An eight-year-old girl appeared in court as her mother’s lawyer. No one expected that her words would change everything forever.
Lucía Esperanza Morales was only eight years old when she decided she would become her own mother’s defender. Not because she had seen it on television, nor because someone had suggested the idea.
She decided this on Monday morning, October 15, as she was eating her cereal at the kitchen table and heard her mother crying in the bathroom for the third time that week. Carmen Morales came out of the bathroom with red, swollen eyes, trying to smile so she wouldn’t worry her daughter. But Lucía had already learned how to read the signs: when her mother stayed in the bathroom too long in the morning, when she whispered on the phone, when she hid important documents in a shoebox under the bed… something serious was happening.
“Mom, why are you sad again?” Lucía asked, setting her spoon back into the bowl.
Her hair was tied in two perfectly neat pigtails that Carmen had made with great care, and her school uniform was clean and neatly ironed. Despite all her troubles, Carmen never allowed her daughter to appear neglected.
“I’m not sad, sweetheart. I just have a little headache,” Carmen lied as she leaned in to kiss her forehead. “Come on now, or you’ll be late for school.”
But Lucía wasn’t like other children. Very early on, she had shown an intelligence that surprised her teachers and, in some ways, worried her mother. Not because intelligence was a flaw, but because Lucía noticed things a child her age shouldn’t notice. She understood adult conversations, sensed family tensions, and had a photographic memory that allowed her to recall every detail of important moments.
That same morning, after Carmen dropped her off at school, Lucía couldn’t concentrate in class. During recess, instead of playing with her friends, she sat under the mango tree in the courtyard and began to think. She had heard her father shouting on the phone the night before. She had seen her mother hiding papers. She had noticed they had not slept in the same room for two months.
“Lucía, aren’t you coming to play with us?” her best friend Isabela asked, approaching with a group of girls skipping rope.
“I’m thinking,” Lucía replied with the seriousness of an adult. “My mom has problems, and I have to help her.”
“What kind of problems?”
“Grown-up problems. But I’m going to solve them.”
The other girls laughed, thinking Lucía was pretending to be an adult, but she wasn’t pretending at all. In her eight-year-old mind, a plan was forming. If her mother had legal troubles, she needed a lawyer. And if they didn’t have the money to hire one, then Lucía would become that lawyer herself.
That afternoon, when Carmen came to pick her up from school, Lucía bombarded her with questions.
“Mom, what does a lawyer do?”
Carmen looked at her, surprised, as they walked toward the bus stop.
“Why are you asking me that, sweetheart?”
“Just curious.”
“Well… a lawyer is someone who helps people when they have legal problems, when they need to defend themselves in court or protect their rights.”
“And how do you become a lawyer?”
“You have to study a lot, sweetheart. Many years at university. It’s really hard.”
Lucía nodded but said no more. In her mind, she was already planning how to study and become a lawyer as quickly as possible.
That evening, after dinner, while Carmen was washing the dishes, Lucía went to her mother’s bedroom. She knew the important documents were in the shoebox under the bed. And although she knew she wasn’t supposed to look through adult things, she felt she needed to understand what was happening. Carefully, she pulled out the box and opened it.
Inside, she found papers she didn’t fully understand, but certain words jumped out at her: custody, divorce, hearing, family court.
There was also a letter from a lawyer addressed to her mother, stating that she had to appear at a hearing the following Friday. Lucía’s heart raced. Her father wanted to take custody away from her mother. That meant someone wanted to separate them.
Quickly, she memorized all the important information: the court’s name, the date of the hearing, the name of her father’s lawyer. Then she put everything back exactly as she had found it.
When Carmen entered the room to get something, she found Lucía sitting on the edge of the bed, her expression unusually serious.
“What are you doing here, sweetheart? Shouldn’t you be doing your homework?”
“Mom… Dad wants to take custody away from you.”
Carmen felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach.
“What do you know about that?”
“I know the hearing is on Friday. I know Dad has a lawyer. And I know you don’t have money to hire one.”
Carmen sat heavily on the bed, feeling defeated.
“Lucía, those are adult matters. You shouldn’t worry about them.”
“But if they want to separate me from you, then yes, I should worry.”
Tears began to stream down Carmen’s face. For months, she had been fighting the divorce process started by Roberto, her ex-husband.
