Not so many years ago, it was not uncommon for 16-year-olds to be married.
You are correct.
I’ve left out the rest because I agree with you about “they say” and, on the whole, the less I hear, see and think about Madonna the happier I am. However, outrage over someone having eleven abortions (presumably none of them medically necessary) would not be at all the same as outrage over having an abortion, as I’m sure you realize.
Regardless of the legal aspect, Madonna is just acting like a chump in this situation, give the kid some time to decompress and relax away from you. The relationship will probably come out the better for it if she decides to chill out on the whole court thing and just let the kid stay with the Dad for a while. Or you can hire all kinds of attorneys and show how you WILL get your way and possibly have the kid forcibly brought back to her, the kid will probably make it known just how much he doesn’t want to be there and make the situation unbearable for her as well and just be a little shit the whole time, and then when all is said and done he’ll probably hold it against her for years and the whole relationship will be poisoned.
Okay, let’s be clear. She’s not accusing her ex of interferring, in any way shape or form. Because the divorce custody agreement was decided in NY she CAN force the child to NY so a judge can decide things. Because NY has jurisdiction.
BUT once in NY the boy can ask for and get an advocate appointed, who will make his case, (I’m not in the mood to be on tour and all its hassles with my Mom while she’s working!) as he’s the age he is, and as there is no evidence the ex interfered in anything, it’s most likely the judge will agree with him, I think.
Now, maybe she’s got some carrot she’s gonna wave in front of him when he arrives to smooth this over and have him drop it and just follow her wishes. (Wanna meet a Kardashians?)Or maybe he’s more pissed than ever and is intent on making her look a fool.
Either way, the ex isn’t at any risk here I think. And it will all play out very soon, I should guess!
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As stated, “as a child gets older, especially 16 plus (this child is 15 and 4/12ths) their stated preference is increasingly taken into account by a court but in no state does the child just get to choose” (so obviously no, I do not think the court treats all age children the same) but note, rarely would a custody agreement switch from “Parent A is custodial and Parent B gets X visitation times” to “Parent B is custodial and Parent A is entitled to no visitation” Even at 15 4/12s, and that they are not given absolute agency.
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One of the reasons that older kids’ say is given lots of weight is precisely because it is hard, in most case, to prevent a teen from running away to the other parent’s home. A bit harder to do when out of country and a plane flight away for a minor to do.
astro, you are a divorced parent. Custodial or not? Any of your kids been teens already or not? Many (not all) teens and parents have conflicts. Navigating emerging adulthood is difficult, sometimes kids think they are more grown up than they are and want no limits, and sometimes parents think the teen is not ready to make choices they should be allowed to make. Teens often play parents off of each other. Parenting with one voice is always important but in a divorce circumstance it is more vital than ever. And more difficult than ever. Surely you know that already.
Courts take a teen’s thoughts into serious account and a teen does have their own independent advocate appointed. But the court is not in the business of empowering the teen to dictate exactly what the visitation schedule is and is not in the business of being used as a go-to against one parent setting limits that a teen does not like. elbows if all there is to it is “I’m not in the mood to be on tour and all its hassles with my Mom while she’s working!” or even “Mom and I argued lots last time I was with her.” then I highly doubt a judge would change visitation arrangements.
Madonna is so old.
How old is she?
She is so old:
that she was besties with Jesus.
Madonna is not Asian.
Well to add another data point I have read on the internet that she has had those 11 abortions.
For there to be a custody fight in court over a well adjusted youth approaching sixteen, either one or the other or both parents are seriously fucked up (the correct family law term being “bat-shit-crazy”).
This is the sort of thing that should be dealt with through clinical investigation, counselling and negotiation, rather than judicial relief. That has gone into litigation speaks volumes about the primary parenting.
With neither parent ostensibly being a bad parent parent, with one offering a stable home and the other offering life on the road, and with the teenager having a strong preference for the stable home, the decision should be a bit of a no-brainer, so it is a very unfortunate for both families, and the youth in particular, that the parents will not adjust the parenting.
