Cocaine and kids? No problem, says judge.

If you’ve never spent time in the family court system, God bless you. But those of you who have know a lot of mind-blowing cases move in and out of those hallowed halls of justice every day. One of particular interest to me comes via Jezebel, about a NC Dad who “lost his job for doing coke” and who is “currently awaiting trial for dealing.” David Edward Kennedy has been arrested and confessed to dealing drugs, and yet his lawyer – and a judge – argue that he should still have visitation with his kids.

According to NBC affiliate WCNC, Kennedy was indicted by a federal grand jury on cocaine trafficking charges, and immediately afterwards the unnamed mother in the case “went to court seeking emergency custody.” In response, “Judge Charlotte Brown said no emergency existed and declined to change the custody arrangement.” Continue reading »

Tweet

1

Pin It

Alaina Giordano and her kids

There have been some interesting developments and revelations made in the case of Alaina Giordano, the NC mom who has been told her children must move to Chicago on June 17th to live with their father because she has breast cancer.  Giordano is divorcing her children’s father, Kane Snyder, who left two years ago for four months without disclosing his location to his family.  Snyder returned after the four months, but moved out again in January 2010, landing in Chicago.  It has been documented by authorities that Snyder abused Giordano, but the judge in the case says that’s of no concern.

Giordano has been blogging at a site called Beauty in Truth, revealing details about her case, like the fact that Judge Nancy E. Gordon – who ruled that Giordano’s children should be removed from her care – has never been married and has no children.  Giordano’s outrage is palpable in her post on the subject.  She writes, “How does a woman with no kids and who has never been married become a Judge in Family Court???!!!”  I’d like to know the answer to that myself.  A judge making decisions about child custody, visitation and child support without knowing what it’s like to be a parent is like a Catholic priest giving marital and child-rearing advice: it makes no sense. Continue reading »

Tweet

21

Pin It

I was driving.  January 2009.  On my way to my first appointment with a divorce lawyer.  My then 3-year-old daughter was in the back seat.  I felt so happy to have her with me.  I was listening to the radio, and the Jason Mraz song “I’m Yours” started playing.  Its melody is so infectious, it’s like happiness incarnate. 

“It’s our Godforsaken right to be loved, loved, loved, loved, loved,” he crooned. 

I thought, “Yes.  Yes, yes, yes.”  For the first time in months I felt like I actually deserved to be loved like that.

And then my daughter started crying.

“I miss my Daddy,” she said.

The self-same song that had me feeling so free, so proud of my choice to leave her father, had her longing for him.  And that’s what happens in divorce.  Just when their parents can finally breathe again, children begin dealing with the implications of the split.  Continue reading »

Tweet

0

Pin It

If you thought the worst part of Facebook was hiding your status updates from your boss, beware. You could land on the wrong side of a family court judge.

The ACLU of Rhode Island announced this week it’s stepping in to help the plight of a woman ordered by a family court judge not to update her Facebook with the status of her brother’s family court proceedings. Continue reading »

Tweet

5

Pin It

The highest court in Michigan refuses to hear cases all the time, so why are parents’ rights advocates so upset this time around?

Because the father who has lost all rights to ever see his three kids again was denied a lawyer all the way through the juvenile court system. And still the Michigan Supreme Court says they won’t even take a look at Ronald McBride’s case. Continue reading »

Tweet

3

Pin It

A West Virginia couple who had been fostering their 19-month old daughter since she was a few weeks old were recently allowed to keep her and proceed with adopting her, after an attempt to remove her from their home.

The little girl’s birth mother lost her parental rights after failing to improve her situation and the child was released for adoption.  In spite of the fact that she had been in her foster home longer than her six foster siblings, and in spite of her foster mother’s expressed interest in permanently adopting her, Baby Girl C. was ordered removed and placed in a new home until she could be adopted by someone other than the parents who had fostered her since birth.  The foster parents, supported by the state’s Department of Health and Human Resources won an appeal to the West Virginia supreme court, and retained custody of the girl whom they intend to adopt.

How could the child’s guardian ad litem and the initial ruling judge have come to a conclusion so clearly not in the best interest of a child?  The foster parents were a lesbian couple.  The child was ordered to be placed in a “traditional home with a mother and father” though state law provided for no such move on the part of a healthy, well cared-for child.

While West Virginia does not allow same-sex couples to adopt children together, the state does allow singles to adopt.  One of the foster moms has already adopted a child through the foster system and both women have gone on to foster seven children together with the full endorsement of the state.  In its ruling on the case, the West Virginia supreme court blasted the earlier decision:

“Despite the number of times that this court has stated the best interest of the child is the polar star upon which decisions involving children are to be based, DHHR did not even consider whether the individual needs of B.G.C. would be best served by removing her from petitioners’ care…”

And though part of the reasoning for the removal was also supposedly that the home had reached its legal limit of children, many of the children in the home had come more recently than Baby Girl C, and were far less bonded with the foster parents.  The supreme court also called this part of the decision a violation of the best interest standard:

“The agency simply turned a blind eye to the fact that B.G.C. had been placed in the foster home a number of months before some of the other children then in the home, and ignored any consideration of the impact relocation would have on B.G.C.‘s emotional, physical and mental development.”

If you have a toddler, you can imagine how tearing that child from your own care and placing her/him in the care of another family might effect “emotional, physical and mental development” I’m sure.  Would your toddler happily embrace “new parents” however more socially acceptable than you (perhaps wealthier, living in a nicer house, with a stay-at-home mom or some other “better” social status according to mainstream notions of better)?  I thought not.  Mine neither.

It’s time for adults to stop using children as hammers to pound their own ideologies and start really basing these kinds of decisions on the best interests of children.

Tweet

14

Pin It

A wonkish little report out of Michigan hails a 14 percent increase in adoptions across a thirteen-county area from 2007 to 2008, after efforts focused on identifying and removing obstacles to finalizing adoptions of children “who had a goal of adoption and an identified adoptive parent, yet had been waiting for more than a year for the adoption to be finalized.”

Aiming really high aren’t we?

Continue reading »

Tweet

0

Pin It