Mishcon de Reya, a law firm in London, England, has completed a study in which 2000 parents and 2000 children involved in divorce were interviewed.  According to the London Times, the findings were:

• one in three children permanently loses touch with a parent, usually the father, after the divorce.
• one in five parents said that their primary objective during separation was to make the experience as unpleasant as possible for their former spouse.
• one in five of the children said that they felt used by their parents.
• One in three of the children said they felt isolated and lonely.
• Half of parents said that they had been to court to fight over residential custody arrangements despite knowing it made matters worse for their children.

“The adversarial, blame-focused system is polarising parents and prevents them thinking forward about the long-term interests of their children,” says Sandra Davis, head of the family division at the law firm.  “As a result the courts are drowning, trying to sort out what are fundamentally behavioural and family issues, with lawyers being drawn into disputes over what time a child is picked up from school.”

Parents are rightly concerned about vaccinations for their children to prevent the swine flu (H1N1) or the seasonal flu.  These are medical decisions.  If you have joint legal custody with a co-parent, then vaccination ought to be agreed upon by both parents.

“Legal custody” carries with it the right and obligation to make long range decisions involving education, religious training, discipline, medical care, and other matters of major significance concerning the child’s life and welfare. “Joint legal custody” means that both parents have an equal voice in making those decisions, and neither parent’s rights are superior to the other. In any child custody case, the paramount concern is the best interest of the child.  Taylor v. Taylor, 306 Md. 290, 508 A.2d 964. (1986).

If you disagree, you may want to speak together with your pediatrician or a mediator, and try to come to an agreement together.  Thanks to Kysa Crusco for bring this up on her blog.  Here is the latest flu news in Maryland.

Does your ex alienate the children from you when they are with her?  Here’s an example of a provision that should be in your Parenting Plan to prevent that.

“Each parent (and any subsequent spouse) will refrain from exercising undue influence over the child with regard to the other parent, criticizing the other parent in the presence of the child, inducing the child to challenge the authority of the other parent, or encouraging the child to request a change of custody or to resist visitation. Neither parent will interrogate the child about the other parent.”

TLC said on Tuesday that “Jon & Kate Plus 8″ will be renamed “Kate Plus 8″ due to recent changes in family dynamics.

On Thursday, octodad, Jon Gosselin told Larry King,”The reason I don’t think it’s healthy for them is that we’re going through a divorce right now, and I don’t think it should be televised and I think my kids should be taken off the show.”

“They’re 5 and 8 now; let them experience a normal childhood,” he said.

Gosselin’s lawyer predicts  no judge would ever “subject the children to the show if the father believes it’s detrimental.”

It sounds like a legal maneuver to me.  I think Gosselin and his lawyer will have to explain to a judge why it was ok for the children to be televised for the last four years and now it is not.  And the show is the income source for the family.

“Who is your son’s teacher?” one of the moms at the bus stop asked me this morning.

While my wife has been busy being the PTA president, buying school supplies and clothes, and meeting the teachers, I have been working to pay for my kid’s food, clothing, shelter and future college tuition.

So I tell her, “I don’t know.  You’ll have to ask my wife.”

But I feel guilty about this.  It reminds me of the infamous Woody Allen deposition.  Woody couldn’t name his children’s teachers, favorite pajamas, shoe sizes or best friends.  In giving custody to Mia Farrow, the judge found that Woody was an uninterested parent.

Next time someone asks me, I’m going to know the answer to questions like these.

A deposition is part of the discovery process in a custody trial.  Your spouse’s lawyer gets to ask you a lot of questions, some rude or embarrassing, at his or her office, in front of a stenographer who is taking everything down to be used against you at trial.  You are in the hot seat and it may take all day.

The lawyer has usually done this hundreds of times and knows a lot of tricks, trips and traps.  And the lawyer gets to ask the questions.  You have to answer them.

Here is the number one thing I tell my clients before their deposition.  Repeat the question in the form of a declaration, pause, and finish the sentence.  Put a period at the end of it and then stop talking.  Wait for the next question.

So the lawyer asks, “Where were you on the night of August the 7th of this year?”

You say, “On August the 7th of this year…I was at work.”

This approach has several benefits.  It gives you time to think.  It keeps you focused on the question asked.  It keeps you from talking too much.  It keeps you from guessing.  It keeps you calm.  And it might keep you from saying something that can be used against you at trial.

Caryn Tamber tells the story in the Maryland Daily Record of Marius Aydanian and Antonina Aydanian, both of Bulgaria, who met when they were seeking political asylum in the United States.  They were granted asylum, married and moved to Indianapolis.  In 1998, Antonina enrolled in the Ph.D. program at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland.  Marius stayed in Indianapolis.  Antonina gave birth to their son.  In 2005, she obtained a Bulgarian divorce.

Marius was able to obtain a visitation order in the U.S. for two days a month and the summers.  However, Antonina sent the boy to Bulgaria for two summers in a row.

Marius filed suit in Montgomery County, Maryland, for intentional interference with visitation.  On July 1, 2009, after two and a half days of trial, the jury returned a verdict for Marius in the amount of $23,000.

In a 2008 case, Khalifa et al. v. Shannon, the Maryland Court of Appeals upheld a $3 million verdict in favor of a father for interference with visitation when his ex-wife and mother-in-law took their two children to Egypt.

Jill Brooke has written an interesting blog at Parental Rights claiming that divorce makes dads better parents in some cases.

She says that, with married couples, sometimes the mom is the center of all children related activities.

However, when timesharing becomes rationed in a divorce, then dad gets more valued one on one time with the children.

She also credits technology, like cellphones, Facebook and videoconferencing, with allowing non-custodial dads to interact more with their children.

“Ever since I was born, Daddy has been the best father you could ever imagine. And I just wanted to say I love him so much,”  – Paris Katherine Jackson, ll year old daughter of Michael Jackson.

Get ready for the custody fight now for Paris and her two brothers, Prince Michael, 12, and Prince Michael II, seven, also known as “Blanket”.

The children are in the temporary custody of Katherine Jackson, Michael’s mother, who is 79 years old, as requested in Michael’s Will.

However, Debbie Rowe, the biological mother of the two oldest children, says she intends to seek custody of all three children.  She gave up her parental rights to the children in her divorce from Michael Jackson in 2003, in which she received $8.5 million dollars as a settlement.  Jakson’s Will left nothing to Rowe, but if she does get custody, she would be guardian of the children’s inheritance while they are minors.

Joan and Jack, two venerable divorce lawyers, bumped into each other while having coffee in the café close to the courthouse.  They greeted each other effusively and sat down at a table together putting their legal files on empty chairs.

“I’ve got this tough case,” said Jack.  “My client is the mother and she wants the father to have no visitation at all.  The father will settle for nothing other than 50 percent of the time with the children.”

“So what are you going to do?” asked Joan.

“I’m going to tell the father that he has a career to worry about.  And he is going to want to have a social life.  There is no better baby sitter than the mother.  I’m going to try to talk him into less than 50 percent.”

“I’ve got another idea,” said Joan.

“What is it?”

“Tell the mother to let him have the children 50 percent of the time.  Lot’s of fathers idealize about custody of the children.  But once they try to juggle a career with the demands of little children, they find it is no easy task.  After a couple of weeks, he will be asking the mother to spend more time with the children.”

“Not bad,” said Jack, “For that salutary advice, I’ll buy you a doughnut.”