Welcome to Turkey Season – Thanksgiving through Christmas, when the parent who pulls the biggest part of the child’s wishbone wins. Pity that some parents think in terms of winning and losing, rather than recognize that there are no winners in such litigation, for you don’t “win” a child, let alone one who is in mid-teens. The one who loses most is the child, for high-conflict custody fights chew up and spit out children.
When I worked in a law office (general practice, but my lawyer specialized in family law), I used to hate Turkey Season. Hated answering my phone. Hated looking at the appointment list. Hated the fact that at some point there would be an irate, non-custodial parent yelling/crying/threatening in the waiting room.
Word.
I do not have the inside scoop on what is going on in this particular case (and of course none of us do, including whether or not the child is or is not well-adjusted) but from public record the complaint is about this one tour that he had been on one portion of with her, her first tour in over three years. The last bit of that tour he’s been spending at Dad’s. There are no tour dates from 12/2015 to 1/6/2016 which was the holiday time period in question, which had been, apparently previously agreed to to be Mom’s holiday time. He apparently has spent large amounts of time in both parents’ households. As a director Guy Ritchie travels quite a bit. There are other children in both the New York and the London households. Ritchie received over 50 million pounds in the divorce settlement from Madonna after 8 years of marriage. He has been arrested for assault as an adult.
To characterize one option as “life on the road” and another as “stable” is adding in information based more on speculation if not outright fantasies than any facts any of us know about the case.
Again, not sure if the circumstance is officially that Madonna is the custodial parent or if there is joint custody but clearly she is not the non-custodial parent. Note Das that it was the “non-custodial parent yelling/crying/threatening in the waiting room” … why? Why was it not as often the custodial one? What would happen if a child, even a 15 year old one, failed to return from a visit as previously scheduled and agreed to, to rejoin the custodial parent during Turkey season, whether or not the child said that was what they wanted? Was it the case that every year it was up to the teens to decide which household they would be at?
If this was regular people in the same city and a 15 year old was not returned on schedule from a visit to a custodial parent the norm would not be for a custodial parent to just say “Oh. Fine dear. Let me know when you want to come back. Love you!”
While I, personally, would not approve of such a high number of abortions the fact that doing so is legal means it’s none of my damn business. There are lots of legal things I don’t approve of personally but are not heinous enough to justify my imposing my viewpoint on others, living in society means learning to tolerate that sort of thing. I can think a women getting a dozen abortions is foolish, stupid, careless, or any number of things while still acknowledging she has a legal right to have her womb vacuumed out on a regular basis.
“Asian tiger mother” is a fairly well-known term, and it was claimed in a post before mine that Madonna was going out of her way to educate Rocco by letting him see what touring was like.
I just Googled “did Madonna have 11 abortions” and in so many words, she’s admitted that she has undergone the procedure but denies that she has done it that many times.
While I, personally, note with some approval that you have apparently backed off from the standpoint that condemning someone for having an inordinately large number of abortions is the same as condemning her for having “an” abortion, the fact that doing so is legal does not mean that it’s none of my damn business. History is littered with people doing all kinds of things that were technically legal but being found reprehensible for doing them, and I’m perfectly prepared to consider that a medical procedure that might be justifiable in extreme emergencies is one that ought not to be resorted to routinely. She may have the legal right but it makes a conspicuous mockery of the oft-quoted line about “safe, legal and rare” and the major reason why I’m prepared to view it as none of my business is that the less I think about anything Madonna says or does, the happier I am.
Sure, I want abortions to be safe, legal, and rare… I also want a better manned space program and a pony (probably have a better chance at getting the pony).
I also don’t feel that abortions should only be reserved for “extreme emergencies”. If you do well, we’ll have to agree to differ.
