Anti-gay marriage rant from jilted wife

[nelliebelle1197]

Nelliebellie, you're right, I took my assumption that she was a stay at home fundamentalist home schooler from lawlifelgbt's post. I hadn't actually read that in the article on patheos and just assumed it was correct. My mistake.

The mother doesn't offer proof, but she does state: "My husband had left us for his gay lover. They make more money than I do. There are two of them and only one of me. Even so, the judge believed that they were the victims. "

I don't see a reason to doubt this statement. And I have seen many custody battles with a judgement that seems to be based primarily on which parent has the most money. And, sadly, that is often going to be the parent who left to be with someone else - and can now count that income as well. I have no idea of the reliability of the statistics, but in the Patheos counter-article, the author states men who ask for primary custody generally get it - and a logical reason for this could be increased financial capability - particularly if the woman was a SAHM. Of course, it often goes the other way as well. And there are certainly plenty of sole custody parents of both sexes who are single parenting it due to abandonment, abuse, addiction, etc.

I just don't understand why people are reluctant to believe a judge couldn't possibly rule inappropriately just because it's on a socially progressive issue. I think people would be wiling to be believe that a judge would award sole custody inappropriately to a straight parent, over a parent in a same sex relationship. People of all belief systems, including, judges, can let their biases take over when they shouldn't.

That happens, but "legislating from the bench" is a conservative dog whistle that is basically the political version of a two year old tantrum.

I did a little digging. Janna Darnelle is not her name. I found the kids' names.The divorce and custody records are sealed. There seems to be some sort of incident involving a car accident in which the children had a guardian ad litem appointed the same year he left her. There is a reason this mother lost primary custody to a gay man.

Janna's story is missing huge chunks of the truth and her ex has posted responses to this without details- he is not sharing- that imply that she isn't completely honest in her post and that he wishes for the sake of their kids she could let go of her anger and bitterness. This story is spun by an anti-gay group for political reasons and it was submitted to editorial boards in red states in which gay marriage rulings are due soon. I found out a bit about this woman pretty quickly (not outing her but it is not hard to find). I found nothing about the husband using his kids as props. There probably is a picture but I found the article USA Today wrote on her state's first gay weddings and the article featured two lesbian couples.

[BrownieMomma]

I do feel sorry for the wife. She is clearly not handling the loss of her life very well. She may very well be trying to blame her husband "going gay" or "gay marriage" but I hope that deep down somewhere she knows that is not really the issue.

Her husband left her. It doesn't matter if it was for a man, a woman, or World of Warcraft. He destroyed her home, her family, her entire life as she knew it. She wants to believe that if this other man did not exist, then her husband would have stayed to work something out. This is just not true.

People make that choice. They just do. It hurts, it is tragic. Her husband could have chosen to honor his marriage vows but he didn't. Many people don't. They cheat, they check out, life becomes what the other person least expected it to be.

There is no choice here. She has no choice but to pick up the pieces of whatever life she has left and build a new life without that husband. She needs support to move on, not encouragement to keep wallowing in blame.

Personally, I kinda doubt her husband got primary custody. He probably got joint custody or 50/50 or some variant thereof. I have read that men who ask for custody often get it, however I rarely read what means exactly. I hope we are not going back to the days where fathers automatically got custody because they were the breadwinners - the tender years concept arose directly from this.

She needs to focus on her grieving process, but I am doubtful that she's getting much real help in that direction. It really doesn't matter why he left, the fact is that he did and he chose to end that family's life. One person can choose that, and the other person is powerless to stop it. But that doesn't mean that person has lost all power in life, it takes some re-orienting to find it.

[BrownieMomma]

I don't know what Brownie Momma meant, but I always thought the terms " social engineering" and " legislating from the bench" only imply that a judge might be placing too much emphasis on his/her views of what society should be, when making a ruling. Couldn't the particular views be conservative or racist or liberal or religious or humanist or, well, any particular view point? I'm asking, because I had always thought those were generic terms based on imposing social ideals possibly inappropriately, in individual law cases -- not what the views are. If that makes sense.

You are correct, the terms are generic. A conservative, pro-life judge can social engineer from the bench just as much as liberal, gay-advocate judge.

In this particular case, neither parent has presented enough information to determine that's what happened. IIRC.

[Walking Cat Bed]

It's really, really easy to blame one person or the other for a divorce. My paternal grandparents still hold my mom responsible for my parents' divorce, even though it was a last resort on her part after fifteen of twenty-five married years were hellish. The person doing the leaving isn't always the one "at fault". And sometimes the marriage covenant/bond/whatever you want to call it has been deteriorating for a while; it's not quickly severed.

