Why is the default position of the courts to allow the Mother custodial rights to the children and have the Father pay child support?
Before I get a hundred different replies saying that isn’t the case, I understand that ‘joint custody’ is the normal default but even in that normal case the Mother gets custodial rights to most nights and the Father pays her for that right.
Does it have to do with them giving birth? Is it an old out-dated view of ‘how things used to be’?
If it is, it’s wrong.
When dealing with decisions regarding children the court will typically ‘want’ what’s best for the child. Whether they are able to discern that is hardly acknowledged.
I just wonder why the default position sides so strongly with the Mother.
It’s the old view that a young child in its tender years needs to be with its mother.
I know that most courts have abandoned those terms because of 14th amendment implications, but they bend over backwards to find reasons why the “best interests of the child” is to live primarily with its mother.
She had better be a crack whore before they start looking toward the father as the primary caregiver.
Because if one person is going to cripple his/her career with a long leave of absence to care for an infant, or frequent days off to care for sick children, or a weird schedule with no overtime because school ends at 4:00, then it should be the one with lower earning potential in the first place. In the past, that was always the woman, and, on average, it still is. Better for the kid, one reasons, to have one parent home a lot, and to have the other making the largest possible payments, than to have one parent who can’t afford to be home as much, because the other can’t afford to pay as much.
Because most people, including judges and social workers, remember a childhood spent with a nurturing mother and a distant father. Or they remember a society where a father’s strength was outside the home, and a mother’s strength was within it. Or they remember a thousand cases where the father left, and the kids were living with Mom anyway.
Child support is not always Father >> Mother. It is a calculation of the % of total income earned by each respective parent, and then divided divided based upon the custody % of the children. Normally the father makes more than the mother and the mother has more custody of the children, that’s why it’s normally $$$ from Dad to Mom.
If Mom is a doctor bringing home $250k and Dad is a freelance writer and makes little to nothing; and Dad get’s the kids 50% of the time, Mom will be paying Dad child support.
Visitation and custody are not the same thing. In numerous states, mom will get full custody and the dad will get visitation every other weekend. That’s not joint custody.
I never said visitation and custody are the same thing. But the OP talked of custody - and the default position is joint legal custody. This is often accompanied by one party having full physical custody, but joint legal custody is the default.
Right. Residence and custody are different things legally. And terminology can be different from state to state. For example I for one don’t pay “alimony,” I pay “spousal support.” In lay terms they are identical, but legally very different in this state.
Here in Colorado “custody” is used regarding what legal rights and responsibilities the parents have over the children. But it has no bearing on where the children live. “Residence” is the word used to define living arrangements. It is conceivable (although very unlikely) that one parent be given full-custody of the children, and then an arrangement made where the other parent be the full time residence of the children. So that the children end up living with a parent with no custodial rights, i.e. where they act in a similar role as a boarding school.
AIn my case I have joint-custody and part time residence (also sometimes referred to as secondary residence) of my children. The residence rules means that I get them on weekends, and other days as negotiated with the ex.
The joint custody means my ex can’t make major decisions without my participation and consent. She can decide, when the kids are with her, all the day-to-day details of their lives, bedtimes, meals, rules, etc. And the same applies to me when they are with me. However she can’t decide religion, schools, doctors etc. without my explicit approval. Again the same goes with me. The details of this take up the majority of our divorce decree.
Because what’s typically best for a kid is to cause as little disruption to his or her day-to-day life as possible, and that means staying with the parent who does the bulk of the hands-on grunt work like wiping noses and asses, feeding and dressing, ferrying to activities, that sort of thing. Which parent is that most likely to be? In a society where women do a disproportionate amount of housework and childcare, to the point that people talk about a man babysitting when he takes care of his own frigging kids for a few hours, odds are way better than average that parent is Mommy.
Mind you, back in the day of the housewife, the primary caregiver was always Mommy, so taking physical custody of the kids away invariably caused almighty upheaval in their lives. Thus the default was to give her custody unless there was some demonstrable reason that being with her was going to be worse that the upheaval. As men have taken a larger role in the scutwork of maintaining a home and family, that’s shifted some. There’s been a lag between what’s happening in the homes and in the courts, certainly, but it always does take time for the law to catch up to social change. Always. If society continues to shift toward an even distribution of childcare, I see no reason to think the courts won’t continue to shift toward an even distribution of physical custody.
Actually the OP (that’s me) said this: “Before I get a hundred different replies saying that isn’t the case, I understand that ‘joint custody’ is the normal default but even in that normal case the Mother gets custodial rights to most nights and the Father pays her for that right.”
This already falls in line to my “that’s the way it used to be scenario”, why do the courts (even upon hearing evidence to the contrary) refuse to grant Dad’s full residential rights (unless Mom is a crack ho)
Again, not always, but it does seem to be the default.
Did Dad stay home when the kids were little? Does Dad change most of the diapers? Does Dad drive the kids to preschool? Does Dad take the kids to the doctor? Does Dad go to the parent-teacher conferences? Does Dad clean up when someone poops their pants? Does Dad make breakfast, lunch and dinner? Does Dad dress the kids in the morning? Does Dad read bedtime stories at night?
The reality is, most of the time it’s the Mom who does these things. It’s not just the way it used to be, it’s the way it is now. In most cases. Which is why in most cases the kid’s mostly live with Mom. It’s not anything more complicated than that.
Because judges and legislators tend to be older and more likely to see the world in gender roles.
It all comes back to cultural suppositions. Mom is default. See a woman in the store with a kid on Sunday morning, nobody thinks it worth a comment. See a man in the store with kids on Sunday morning he is either giving Mom a break or it is his weekend for visitation.
If you look around, you will see these gender norms show up all over the place. Just recently we discussed the brain teaser about the doctor not wanting to operate on a patient claiming “He’s my son!” It is only a stumper if you assume doctors are male.
These norms are changing, but slowly. The doctor stumper made news because there was a huge difference how people responded based on age. Younger people tended to get it right away because they grew up with women doctors on TV and in person. As more men fight for custody, it will become less of an issue and become easier for the next father.
Norms can be very frustrating when you try to go against them. But most of us are guilty of them on some level. Before you rail to hard against those judges, ask yourself how you would respond if you took you child to daycare/kindergarten and found out the caregiver/teacher was a man. Would it bother you?
The reality is the judge doesn’t want to spend all day listening to Mom and Dad argue about what parental ‘jobs’ were done by Mom and Dad as they sit there and can’t agree so they take the easy way out of it all and grant custodial rights and support to Mom.
My kids have had male teachers/after school caregivers before. I can certainly see your point in that most care givers (of the young tender years aka babies) are women. They prefer to be around in those formative years changing diapers etc. Who deals with the kids once they hit puberty?
How many of you had parents (usually Mom) who stated loudly “Wait til your Father gets home!!”
The courts are generally seeing that a kid is better with both parents involved in their lives and the fact of the matter is, they aren’t doing the kid any favors by defaulting on the side of Mom.
My divorce attorney asked me how old my son was and then proceeded to tell me if he was under 5, there was no one in hell a judge was going to give him to me over my wife.
This is factually incorrect. In Illinois, the custodial parents income does not factor into the equation. My ex makes substantially more than me (and ridiculously {4-5X} more when you count her husbands income) and even with joint custody I still pay her child support.
Well actually you pay your child child support. The checks may go to the mother, but the right for support is the child’s. Unless her current husband has adopted your child, he isn’t responsible for your child’s support - you and your ex are.