You are spending a lot of rhetorical energy defending the concept of a 15-16 year old being required to follow a parental custody agreement. Short of a proven unfit environment or some sort of hazard for the child being with one or the other parent to (and this the point) GO TO COURT to force a 15-16 year old to stay with you against their wishes is (in terms of real world outcomes) useless, counter-productive and asinine. Per Muffin’s characterization it’s batshit insane. No competent Judge is going to try and legally force a 15-16 year old to stay where they do not want to go unless there are the hazard exceptions noted above.
So yes, if a 15-16 year does not want to stay with you, you effectively have to cede unilateral control of the situation and rely on negotiation, mediation or whatever other discussion tools are at your disposal unless you want to put your lawyer’s kid through school. In most cases as the kids edge into their early teens and start to develop semi-adult agency most rational parents just let the confines of the custody agreement go and the kid winds up staying where they want or where it makes the most sense economically. To be at war on this at the age of 15-16 is ludicrous.
Methinks you have some extraneous baggage here.
No. Normative behavior is not to let a 15 year be completely in charge at their whim of where they stay when. Not in intact marriage households and not in divorced families. (Our daughter for example cannot, when angry with us, just decide to go live at her friend’s house with her friend’s parents, who of course are better nicer parents than we are, and who let their daughter do all sorts of things that we say no to. But by your standard if our child says they don’t want to live with us under our rules we “have to cede unilateral control of the situation and rely on negotiation, mediation or whatever other discussion tools are at your disposal.”)
In general going to court is not something that happens because Parent B (role played by Guy Ritchie in this case) has agreed to and supports the custody agreement and as one of two parents who care about the actual well being of the child (rather than using the child as a tool for their own ego or as a weapon against the other parent) when the kid says “I don’t wan’t to go back to Parent A.'s. I want stay with you”, states “Well I love you too. But so does Mom and you two need to work things out. This is the plan. It is not your option.” When that is said it stops there, as it should. Parents on the same page, setting appropriate limits.
Your imagined standard would have the 15 year old who says the day before (s)he is due to return to the custodial parent’s house that “Dad just offered to get me a Corvette to learn to drive on and will let me stay out as late as I want with whoever I want. I want to stay here and never see you again Mom. You expect me to do homework every night and do chores.” And expect the custodial parent to say: “Of course dear.” Would be batshit insane to say anything else. And expect the court to say “Well a 15 year old has the absolute right to decide.”
No a judge would not say that. Don’t be ridiculous.
Your concept would make a divorced custodial parent afraid to enforce any limits, to set any rules, lest the other parent outbid you on laxness.
You never answered my questions, specifically how much experience you have so far had parenting teens and if you are custodial or not yourself. You seem to think teens are universally much more grown up and mature than they are. If you have a 15 year old who is that mature good for you. My kids have been smoother sailing than most and they were not. Nor are too many of the 15 year olds I see professionally.
What, you mean like a senior family lawyer who deals with these matters daily?
I didn’t think I needed to spell out that the courtroom scenario I outlined offered the 15-16 year old the choice between two parental households, it did not offer the “run away and join the free love, hippy commune, circus cult” option. But since you need that spelled out consider it a fact that we are dealing the choice between two parental households.
With respect to bribing a kid with material goods or slack parenting that may or may not be a factor in the kid’s choice, but I doubt it will result in the cartoon villain monologue by the kid that you seem to think will occur.
And really, even if one parent was more indulgent than the other one, how in any practical sense is the Judge going to make a determination about the context and the ethical import of one parent giving a 15-16 year old the kid more goodies and agency than the other parent. “No Billy your mother is spoiling you! You have to go with dad and mow the lawn for him!” …said no Judge ever.
I get that you seem to have this fantasy about how things will go in court when dealing with child visitation and 15-16 year olds but that’s not the way it plays out in the real world where the choice is between two engaged parents (or they would not be investing in the tussle in the first place). Judges do not want to fool with custodial fights over kids that age, it’s aggravating and something the parents should have worked out themselves. In the vast majority of scenarios the kid will be able to go with whatever parent they choose.