Otherwise known as another stupid Rhymer hypothetical; jeez, I wish that guy would get a life.
Today’s story is about Pat and Chris, a divorced couple both in their 40s, and their pre-teen child, Sean. Pat has primary custody; Chris sees Sean on weekends, during the summer, and for alternating major holidays. Pat & Chris are executives for the same major corporation (though not in the same office) and have identical health care and comparable salaries. Neither has ever remarried. Chris pays child support and has never missed a payment. There are no other children, and Sean loves them both.
One day, due to no one’s negligence, Sean gets very sick. The doctors diagnose the problem as liver failure and recommend a partial-liver transplant. Both Pat & Chris are tested to see if they are compatible; the results come back saying that while either Pat or Chris can donate, but Pat is a better match. The doctors recommend that Pat be the donor; that is what gives Sean the best chance of survival.
Hearing this, Pat hesitates for a moment, then says that it is probably best that Chris be the donor. The surgery, after all, is not without risks for the donor; death is a possiblity, however remote. If the worse happens, Pat feels, Sean is better off if the surviving parent is the one with primary custody. Thus Pat is only willing to be the donor if Chris absolutely refuses.
Chris listens to all of this silently, then agrees. The surgery goes well. Both Sean and Chris experiences some post-operative complications, but in a few months is fully back to health. Once that happens, Chris sues for full custody, averring that Pat’s actions during the crisis betray an inability to be fully committed to Sean’s welfare.
Do you think Chris has a point? If so, why? If not, why not?
Well, Chris has a colorable argument- but it’s not a slam-dunk, and I don’t think it should be determinative. In determining custody, Americans courts apply a “best interests of the child” standard (I don’t know of any state that doesn’t, anyway). Certainly the parent’s degree of committment to the child is a factor here. However:
1.) As much as we might laud such a thing, I suspect most courts would be reluctant to insist that the custodial parent must be willing to lay down his/her life for the child, and
2.) In this case, Pat has a reasonable. not-entirely-selfish reason for hesitating, and has still expressed a willingness to donate if necessary. Given that Pat’s conduct here is well within the range of “reasonable”, and further that this particular crisis is unlikely to recur, I can’t imagine a judge weighing it very heavily. Which brings up the last point -
3.) There are a lot of factors that go into the “best interests of the child” analysis, not least of which is the child’s interest in a stable home environment. The burden is going to be on Chris to demonstrate that the current custody arrangement isn’t in the kid’s best interests - absent some showing that Pat is failing to provide for the kid’s current physical, emotional, or educational needs, that seems unlikely.
I don’t practice family law, I certainly don’t practice it in your jurisdiction, and I’m absolutely not now, nor will I ever be, your lawyer - but I’d be very surprised if Pat ended up losing custody absent facts not in the record. Of course, I imagine the court might look more sympathetically on a request from Chris to tweak visitation or other marginal issues - but the same “best interests of the child” standard controls here as well.
That should really be Sean lives with Chris on weekends, during the summer, and on alternating major holidays.] I didn’t mean to imply that Sean never lives with Chris, nor that Chris only ever is in Sean’s presence during the aforementioned times. Chris attends school plays and other such events in Sean’s life.
I think Mr. Excellent’s answer was (naturally) excellent.
The scenario described in the OP leaves open the possibility that Chris is a foul-tempered asshole with no parenting skills, while Pat is superparent (which is why Pat’s the custodial parent). In that case, Pat has a very legitimate point that it would be better for Sean to lose Chris than to lose Pat. It also leaves open the possibility that Pat is a self-centered weasel while Chris has nothing but Sean’s best interests at heart. So, without knowing more, I certainly wouldn’t presume to judge.
Suppose we take as a given that both Chris and Pat seemed to be excellent parents before this, and that the judge basically flipped a coin in making his decision after the divorce (or that Chris agreed not to contest the matter so as to minimize any trauma to Sean). In that case, would Pat’s behavior here hold more weight for you?
Also, bear in mind that the doctors said that Pat being the donor was riskier for Sean, not for either parent. Since nothing was said about the risks being higher for Pat than Chris (or vice versa), doesn’t it seem that Pat was thinking more about Pat’s own well-being and interests than anyone else’s?
Man, this would be easier with pronouns.
The lists are generated randomly from the voter rolls.
I voted for “Hell yes” but I wanted to qualify it to say that it’s only “Hell yes” if all other things are equal. That is, if Chris has tendencies that would otherwise disqualify him or severely handicap him from being the custodial parent, they need to be weighed in with everything else.
Othwerwise my vote goes with him.
And I see in your most recent post you clarified that it was a flip of the coin. In that case, I think Chris has demonstrated that he has the kid’s best interest in mind moreso than Pat.
