This is a comment by Rick on the post “How the War on ‘Dead-Beat Dads’ is Hurting Co-Parenting Fathers“.
Rick knows personally of a few cases where the courts are starting to be less biased against men in custody battles. The way the tide turned for some? Seeing examples of meth addicts. What have you noticed in custody battles?
Rick said:
As tragic as this situation is, it’s actually better than it used to be. I personally know of three cases years ago where the father raised the kids full time, still paying full child support (translated ransom) for fear that a trip back to court to get custody would just cost more and may result in the mother actually taking the kids in with her and whatever loser/druggie is currently in the picture.
What’s even more surprising is what actually facilitated the change for the better: meth. Dragging a few examples of people no reasonable human being could possibly believe could be responsible for themselves much less a child allowed some of these courts to begin to see beyond the mother=custody paradigm of this rural community.
There is still a long ways to go for sure.
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Photo credit: Flickr / ryanrocketship
I also look at the department of social services and have read a number of articles on what happens when a single mom ‘loses custody of the kids’. Rarely do they place them with the father, in fact, rarely do they even consider placing them with the father. they will utilize foster parents etc.
Also look at adoption and how the adoption industry uses the law to “get around’ having the father involved, with the state of Utah being the worst example.
Whilst it’s good to see a Dad getting somewhere it dose not fill me with joy that a court needs a string of meth addicts to show that maybe the Mother is, in this case, less compitant than the Father. This is not showing that the court realised the Father is a good choice but that they felt that a clean, loving Father is less bad than a Mother with a string of meth addict parthers (and presumably a drug problem herself).
@Jonathan: Is 50/50 codified in your laws that the starting point is 50/50, if it isn’t the I am sorry but I highly doubt they start with an assumption of 50/50. This is what shared parenting advocates are trying to get done. Start at 50/50 and adjust from there as necessary. This is also what anti shared parenting advocates are trying to prevent. A presumption of shared parenting. They are doing this by claiming (and it has been done on this site a couple of times) that men who want 50/50 are abusive and are using the courts to exact… Read more »
John, I understand your skepticism, but consider the scope of what I said. There are 49 other states besides Wisconsin, and 72 counties, with almost as many county circuit courts, within the state. I can only speak with any credible authority about cases I worked saw in select subset of those courts. (However, these were in many of the state’s urban areas.) I’m not an attorney, and I haven’t kept up with the caselaw. That said, Wisconsin does have a very progressive legal tradition in these matters, and its statutes do essentially codify those assumptions. In Chapter 767, Actions Affecting… Read more »
It proves to the court that you want to be involved, and even if the court does screw you over, your efforts look good to your kids in a few years when they get older and start figuring out what their mother is really all about. I heard too many stories from men who threw in the towel right away because they just knew they’d lose, thereby sealing their own fate with “proof” that they were absentee dads, and that’s sad. I’ll agree that it is important for dads to keep fighting but let’s look at what they are up… Read more »
I worked in a family law office for a few years and saw many custody cases over the years, so I can say with reasonable confidence that most of the Wisconsin circuit courts that we worked with are very fair. If the father shows up and shows sincere interest in his children, they start with a default assumption of joint custody and 50/50 placement. We had quite a few cases in which the father got primary placement of the child when the mother didn’t have her life together enough. Yes, there was a fight in court, but that’s how our… Read more »