Limiting what she can decide

A woman called me up and wanted to talk with me about her separation from her most recent partner and father to her second child.

I guessed it was my job to listen. She arrived at a café I had suggested, she sat down and began to unburden herself.

A sad, disconsolate story. She was in the throes of breaking up with her husband of not much more than a year. She had had a child with him, and another child with another man before.

She admitted that she had entered this latest relationship and this marriage with the full hope that this latest man could step up to replace the previous father.

This triggered me.

What exactly was wrong with the previous father? I didn't ask. This wasn't the time and it wasn't the place.


Custodial Rights and Wrongs

The family courts are to be admired for all the good work that they do in trying to resolve the arguments of broken families. I do mean 'broken families' because those that are not broken do not need to go to the courts to resolve matters.

However, the court's approach to resolving child custody battles is problematic. In the case of a battle, women will tend to win custody in approximately 80% of cases. This is suggestive of a problem but not proof.

However, the awarding of custody to toxic, angry women and arguing it is in the best interests of the children is a problem.

In one recent Family Court decision a mother with a "delinquent attitude" who had created estrangement between the children and their father was awarded full custody of the children. It was ruled that the father would have no contact with the children even though the court considered that there was no risk that he would expose the children to any harm.


In another decision, a mother who had fabricated claims of sexual abuse successfully prevented the father from having access to his daughters. The mother won full custody of the two daughters recently even though the father had been granted access by a court order in 2008.

In another case, the mother's hatred for the father was so intense that she doubted his claim that he was dying of an inoperable cancer as he appealed to see his daughter. Encouragingly, the court invited him to prepare a DVD for his daughter. However, the court ruled that the content be checked to ensure that he made no disparaging remarks about the mother. This despite the mother having been free to poison the child with her disparaging remarks about the father to an extent that the child wished the father dead.