Speculating isn’t by default necessarily a bad thing, especially in cases where what is being speculated is ultimately irrelevant to the main issue. I’m wondering your opinion on his question though, since the answer doesn’t matter really anyway… What do you personally think is the most likely answer to Czarcasm’s question?
You should check on the laws of the particular jurisdiction before making your assumptions.
For example, where Moonlitherial and I live, the presumption is 50/50 parenting. More moms end up with custody than dads because more moms are homemakers prior to separation than are dads, and the parenting arrangements following separation continue on as close as is reasonable to what they were prior to separation. If mom was a stay-at-home mom prior to separaton, she will usually get the kids following separation. If dad was a stay-at-home dad prior to separaton, he will usually get the kids following separation. (And if both mom and dad were stay-at-home parents, odds are that they are welfare bums who will ride the public purse in their litigation against each other while the children get screwed up emotionally. :smack: )
Why would they not both be responsible for working to accumulate the best possible life for them both?
When parents split up, bills go up. If the mom gets the status quo what happens to Dad (when he is stuck providing the status quo and trying to start anew?)
I’ve often wondered, even flirted with leaving my wife but how is that even plausible?
I’m thinking in the State has jumped upon a reason for hand holding deadbeat Dad’s, the regular Joes are getting screwed.
I understand how the status quo works, I was curious as to the actual reasoning behind it I suppose.
In more and more places we are moving closer to a 50/50 arrangement. However, for most families, the mother provides most of the day-to-day general child care. Not in every family, but in most. That’s the general tradition of our society. When a couple splits up, it’s usually the mother who has the ties to the school, the friends, the doctor, etc. So it makes good common sense that the person who has had the most control of the child’s ordinary life to continue in that role. Often that seems to relegate the non-custodial parent to the role of bill-payer, but it doesn’t follow that that is necessarily the mother’s fault. While I’ve known mothers who took over the childcare responsibilities and didn’t let Dad in, I’ve also known a lot of Dads who just weren’t interested in taking on those jobs and were quite happy to let Mom do it.
Sharing 50/50 physical custody is a real challenge, especially if Mom & Dad don’t live near each other or don’t handle dealings with each other well.
Which leads us back to the punishment of all Dad’s for those deadbeat some. My question is still, why would the default ever not be a 50/50 arrangement?
You need to distinguish between physical custody and legal custody. The former has to do with where the child lives: the latter is related to who can make choices for the kid. Lots of parents have joint legal custody but not joint physical custody because they have moved into a different school zone, or because they do not have reliable schedules for childcare, or because they do not live in a place where they have room for the children, or whatever.
Mothers are still more likely to get physical custody, IME, but joint legal custody is becoming more and more the norm.
I think there’s a difference between a deadbeat Dad and a more traditional Dad. My husband is a great and very involved father, but when it comes to the daily routine of our kids’ lives, I’m the one who knows where the bodies are buried, so to speak. I’m the one who handles the doctor appointments and the daily routine. I’m the one who knows their friends, and where they live and who their parents are, I’m the one who has the most interaction with the school, the church, the sports activities. He doesn’t love them one whit less, they’re not any less important to him…I’m just the one who has the knowledge, you know?
So if, God forbid, we ever considered breaking up, the transition to living full time with Dad would be more difficult than with me–for him and for them. Does that mean that he’s just a paycheck in their lives? Hell no. He has a huge role–but when it comes to the routine chores that make the world go around–that’s often the Mom’s job.
So when you look at the huge disruption that divorce presents for kids, whatever you can do to make the transition a little easier is a good thing, right? If both Mom & Dad can share the daily responsibilities, that’s great. But often it’s easier to let the kids live with the parent who has been handling the day-to-day and give visitation to the one who hasn’t.
It is, now. AFAIK, the default in most of Canada is joint custody. How that translates in practical terms is up to the parents. Of course, they are splitting up because they can’t work things out - so why would you expect setting up custody to be smooth?
