Free Republic

Since before the election in the Spring that turned Labor out of office in favor of a Conservative/Liberal Democratic government, British voters have been promised a thoroughgoing reevaluation of family law. Begun under the Brown government, the review of family law has been largely cloaked in mystery. But last week, Lord Justice Wall, President of the Family Division gave a speech to the organization Families Need Fathers that sketched the outlines of the coming changes, and many news outlets picked up on his remarks. But most of those were at best suggestive and, as is so often the case, reporters...

The war on fathers’ rights in adoption proceedings continues and fathers are starting to win a few battles, like the one described in this article (Toledo Blade, 9/24/10) and this Ohio Supreme Court opinion (Leagle, 7/22/10). Benjamin Wyrembek had a brief affair with a married woman. She became pregnant in 2007 and, along with her husband, decided to place the child for adoption. Wyrembek had no way of knowing if the child was his or not and possibly neither did the woman, although neither the article nor the opinion says. But he timely filed his claim of paternity with the...

I’ve written before about the fact that both mothers and fathers experience the same hormonal bonding to their children both before and after birth. Now, Lisa Belkin at the New York Times brings to our attention a new study of the nonapeptide oxytocin that seems to play a role in both mother-child and father-child bonding post-partum. Read about it here (New York Times, 9/2/10). A little background. Mammals, as we know, are born immature. They therefore require long periods of care by their parents (or someone), in order to grow to adulthood. Without that nurturing and protection they’d die very...

The sins of child protective agencies are many, and many have detailed them at length. I’ve tossed my hat in that ring on occasion. Mostly, CPS agencies tend to over-interfere in families. I recently ran a piece based on a blog in the New York Times written by attorney Chris Gottlieb. She’s an attorney whose largely thankless job it is to try to defend parents targeted by CPS. Most of her clients are poor, and they find themselves criticized for infractions as bizarre as feeding the child Chinese take-out and allowing it to play in a sprinkler. What Gottlieb didn’t...

How many times have you heard or read the phrase “the best interests of the child?” If you read much about family law and family courts, the probable answer is “more times than I can count.” Indeed, establish a Google Alert for the phrase and you’ll get links to several articles, court cases, op-eds, etc. a day, every day of the week. In Canada the “best interests of the child” has been raised by the Supreme Court to a level of importance that trumps even constitutional considerations. So, with the phrase in such common usage and so vital to custody...

I’ve written a fair amount on parental alienation and parental alienation syndrome (PAS) or parental alienation disorder (PAD). I’ve said before that I’m in no way qualified to give an opinion about whether the behavioral changes displayed by an alienated child fit the American Psychiatric Association’s definition of a discrete syndrome or disorder. But what I do know is that certain parents attempt to alienate children from the other parent and that that effort can result in personality changes in the child. Now here’s an excellent overview of the matter that lay people like me can understand (The Colorado Lawyer,...

Here’s yet another piece that lauds equality between mothers and fathers in childrearing, but uses some very questionable “facts” and figures to do it (Chicago Tribune, 8/20/10). The writer, Alexa Aguilar, wants to think of her marriage as non-traditional enough that both partners work and both do childcare. But she notices that, when push comes to shove, she’s more likely to control childcare and housework while her husband does the more traditionally male tasks around the house. She even refers to herself as the “gatekeeper,” and I wonder if she knows about the social science that refers to mothers’ control...

(1) Parenting time shall be granted in accordance with the best interests of the child. It is presumed to be in the best interests of a child for the child to have a strong relationship with both of his or her parents. Except as otherwise provided in this section, parenting time shall be granted to a parent in a frequency, duration, and type reasonably calculated to promote a strong relationship between the child and the parent granted parenting time…(3) A child has a right to parenting time with a parent unless it is shown on the record by clear and...

Last year, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Germany’s law requiring the mother’s approval for a single father to be granted parental rights violated the European Union’s charter prohibiting discrimination. Now Germany’s highest court has followed suit declaring the scheme unconstitutional. Read about it here (Der Spiegel, 8/4/10). As things have stood to date, a single man who fathered a child had to apply to the government for parental rights which were only granted if the mother signed off on them. Radically discriminatory as that system was, it somehow lasted until now. The government is now at work...

One of my first jaw-dropping experiences in the fathers’ rights arena came back in 1999. I was researching the phenomenon of men who had learned after the fact - and sometimes long after the fact - that they’d fathered a child. I was interested in what happened to their parental rights if a mother kept a man’s child secret from him. I was astonished to learn that the rights of such a dad could vanish into thin air. The rule in many states was that, since he hadn’t actively cared for the child, he had no more claim to it....