I have to vote option C. From what I can glean from the story, it appears that Pat is making a selfish decision that is not in the best interest of the child. Yes, Pat is the custodial parent, but I’m not really sure how that makes Pat somehow more meaningful to survive than Chris. Unless, one parent is somehow substantially more or less capable of providing for the child, or has history of abuse, addiction, etc., I don’t see much other difference. And considering that you specifically mitigated the first and seem to indicate that the latter is a non-issue, I don’t see the logic in her reasoning.
I assume you chose unisex names to keep mother/father out of it, but I think it’s at least tangentally related. In the majority of cases, one parent will have to be the custodial parent if, for no other reason, because of logistics like school, regular schedule, etc. At least in my state, all things being equal, that will tend to be the mother. So, I’m inclined to believe in this case that Pat is probably the mother and likely only has Sean because of that and, thus, there’s even less reason to believe that her survival is necessarily more important than Chris’s. If, however, Pat is the father (if they live in a place with laws similar to VA) or had some other compelling reason to be the custodial parent besides just being the mother, then perhaps there is something to her decision, but the story is silent on that.
So, I see Pat’s decision as selfish and not necessarily in the best interest of the child, but I’m unsure if that necessarily makes Pat unfit as a custodial parent. How much difference is there in the risk caused by Pat being a better match? If it’s beyond a trivial amount, I think Chris might have a case. …maybe I’m thinking too much into it?
OTOH, if Sean gets sick again, Pat can still has a whole liver to donate where Chris doesn’t.
Wait, I’m confused. In your OP, you seem to indicate that Pat is the better match for Sean, in this clarification, you indicate that Pat is a higher risk. If it’s the latter, that completely changes my answer.
You’re partly right about the unisex names. Also, bear in mind that there’s nothing in the tale as told that says they’re a heterosexual couple. They could be a pair of lesbians, for instance, with Pat the biological mother and Chris the sister of the sperm donor; Chris could have adopted Sean. That might explain why Pat is the better match, as genetically Chris would be Sean’s aunt rather than parent.
They could also be a pair of gay males; Pat might be the biological father, and Chris’s sister bore the child for them. Pat, again, is genetically closely related to Sean than Chris is.
In either case you can assume the sibling sperm donor/egg mother was, I dunno, killed in a yodeling accident.
I typed it wrong. Pat is the better match; Chris being the donor was doable, but riskier. If Pat & Chris had both been dead and they were deciding whose liver to give Sean, they’d have given Pat’s.
Sure - if there are few differences between Chris and Pat, then those differences that do exist pretty much have to matter more. But there’s another difference: Pat is still the current custodial parent, and Chris is not. If Pat is in most regards an “excellent” parent, then the kid’s interest in a stable status quo would still seem to tip the scales towards Pat retaining custody.
Well, it certainly seems like Pat was thinking about his/her own well-being in addition to Sean’s - but I don’t believe a court would fault Pat much for that. I could be wrong, but I don’t believe courts would expect life-threatening levels of self-sacrifice from parents. Besides which - even if Chris and Pat were both good parents, Pat could reasonably argue that the death of one’s custodial parent is uniquely traumatic.
This makes sense - it provides a powerful disinincentive to voter registration. And a less politically-engaged populace will be less likely to object when your robot monkey minions seize power on your behalf.
If the difference between Pat and Chris as donors had been huge, then the doctors would have been very reluctant to use Chris instead, and it wouldn’t have been difficult to persuade Pat - all Chris had to do was say no, on the grounds that Pat’s a better match. So the difference can’t have been substantial.
Fair enough, though one could also argue that if Pat is closer because of being the biological parent rather than aunt/uncle, then Pat is also, under most cases, given some legal preference.
So, I guess I could say that Chris potentially has a case, but it depends on certain other factors. How much would Sean be uprooted? Would he move across town or across the country? How much riskier was Chris’s liver than Pat’s?
In fact, if it was more than trivially riskier for Chris to donate, Chris should have said that Pat should donate and that s/he would only donate if Pat refused. So, maybe Chris didn’t have Sean’s best interest at heart either, potentially leaving it a bit of a wash.
So, I could probably see Chris getting somewhere with his case and possibly getting custody, but it’s probably pretty close to even and favoring Pat since Pat already had custody. So, maybe 60-40.
Won’t the one surviving parent be the one with primary custody in any case? Prior to the arising of this medical circumstance, there’s no evidence that either are in any way unacceptable as primary custodian.
And wouldn’t the worst outcome be the child’s death due to transplant failure?
Yes, but no one has asked for that–only that a parent be willing to take the relatively small risk, on the advice of doctors who find it the best chance for the child’s survival.
I do not find Pat’s argument reasonable. I suspect it to be a contortion designed to arrive at a previously determined conclusion, i.e., that the person making it doesn’t want to go under the knife. I am skeptical that the argument has anything to do with the interests of the child.
In the scenario given, I don’t see where moving to the other household would be particularly destabilizing. By all evidence given, both parents are heavily involved in the child’s life. Certainly a relocation is far less destabilizing than the death of either parent (!), or any serious medical complications for anyone involved.