Why the need for the State? In your example (let’s hope not) you and your husband split up. What does it matter that you know the parents, churches, school etc? Dad will soon learn those very same things. In your example (do you work or stay at home?), would you consider working a regular job so that Dad didn’t struggle to find a new place and still support your way of living (with the kids) or would you want the situation unchanged and have him struggle to make ends meet as long as you and the kids are sufficiently taken care of.
The State has come into play primarily because of the dead beat Dad’s. Now I see it used as a bludgeoning tool to stomp (some) Dad’s into the ground.
I don’t expect smooth. I do expect rational. (oh, and fair)
I am giving you all the choices I can think of. If you can come up with another, please tell us what it might be, please.
Let’s see. I’m 16, 17 years old living in a trailer park with dad. I’m really sick of dad by now. My real mom contacts me. Woo! Fantasy come true! Come wisk me away from my boring, strict old dad!
What could dad say to poison this? Mom’s dead? Nah.
Mom’s an evil escaped ax murdering crime lord who will kill us all if she ever finds us? Nah. At 16 or 17 I’m not buying that story and even if I sorta did, curiosity would get the best of me.
What would make me say, living with dad in a crappy trailer park, “we have a nice life. We’re happy. Leave us alone.”
The truth, I suspect. I’ve been living and going to school under my real name and mom has never been arsed to find us. She doesn’t really give a shit.
THAT would make me blow her off.
This isn’t the 60’s, and even then when mom took off with us, dad found us within a couple years, across country.
This was the mid 90’s through the 2000’s. Mom couldn’t find us? Really? Must have tried pretty fucking hard. Ooh, I think I’ll tap their name in Facebook. Bingo! What law enforcement was incapable of doing for 15 years!
Cops are pretty lazy and dumb sometimes, but that dumb?
Hmmm… Let’s summarize the article:
The father disappeared with the kids and went to Mexico while the couple was contemplating divorce. No mention of existing custody orders, probably still living together if “Sagala returned from work to find the children, then 3 and 2, gone”. So it was a pre-emptive strike, not a reaction to oppressive justice.
The mother knew they were in Mexico City area but did not go there because “he had threatened her”. She went to the local police, but they got nowhere.
They found the daughter because her new kids used a library computer for the search. Des not sound like a tech-savvy household.
“On March 10, she began exchanging e-mails and chatting with her daughter, and hoped to get her to reveal where she lived and re-establish a bond. Sagala said she sent an old family photo to the teen, but her daughter broke it off, saying in an e-mail that she was happy with her family and that she’d heard bad things about her.” So the teen was talking for a while then suddenly broke it off. Hmmm… once the father found out? (Speculation)
“Authorities tracked down the children and arrested their father, Faustino Fernandez Utrera, 42, on kidnapping and child custody charges on May 26.” He’s awaiting extradition to California from Flrida. Whatever he did, there’s sufficient grounds in law to charge him. Note the lack of quotes around the crime.
“Sagala gave police copies of e-mails she exchanged with her daughter, which helped prosecutors build their case against Utrera.” I wonder what additional evidence that was… What he told the girl, how they had been living? Before they arrested him, they checked if he had taken any legal steps (divorce, custody action) to establish any legal right to keep the kids. Obviously, whatever they found (nothing mentioned) did not prevent kidnapping charges.
From the article: “…now, with the dad in jail, she does have a right of custody by default but it’s not that simple,” Rowley said, adding that courts give weight to the children’s opinions because of their age. “If they were returned to her, in all likelihood, they would probably run away.”
So a sad situation all around because of the father’s actions.
Not everyone is as tech savvy as you, levdrakon. A lot of adults don’t really know about Facebook or social networking. Or maybe they weren’t on Facebook until recently. It just seems really nuts to say that the dad is a fine person for kidnapping the kids but the mother is a horrible drug addled nut because she couldn’t track them down. That’s such insane reasoning. If the police couldn’t, why do you think she would have been able to?