At least in Germany they admit it. In 2003, Harshad, a British citizen of Indian descent, had a baby daughter with his German girlfriend. Knowing nothing of Germany’s idiosyncratic custody laws, Harshad went along with his girlfriend’s suggestion that they skip the laborious process of registering joint custody. It wasn’t until the couple split that Harshad discovered the enormity of that choice. “I had no idea it would cause so many problems,” said Harshad, a 44-year-old IT professional. “My ex-girlfriend had said, ‘It’s nothing to worry about; from the paperwork point of view, it’s far easier not to do it,...

This case out of the Ohio Supreme Court does little but suggests much (Leagle, 7/22/10). Reading the court’s dicta, i.e. the verbal embroidery with which it decorates its actual holding, fathers’ rights in adoption cases just got a huge boost. Back in July 2005, Susan Tuttle gave birth to a child. She was married to Jeremy Tuttle at the time and his name was placed on the birth certificate. The court’s recitation of facts leaves us to guess at just how and why certain events transpired, but, a month later, DNA testing on the baby had been performed. It showed...

Here it is 2010. It’s been over 20 years since the McMartin Preschool, Fells Acres and other scandals sent innocent people to prison for sexual abuse of children that never took place. The primary weapon used against them was the manner in which children were induced to make up fictional abuse and then testify to it in court. Essentially, adults questioning the children were so imbued with the righteousness of their cause that they ignored the children’s persistent answers that no abuse had occurred. Through relentless suggestive and leading questioning, the adults got the answers they wanted. And what they...

Doss said the birth mother signed an affidavit stating that she didn’t know the identity of the birth father. “That was what she signed and what we believed,” she said. Several weeks later, she learned that Mills had filed a brief in court claiming to be the father. “We didn’t know if that were true or if he wanted custody,” she said. “The birth mother was adamant he wasn’t the father. It wasn’t until the end of September that we got the result of the DNA testing.” And so began the heart-rending case of a little girl she named Vanessa,...

Massachusetts HB 1400 will be voted on in committee soon, perhaps as early as July 13th. It would establish a presumption of equally shared parenting in case of divorce or separation. If a judge deviated from an equally shared arrangement, he/she would have to write an opinion detailing the reasons for ordering unequal parenting. This article is a pretty balanced view of the subject on the part of a paper that’s on record as opposing the bill (Boston Globe, 7/5/10). Full disclosure: the article quotes Dr. Ned Holstein who is a board member of Fathers & Families as am I....

The French parliament has approved a law that makes psychological violence a criminal offence. Not only is “psychological violence” a criminal offense, it’s now punishable by as much as a 75,000 euro fine and three years in prison. Read about the new law here (BBC, 6/24/10). The law is gender-neutral on its face, but the article readily admits that it was passed to protect women. What is “psychological violence” other than a serious misuse of language? It’s defined as, “repeated acts which could be constituted by words or other machinations, to degrade one’s quality of life and cause a change...

"Given the unusual facts of this case, and recognizing the inherent, equitable rights of biological parents who are deprived of parenting through no fault of their own, the grant of joint custody to Trevor cannot prevent Cahill from going forward with his paternity action." That’s the Supreme Court of Kentucky writing in this case (Leagle, 6/17/10). Let me repeat the key words: “recognizing the inherent, equitable rights of biological parents who are deprived of parenting through no fault of their own…” Let me be clear; those words have the power to blaze trails into the law governing paternity fraud and...

Wrath of a woman scorned? You betcha! It took Tonya Craft less than two weeks to sue her accusers - all of them - after she was acquitted on all counts of sexual molestation of children in her kindergarten class. Read about it here (The Chattanoogan, 5/24/10). I wrote about the acquittal here. Up until May 19, 2008, Tonya Craft had been a kindergarten teacher for years and with a spotless record. Teaching youngsters was her career, her life, and from all accounts, she was good at it. Not any more. That’s because on May 19, 2008, the accusations started....

The case that’s dropped jaws all across the U.S. and Canada is finally coming to an end. Judge Kip Leonard is finally allowing Noah Kirkman to return to his native Calgary after two years in foster care in Oregon. Read about it here (Yahoo, 5/29/10). I and countless others have written outraged pieces about the case. Noah Kirkman is now 12 years old. When he was taken into foster care by Oregon authorities two years ago, he had not been abused; he had not been neglected. No one has ever claimed that his mother Lisa Kirkman (pictured) or his stepfather...

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that, here at GlennSacks.com and Fathers & Families, we’re all about equally shared parenting post divorce or separation. That stems from the well-established fact that children of two-parent families do better than those of single-parent families. As far back as 1994, sociologist David Popenoe could say that, [I]n three decades of work as a social scientist, I know of few other bodies of data in which the weight of evidence is so decisively on one side of the issue: on the whole, for children, two-parent families are preferable to single-parent and stepfamilies....