Without knowing his perspective (beyond what he's shared, which has been very little)...I can't blame him for "destroying the marriage". I hope the kids are in the best place for them, and that the adults are being the best parents (and people) they can be.

[2xx1xy1JD]

It's really, really easy to blame one person or the other for a divorce. My paternal grandparents still hold my mom responsible for my parents' divorce, even though it was a last resort on her part after fifteen of twenty-five married years were hellish. The person doing the leaving isn't always the one "at fault". And sometimes the marriage covenant/bond/whatever you want to call it has been deteriorating for a while; it's not quickly severed.

Without knowing his perspective (beyond what he's shared, which has been very little)...I can't blame him for "destroying the marriage". I hope the kids are in the best place for them, and that the adults are being the best parents (and people) they can be.

I do find that in many of my cases, one spouse will claim that everything was fine until the day that the spouse walked out, while the other will complain that they had their complaints ignored for years until they finally couldn't take it anymore.

Each case is different, though. If it's a case of a spouse suddenly coming out of the closet, it's hard to see how that's the fault of the other spouse. [i will put some blame on societal, religious or family pressures that may have prevented the spouse from fully acknowledging their sexuality prior to the marriage.] OTOH, I've had the odd case where the marriage broke up for other reasons, and THEN the spouse came out.

[2xx1xy1JD]

Re fathers who apply for it getting primary custody at a higher rate:

In my experience, the average involved father tends to ask for joint custody, not sole custody.

Claims for sole custody tend to happen because:

1. A father may not care about the kids, but thinks that claiming sole custody will scare the crap out of the mother and persuade her to settle the case. Judges do not look favorably on these cases.

2. A father feels compelled to ask for sole custody because it's become obvious that it's just not safe or appropriate for the kids to be in the mother's custody.

I've won sole custody for fathers with the second type of cases. In a number of cases, they didn't start out with custody of the kids. At some point, though, it became obvious that mom was an addict, or mom was arrested, or mom went off her meds, or mom was abusive, or stepdad/new partner was abusive, or mom and child had a complete breakdown in their relationship.

[Mama Mia]

Re fathers who apply for it getting primary custody at a higher rate:

In my experience, the average involved father tends to ask for joint custody, not sole custody.

Claims for sole custody tend to happen because:

1. A father may not care about the kids, but thinks that claiming sole custody will scare the crap out of the mother and persuade her to settle the case. Judges do not look favorably on these cases.

2. A father feels compelled to ask for sole custody because it's become obvious that it's just not safe or appropriate for the kids to be in the mother's custody.

I've won sole custody for fathers with the second type of cases. In a number of cases, they didn't start out with custody of the kids. At some point, though, it became obvious that mom was an addict, or mom was arrested, or mom went off her meds, or mom was abusive, or stepdad/new partner was abusive, or mom and child had a complete breakdown in their relationship.

I think, in my experience, that the same would hold true for mothers who file and fight for sole custody. Most parents , even if angry, want some version of shared custody. Problems come up when either ( or both) parents have 1) a huge amount of vindictive rage and want to punish the other parent by preventing access to the kids or 2) one parent is abusive/neglectful/addicted and can't care for the kids.

In my experience it's mostly the families that started out upper middle-class who took the custody battles through the court system. Everyone else just figured it out, or fought it out, on their own. But unless their are special circumstances where a domestic violence agency might provide support, or of course, if CPS is involved -- there isn't access to lawyers for most people for family law. At least in my area.

[Walking Cat Bed]

Re fathers who apply for it getting primary custody at a higher rate:

In my experience, the average involved father tends to ask for joint custody, not sole custody.

Claims for sole custody tend to happen because:

1. A father may not care about the kids, but thinks that claiming sole custody will scare the crap out of the mother and persuade her to settle the case. Judges do not look favorably on these cases.

2. A father feels compelled to ask for sole custody because it's become obvious that it's just not safe or appropriate for the kids to be in the mother's custody.

I've won sole custody for fathers with the second type of cases. In a number of cases, they didn't start out with custody of the kids. At some point, though, it became obvious that mom was an addict, or mom was arrested, or mom went off her meds, or mom was abusive, or stepdad/new partner was abusive, or mom and child had a complete breakdown in their relationship.

A friend of mine has a stepdaughter; Kiddo loves her visits with Dad and Miss S, but when she's at home, she's not allowed to say anything nice to or about them. Her mother will sit next to her when she's on the phone to listen to what she says and intentionally distract her. They have shared custody (S and her husband have about a month total per year) that the mother will fight every time -- says she's not sending Kiddo, the dad has no right to see her, etc, that S is horrible and mean to Kiddo -- when Kiddo is happier, more encouraged in hobbies (not just TV-watching) and given school-related help at her dad's. If S wasn't about to give birth (in the next few weeks) they'd be working harder for more custody.

