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Strollerderby
Massachusetts is considering a bill that would assume equal parenting time for divorcing couples with kids. My fellow Strollerderby blogger Carolyn weighed in against this yesterday, with a smart, heartfelt post about the problems equal parenting would cause for families like hers.
But I think she’s missing some of the pieces of this puzzle. I live in Massachusetts, and I’ve seen several families go through long, messy divorces that would have been made simpler by a presumption of shared physical custody.
That’s what this bill is asking: that the courts assume a 50/50 custody split for the parents, and alter that only in the face of compelling arguments to the contrary. Carolyn’s case would be obviously one in need of alteration: she and her ex live several hours away from each other.
Share and share alike. Fifty-fifty. Half-and-half. Seems like a good idea, whether you’re a couple of kids at recess with a single playground ball or divorced parents figuring out custody of your kids. That’s what lawmakers in Tennessee think, anyway. House bill 2916 would require children’s time to be evenly divided between couples who cannot agree on a custody agreement.
According to my wife, my mother, were she alive today, would likely be hauling our kids off to church to be baptised — to which I responded that that would be the last time she saw them. To undermine a parent’s authority on something as important and fundamental as their religious beliefs is, in my opinion, grounds for terminating contact. Sneaking kids a cookie on a school night is something I can live with, but attempting to indoctrinate my kids into a belief set that I not only don’t subscribe to but actively oppose is untenable. While, for us, this is merely conjecture, there are many families where severing contact with the grandparents is in the best interests of the children. The problem is, in Indiana, the legislature wants to be able to overrule the parents.
When Shannon Wilfong lost custody of her four-year-old son to her ex-boyfriend Michael Chekevdia in a bitter custody dispute, she took the boy and ran. But she didn’t go far.
Two years after the pair disappeared, they turned up at her mother’s home — just three miles from where Chekevdia now lives — in a secret room hidden by a wall.
A woman who left her wife to convert to evangelical Christianity is now facing jail . . . because she doesn’t think the Vermont courts have the right to force her to send a little girl conceived during their relationship to visit her ex-girlfriend. Continue reading »
A new development in the case of the New Jersey father who wants to bring his some home from Brazil.
The kid wants to stay. And he said it on video. (You can watch the clip here.)
Personally, I find this whole story very depressing. This video of the 9-year-old boy, Sean Goldman, saying that he wants to remain in Brazil with his Stepfather, doesn’t do anything to make me feel any better about it.
I’m not saying the kid should or shouldn’t stay. But it’s hard for me to accept the idea that he wasn’t coerced into saying that he wants to “stay in Brazil.” Continue reading »
This is a strange story but the ending appears to be a happy one.
The details, from CNN:
- Sean’s parents divorced and mom moved him to Brazil in 2004
- Mom died in childbirth in 2008, leaving Sean with stepfather
- Sean Goldman, 8, to be turned over to U.S. Consulate on Wednesday
Hilary Clinton even referred to the case yesterday, which is unusual. But so is the story itself. Continue reading »
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