These cases happen now in blandly carpeted municipal rooms, and with less fanfare than they did in Sand’s day – she won her case against all odds, only for her husband to kidnap their daughter. But I thought of her when I fought for my children in the dull desolation of the winter of the pandemic, and discovered what it means to subject your capacity for love and care to a legal test likely to leave one parent high on the power of a win and the other traumatised by the vilification that often forms a part of these proceedings.