That's a specific situation and neither representative nor a unicorn, but I'd say that's a situation in which I'd hope for the father gaining primary custody over the mother. Maybe a similar situation is going on with the couple we're discussing.

[2xx1xy1JD]

Mama Mia - there's a certain amount of truth to that.

Cases with clear-cut safety issues go to court, because they have to. There's some legal aid funding for that here, but even if someone is representing themselves, some situations are just so obvious to a court.

Working class/middle class families can't afford to do everything that you need to do to properly fight a full trial. They don't qualify for legal aid. So, they either put everything on the line - borrow from family, mortgage the house, have parents mortgage their house - or they realize that things need to settle relatively early.

This will sound like total heresy, but more money doesn't make for better outcomes. Early in my career, I did a lot of work on legal aid certificates. These were basically like a voucher for a certain number of hours, and we needed to get approval for each new step in the case. I got to know the regular lawyers at the courthouse who also did a lot of legal aid work. Even when cases were really serious, we realized that nobody had the ability to fight it out forever. So, the lawyers would go into a corner, we'd quickly go through the issues, and we'd tell our client how things were going to go.

Any paternity issues? Get a DNA test.

Allegations of violence? No contact between the parties, disclosure of police records, get a social worker to investigate.

Mental health concerns? Get medical records, consider an assessment.

Parents can't communicate or cooperate on anything? Make a crystal clear schedule, alternate weekends, do some sort of mid-week access and telephone access, all communication via monitored email, spell out the holidays, and make it clear that absolutely nobody wants to spend time arguing over small details.

Someone hugely offended that ex's new partner is spending time with kids/kids are around hated inlaws/kids are being exposed to different religious beliefs or lack of belief/kids being exposed to gay parent/kids are being taken to McDonald's/kids are allowed to play video games/kids are being taught a foreign language? Clients are basically told to suck it up, since the courts couldn't care less and legal aid wouldn't give a dime for these issues. [Yes, I've had cases where someone was making a huge deal about all of these issues. I've grown less patient with this stuff over the years.]

[2xx1xy1JD]

A friend of mine has a stepdaughter; Kiddo loves her visits with Dad and Miss S, but when she's at home, she's not allowed to say anything nice to or about them. Her mother will sit next to her when she's on the phone to listen to what she says and intentionally distract her. They have shared custody (S and her husband have about a month total per year) that the mother will fight every time -- says she's not sending Kiddo, the dad has no right to see her, etc, that S is horrible and mean to Kiddo -- when Kiddo is happier, more encouraged in hobbies (not just TV-watching) and given school-related help at her dad's. If S wasn't about to give birth (in the next few weeks) they'd be working harder for more custody.

That's a specific situation and neither representative nor a unicorn, but I'd say that's a situation in which I'd hope for the father gaining primary custody over the mother. Maybe a similar situation is going on with the couple we're discussing.

Yes, otherwise good parents can destroy their cases be deliberately trying to sabotage the kids' relationship with the other parent. I'm noticing that courts and social workers here have grown more concerned about this over the years.

[polecat]

Yes, otherwise good parents can destroy their cases be deliberately trying to sabotage the kids' relationship with the other parent. I'm noticing that courts and social workers here have grown more concerned about this over the years.

Parental Alienation Syndrome is real. I don't know if that's what's going on here, but I do know of a situation in which the father had physical custody, and he and his mother did everything they could to alienate the child from the child's mother, who lived in a different state. It ended with disastrous consequences.

I get that divorces are emotionally fraught and draining, but if you cannot say anything positive about the other parent, stfu entirely when it comes to your kids. It is destructive beyond belief to consistently bad-mouth the other parent to the child.

[nelliebelle1197]

Re fathers who apply for it getting primary custody at a higher rate:

In my experience, the average involved father tends to ask for joint custody, not sole custody.

Claims for sole custody tend to happen because:

1. A father may not care about the kids, but thinks that claiming sole custody will scare the crap out of the mother and persuade her to settle the case. Judges do not look favorably on these cases.

2. A father feels compelled to ask for sole custody because it's become obvious that it's just not safe or appropriate for the kids to be in the mother's custody.

I've won sole custody for fathers with the second type of cases. In a number of cases, they didn't start out with custody of the kids. At some point, though, it became obvious that mom was an addict, or mom was arrested, or mom went off her meds, or mom was abusive, or stepdad/new partner was abusive, or mom and child had a complete breakdown in their relationship.

From what I gathered in the state statute of their state awards "primary physical custody", which basically means that holds the child's address and the major day to day stuff but the other parent may have 50% visitation. Their state calls joint custody "shared residential schedule". From what I have gathered, the father and stepfather got primary physical custody.