Like every divorce attorney, I’ve heard this from time to time.

The truth is, in the average layperson’s mind, if a ruling doesn’t go their way, they often tend to feel that their assigned family court judge is “against them”. But, by definition, most divorce court rulings are going to favor one spouse at the expense of the other.

So, in a sense, most family court rulings will be “against” one spouse or the other. But that doesn’t mean that the divorce court judge is “against” the “losing spouse”. And a spouse isn’t entitled to “swap judges” just because the original family court judge has ruled against him or her.

Judges are required to be impartial and free of bias. But ruling is the very essence of a judge’s duty. True judicial bias is pretty rare.

But not entirely unheard of. Take this case from the UK.

In their divorce, Husband, a very successful business man, was ordered to pay Wife alimony and spousal support.

Husband has allegedly fallen behind in his alimony, on the order of UK £2 million.

The presiding Judge threatens to incarcerate Husband.

Problem is, it does not appear that Husband is willfully non-compliant with the court’s alimony and spousal support order.

Rather, Husband allegedly has cancer and is simply unable to pay the court-ordered alimony. Under such circumstances, if true, of course, incarceration would just not be appropriate.

But Judge apparently refused to hear of it.

A UK appeals court saw the situation differently though and recused the Judge from the case, causing the case to be reassigned to another judge.

Read more in this UK Telegraph news article: ‘Hostile’ divorce judge thrown off case