When her estranged husband Joseph Reyes had their 3-year-old daughter baptized in the Catholic Church without telling her, Rebecca Shapiro of Chicago filed for temporary restraining order.  She claimed that this could result in harm to the child.

A family law judge issued the order prohibiting Reyes from “exposing his daughter to any other religion other than the Jewish religion during his visitation” for 30 days.  Reyes defied the court order and took his daughter to a Chicago church with news cameras rolling.  Shapiro asked the court to find him in contempt and sentence him to jail for up to six months.

Father’s rights lawyers will be watching this case because the father contends that a court shouldn’t be deciding a child’s religious practices.

“I have found that the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.” – Harry S. Truman

Lisa Belkin of the New York Times Magazine writes that more fathers are getting custody in divorces.

“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.

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.”

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.

A Florida man, known only as CA in court records, had his parental rights to his daughter, now 13 years old, terminated.  That was because he was a crack addict and the state had placed the girl with foster parents who wanted to adopt her.

CA appealed the decision.  Before the Court of Appeal ruled, CA was hit by a car and died.  There may be a wrongful death suit by the deceased father’s estate.  With parental rights terminated, the daughter would not be entitled to share in any recovery.

The Court of Appeal has ordered the Trial Judge to reconsider.

“Even if the final judgment (severing C.A.’s rights was) soundly based and affirmed, it may not now be in the best interests of the child to do so,” says the Court of Appeal.

More details at Better Dad Dead by Miami Herald Reporter Carol Marbin Miller.

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.

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.”

David Rembert tried his divorce case against Angela Rembert and got joint legal custody of his two children.  But the judge also gave him primary physical custody and final decision making authority on all matters involving the children including the school they attend, membership in organizations, and other extracurricular activities.

Angela appealed contending that the order didn’t really grant joint legal custody because it gave David final decision making authority.

The Supreme Court of Georgia noted the joint custody statute provided that the judge may designate one parent to have sole power to make certain decisions.

Angela also complained that the decision to award primary physical custody to David was wrong because she was equally fit to be a parent.  The court noted that Angela had a romantic involvement with a married man prior to filing for divorce and said she intended to marry him after her divorce.  She also planned to be a full-time student.  She borrowed $43,000 from David to buy a car after the separation.  And she threatened the life of a neighbor.

David, on the other hand, intended to stay in the marital home, and was seeking a transfer from his job as a pilot to be a trainer with a more regular schedule.  The appeals court said this was ample support for the decision of the trial court and affirmed the decision.

Rembert v. Rembert, Case No. S08F1582, Georgia Supreme Court (Decided March 23, 2009)

Pasqualino Cornelio of Toronto, Canada, married Anciolina Cornelio and they had twins.  They separated in 1998 and Pasqualino began making child support payments.

Recently, Anciolina sought to reduce his time with the twins and increase his child support.  Pasqualino retaliated by have a DNA test.  Guess what.  He was not the biological father of the twins.

Pasqualino claimed he was the victim of misrepresentation and fraud.  He demanded termination of child support and reimbursement of the tens of thousands of dollars he has paid over the years.

But there was no other father to step in and take his place.  “Ms. Cornelio denies knowledge of who the twins’ biological father might be,” the Judge said. “In fact, she claims to have no memory of an extramarital affair preceding their birth, which she attributes to the medication she was taking at the time.”

So, the court decided that because Pasqualino “was the only father the twins knew during the course of the marriage,” he could neither stop paying child support nor recover past child support.

“While the failure of Ms. Cornelio to disclose to her husband the fact that she had an extramarital affair and that the twins might not be his biological children may well have been a moral wrong against Mr. Cornelio, it is a wrong that does not afford him a legal remedy to recover child support he has already paid, and that does not permit him to stop paying child support,” wrote Judge Katherine van Rensburg on Dec. 22, 2008.

Source:  National Post