No. The best line (worked on me for 35 years) was “if you talk to her you are betraying us and that means you really don’t love the one who raised you and fought so hard to keep you and has given you this home and all your life. If you want to talk to her, then by all means go - leave and never talk to us again. A real child shows love and care for the parent that raised them, and doesn’t betray them by wanting to contact someone who hurt them.”
Just because a girl wants to talk to her mother does not mean that she wants to abandon her life and anyone she knows. Given the ultimatum, choose A or B, and she’ll probably stick with the life she knows, delete her facebook page and try to hide.
And that’s how these custody disputes work.
She doesn’t have to be tech savvy. All she’d have to do is keep on the cops. I mean, if my kids were kidnapped by a stranger and not my spouse, maybe I’d give up on them in 5-10 years. Maybe. But knowing my spouse took them? The local cop shop would have a seat in the waiting room with my name on it.
How do you know she wasn’t doing that, and they just weren’t being super cooperative? Cops aren’t always great at doing their jobs.
We don’t know a lot about the background of this case. All we really know is that the father kidnapped the kids. Why you so quick to judge her not stopping HIS crime?
Okay, let’s take my example. I worked in the early years of our marriage until our 2nd child was born and it made more financial sense for me to stay home with the kids. (My husband has always made more money, so it made sense that the one who should be home would be the one who earned less) I resumed part-time work when the older 2 were in school and resumed full-time work shortly after the last child was in school full-time. I’ve never expected my husband to “support my way of living” and I kind of take offense at the idea that I ever would expect him to work his fingers to the bone while I sat around and ate bon-bons. The stay-at-home mothers that I’ve known have rarely been the lazy layabout types, but that seems to be the stereotype often used when discussing child support.
I also never saw my staying at home as less of a commitment than his going to work was. I had just as many responsibilities as before, I just had them at home rather than in the workplace.
We’ve both always taken our marriage seriously and although this may sound old-fashioned, I think there should be some societal pressures for a couple with children to want to stay together. Should we divorce, I shouldn’t expect a free ride from my ex…but neither should he, right? He shouldn’t be able to walk away from our family and move into a nice new place with no responsibilities while the kids & I struggle to make ends meet, right?
To go back to the stay-at-home stereotype, of the mothers I knew who were at home when their kids were little, all have returned to the workforce in one capacity or another since their children have gotten older. All still continue to be the primary day-to-day caregivers of their children. I’m not seeing any free rides here–not for the fathers who shoulder the larger financial burden for the family, and not for the mothers who shoulder more of the day-to-day responsibilities.
And yes, their father would certainly learn all of the things that I have learned, but there would be a disruption in the kids’ lives that wouldn’t be necessary if they remained with me. Where is the Dad bludgeoning in that?
That’s the thing. We don’t know much at all. This is all more or less based on one news story that’s been regurgitated all over the internet, but we really don’t know all that much. I’m prepared for anything. Assuming we ever find out what really happened. Given how biased the courts are against men, and given how many mothers threaten to deny their husband anything to do with the children forever, and then get away with it with the courts’ blessings, I’m not prepared to condemn dad for quite possibly loving his kids so much he’d risk prison to keep them.
As far as she knew, the guy had disappeared to Mexico City, one of the biggest cities in the world. She didn’t go there because he had threatened her; not that Mexico is a violent place or that life is cheap there or you can’t hire a hit-man cheap, eh? I also don’t suppose that Mexico still has a more medieval outlook on domestic violence if harm did come her way?
San Bernadino cops looked at the case 3 times in the intervening years. They got nowhere. You’d think the Mexcio City police would be happy to spend all their time looking for someone’s kids, when they weren’t busy with other stuff.
As it turns out, he’d gone back to the USA under an assumed name. That should have made him easy to find too.
I’m sure harrassing the people trying to help you is the most productive way to get results…