Beach in a group of thirty physicians of varying specialties. He is the father of two talented children, a boy who was 16 and a girl, 14, when the trial court heard the matter. The doctor’s gross income in 1982 was $205,000, when he and his wife of eighteen years entered into a written support agreement, and may have been less in 1983…