One of the reviews on a Battlestar Galactica CD at Amazon.com is from a woman who says it ruined her marriage.

Her husband became obsessed with the television show, then went onto websites, Twitter, Skype, listening to podcasts, texting and chatting about the show.  Finally he went to a Battlestar Galactica convention in Texas and now lives with a woman he met on the website.  She says he forgot all about his wife, children, family, home and job.

They are now involved in a bitter divorce.  This can’t be good for his custody and visitation case.

The court also ruled that the father would have Christmas and Easter holidays with the child and the mother would have the Jewish holidays.

But Reyes still faces contempt sanctions for taking his daughter to church in violation of a previous court order.

If you post your thoughts on Facebook, you may be giving the other side a roadmap for your case.  Do you want your spouse and his or her counsel to know what you are thinking and what your strategy is?

If you make angry statements about your spouse, you may be stepping in wet concrete.  The other side can use these statements in court to attack your credibility if you say something different.  Or to show the judge what kind of person you are if the statements are unreasonable.

The solution is to keep this in mind.  The first thing your spouse’s attorney will do after signing the retainer, is print out all your Facebook posts to use against you at trial.

During visitation, the daughter would spend some time with Darryl, his wife, her half siblings and some time with Darryl’s new girlfriend and the new girlfriend’s son.  Emma was opposed to her daughter being exposed to such behavior and asked the court to require supervised visitation.

The trial judge threw the case out with a brief decision, “Your application to modify visitation and [for] supervised visitation is denied.  Thank you very much. Have a pleasant holiday.”

While the Appellate Court said the trial judge should have explained his decision better, Emma had brought this objection up in previous hearings and had not shown a change in circumstances had occurred that would justify changing visitation to supervised.

Read more at New Jersey Family Law.

by the Zac Brown Band

I ride east every other Friday but if I had it my way
The day would not be wasted on this drive
And I want so bad to hold you
So much things I haven’t told you
Your mom and me couldn’t get along
So I’ll drive
And I think about my life
And wonder why, that I slowly die inside.

Sean’s step father and maternal grandmother in Brazil said they “will not pursue any more legal channels” and will obey the order.

The Brazilian family will obey the order and “will not pursue any more legal channels,” an aide to a lawyer told the Associated Press.  Another appeal would have meant delays until February at least.  If all goes smoothly tomorrow, David will return with Sean to the US after a five year custody battle for his son.

Read More.

But the boy’s stepfather filed a writ of habeas corpus in the Supreme Court of Brazil which was granted.  The order prevents Sean from leaving Brazil until a hearing can be held for him to express his own wishes.

According to this report, the hearing may not be held until February.

Buran Bianchi, Goldman’s wife, took Sean to her native Brazil in 2004 for a vacation and never returned.  She divorced Goldman and then remarried.  Goldman started legal proceedings for the return of his son when she unexpectedly died.  Sean has lived with his stepfather since then, Joao Paulo Lins e Silva, who has battled Goldman for custody for over five years.

Goldman and his lawyers are bracing for another appeal.  President Obama, Congress and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton have all urged return of the child to Goldman.

More here.

“There are now 2.2 million divorced women in the United States who do not have primary physical custody of their children,” she says, “and an estimated 50 percent of fathers who seek such custody in a disputed divorce are granted it.”

She attributes some of this to the recession.  More men are being laid off than women, and for the first time in history, women are about to outnumber men in the American workforce.

She predicts that the percentage of fathers with primary custody will likely increase, as social views about parenting continue to change.