This is about fathers’ rights law, and protecting the best interests of your children. It provides information, news and comments on laws, cases and strategies for life as a single father and winning your custody, access or child support case.
Carlos J. Phillips says don’t make these top three mistakes men make after divorce.
#1 – Rush back to the altar too soon
#2 – Become the town playboy now that you are single
#3 – Introduce your children to the new woman in your life way too soon.
Best interests of the child is the test for determining custody. But what does that mean? It means whatever the judge decides it means. Every judge sees it differently. Judges are not all knowing and all wise. They are in fact human beings. They see their cases through their own filters.
1. No Easy Answer.
“There is no litmus paper test that provides a quick and relatively easy answer to custody matters.”
2. Ambiguous Factors.
“Present methods for determining a child’s best interests are time-consuming, involve a multitude of intangible factors that ofttimes are ambiguous.”
3. Judge as Fortune Teller.
“The fact finder is called upon to evaluate the child’s life chances in each of the homes competing for custody and then to predict with whom the child will be better off in the future.”
4. Best Interests = Best Guess.
“At the bottom line, what is in the child’s best interests equals the fact finder’s best guess.”
All the quotes are from Montgomery County v. Sanders, 38 Md. App. 406, 381 A.2d 1154 (1977)
The law firm of Cordell and Cordell has published a free app for iPhone and iPad called Men’s Divorce Source Lite.
The screen shot shows Goals and articles on Advice, Child Custody, Finances, Parental Alienation, Child Support and Alimony.
GizMagazine.Com has a description and screen shots of other handy divorce apps that, for a nominal cost, can help with your divorce.
42-year-old Anthony Morelli, of Pennsylvania, set up a blog in 2007 to chronicle the details of his divorce and custody battle with Allison. He called it Thepyschoexwife.com. Since then it has attracted more than 200,000 followers a month, many of them venting about their exes as well.
Family Court Judge Diane Gibbons, however, took a dim view of the blog, especially since the couple has two sons, ages 10 and 12. She ordered Morelli to shut down the site.
In its place, Morelli has set up Savethepyschoexwife.com, to raise legal fees to challenge the judge’s ruling on freedom of speech grounds. He has already received over $5,000 in contributions.
Arnold Schwarzenegger does not agree that he should have to pay alimony or attorney fees for Maria Shriver according to divorce pleadings filed by his attorney in response to her complaint for divorce.
The pleadings may not make much difference if the couple settles out of court.
Both parties are asking the court for joint custody of their sons, age 17 and 13. Child support will also have to be addressed in the settlement.
Source: Bakersfieldnow.com
Dorene and Richard Ward of Georgia were divorced in March of 2007 and Richard was awarded primarily physical custody of the parties’ two children.
In 2008, Dorene filed an action to obtain sole custody of the children. She lost and the court amended her visitation to provide that she “shall not have any overnight male guests while the minor children are present.”
Dorene appealed contending that this provision was overbroad, because on its face it prohibits her from having her father, a brother, a new spouse, or even the children’s father spend the night at her house while the minor children are present.
The appeals court agreed. It said a trial court has discretion to place restrictions on custodial parents’ behavior that will harm their children. While the trial court could limit visitation if it finds that the children would be adversely affected if any boyfriends of Dorene spent the night with her, the restriction against “any overnight male guests” would prohibit Dorene from having visitors with whom she has no romantic relationship and for whom the record does not support a finding of any harmful effect on her children.
Ward v. Ward, No. S11A0437 (Georgia Supreme Court, May 31, 2011)
In a new study at Arizona State University, researchers gave three hypothetical child custody cases to participants and asked them to be the judge.
In one case vignette, the mother was the primary care giver 75 percent of the time. In another, the father, and in a third they divided child care equally. In each case, neither parent wanted equal custody, but were each requesting as much living time with the children as possible because each now genuinely feels the children would be better off mostly in their care and not so much in the care of the other parent.
Surprisingly, most decided that timesharing should be equally divided in all three cases. However, when asked how a real judge would decide, most said that the mother would get more time with the children than the father. This indicates that the public perception is that courts are unfairly biased toward the mother in custody cases.
Patricia and Michael Martin met in 2002 and were married in 2004. Shortly after their son was born in 2007, Patricia discovered that Michael was having an affair.
Patricia filed for divorce in New Hampshire and asked the court to let her relocate with the son to Rhode Island where her parents lived. The court said no and she appealed.
New Hampshire law provides that the parent seeking permission to relocate bears the initial burden of demonstrating, by a preponderance of the evidence, that (a) The relocation is for a legitimate purpose; and (b) The proposed location is reasonable in light of that purpose.
Patricia argued that her legitimate reason for wanting to relocate was her needs for emotional and financial support from her Rhode Island family.
However, the court noted she had a full time job in New Hampshire, and no comparable job prospects in Rhode Island. As for the emotional support, Patricia’s counseling records indicated that she did not have a strong relationship with her parents in the past. The court found that the primary reason Patricia wanted to move was to avoid interaction with the father and to get away from him.
In re Martin, No. 2009-556, (New Hampshire Supreme Court, August 19, 2010)
House Bill 1132, if passed, would establish a presumption in favor of joint custody for children in Maryland. The Judiciary Committee of the Maryland House of Delegates is considering the bill, which would add the following as Section 9-109 to the Maryland Family Law Article:
IN AN INITIAL CHILD CUSTODY PROCEEDING, WHETHER PENDENTE LITE OR PERMANENT, INVOLVING THE PARENTS OF A CHILD, THERE IS A REBUTTABLE PRESUMPTION THAT:
(1) JOINT LEGAL CUSTODY IS IN THE BEST INTEREST OF THE CHILD; AND
(2) PHYSICAL CUSTODY TO EACH PARENT FOR APPROXIMATELY EQUAL PERIODS OF TIME IS IN THE BEST INTEREST OF THE CHILD.
Similar bills have failed before, but they are always hotly debated with strong advocates on either side. I’m not sure it really makes that much difference in the end in litigation. With or without the presumption, the judge still decides whether custody should be joint or sole with one parent or the other, based on what the judge thinks is in the best interest of the child. In settlement negotiations, however, it might replace “every other weekend” as a starting position.
Many times we see agreements or decrees that say the parents have joint legal custody and the mother (or the father) has physical custody of the children.
Legal custody is about long term parenting decisions, such as the education, health and religion of the children. Joint legal custody means the parents are to make those decisions together. Both have an equal vote and each has a veto power.
Physical custody means where the child resides most of the time. The other parent has visitation or access or timesharing. Each parent has care and custody of the child when they are with them, and can make day to day parenting decisions alone.
Here’s where legal world and real world part company. In the legal world, long term decisions are required to be made by agreement. But in the real world, if mom decides on her own to make Dr. A their pediatrician, dad usually doesn’t object. If dad does object, his only recourse is to take mom back to court and that usually costs more money than it is worth.
So sometimes, joint legal custody and primary physical custody ends up being, as a practical matter, the same as sole legal custody.
