Do Grandparents Matter?

Tonight's guest blogger is none other than our own, Kairi Smith Gure.



I recently met with a lady, a grandmother, seeking information about getting visitation with her grandson. At one time, Grandparent visitation was a pretty hot topic in the legal community because of all of the constitutional fundamental rights that are implicated at the mention of someone other than the biological parents having rights concerning their child.  The state of Georgia has decided that Grandparents will be granted visitation when it is “in the best interest of the child” to do so.

So, I guess that becomes the question; when is it in the best interest of the child for a Grandparent to have visitation with the child against the wishes of the parent?  I am not talking about situations where the parents are neglectful or harmful to the child in some way.  In those cases the Grandparents would be able to gain custody of the child, not just visitation.  When the parents are NOT bad parents is there ever a reason to usurp the parents authority and award a Grandparent visitation?

Being a parent myself I didn’t like the idea of someone telling me what is best for my child, so when I first learned of courts granting Grandparents visitation I thought it was wrong.  But then I began to think about it in terms of the best interest of the child standard. When I think about the added benefit to most children’s lives from maintaining a relationship with their Grandparents it makes sense.  The standard is the best interest of the child, not the best interest of the parent's ego.

In the case of the lady that I met, she had raised her grandson when his teenage mother, the lady's daughter, became overwhelmed with young motherhood and asked her to take over.  Now, ten years later, her daughter is stable, married and, like Grandmother and her daughter had planned, is parenting her child again. All was fine until the Grandmother's daughter's husband decided that Grandmother had too much influence in the life of the child and decided to cut the Grandmother off.  I listened to this lady tell me her story and felt bad; not just for her, but also for the eleven year old boy that was cut off from his Grandmother, the person who nurtured and raised him the first ten years of his life. I have to wonder if this lady’s daughter was thinking about what was best for her son when she decided that his Grandmother would be cut off from all contact with him, all because the step-father said so.

I don’t think that the daughter was.

Kairi Smith Gure
http://www.allfamilylaw.com/CM/Custom/Attorneys.asp

It is universal

I relate the stories that come through my office, the cases I've litigated, the successes and tragedies my clients have lived through.  Those stories are universal, they are experienced by everyone on some level, at some time. But the family law stories are not confined to my practice...

Yesterday I was at the gym, a place I visit far too infrequently, when I overheard a conversation between two gentlemen of moderate age.  Before you think I was eavesdropping, guys in a gym don't tend to share secrets as they pump iron, rather what they discuss they broadcast in semi-boisterous tones without regard, or sometimes with regard, for whether the nearby weight-lifters can listen in on the conversations.  It doesn't matter whether it is politics, sex (a frequent subject) or, pertinent to my story tonight, family.

What really captured my attention was that they were talking about their sons.  Having three myself, the subject is near and dear to my heart. Their sons were now grown.  The men had both been divorced when their sons were young.  The men related how they had gone through great difficulty with their sons, but with the passing of time, things were made right.

The first man was talking, "my wife and I split up when my boy was seven.  My wife was in a bad way at the time.  I got custody. Things were rocky, hard to manage, we got by I think mostly because I ran such a tight ship, tried to make it like clockwork. I think that kept me from going crazy in those days."

After awhile, my ex pretty much got her life back together.  She finally stayed in one place for longer than six months and found a job.  My boy and I were arguing more, he didn't like my rules, like, 'do your homework,' 'clean your room,' 'be back home by 9:00' kind of stuff.  So, when he was old enough, he decided to move to his mom's.  Broke my heart.  I mean, I shouldn't have minded so much since I'd had him for seven years but it broke my heart.  And he decided right after a big argument about whether he could stay out all night with a bunch of friends, including his little girl friend.  I said no.  His mom said she didn't see a problem with it and there you go, next thing you know, my boy's living with his mom. 

"We went through a few months where I couldn't look at him, it pissed me off so much.  Then it got better, he started coming over every now and then.  I kept up with him to see how he was doing in school.  Of course his grades were tanking, but then he was in ninth grade.  Anyway, two years pass, its the summer before he's a junior and he calls me up, asks me if we could have dinner together.  At dinner he says, 'I need to be a success, and I'm just not going to be a success at mom's house.  It's too disorganized.'  You could have floored me.  I felt like I was grinning all over my face.  He moved back in about two weeks before school started.  His mom thought that was probably best, too."

Then the other man shared, "my son's momma would fuss and cuss every time it was my weekend.  She'd come up with some excuse to keep him from me like, 'he's gotta study today' or 'he's gotta mow the lawn' or some such #&*%!."  (Talk runs like that at the gym.) "Got to where I couldn't break through, I couldn't keep her back long enough to see him when I was supposed to.

"Then he became a teenager and it got even worse.  He got all angry, sullen, accusing me of ditching his momma when it was she that filed for divorce.  Got to where he wouldn't even talk to me anymore, said he was too busy.  I never really lost track of him, I just barely saw him.  It became usual to where a few months would pass when I wouldn't see him.  That became the way it was.  So he drifted away from me.

"But now he's 22, a young man.  He's got a good girlfriend.  He's finished school.  And he wants to hang out with me.  Can you beat that?  He wants to hang out with me.  He was over the other day, I had my dad there too, and my son says to my dad, Grandpa, you raised a pretty good son.  I got so choked up I gave him another beer."

Time passes, wounds heal, wisdom grows.  At least it can.

Families are a fundamental reality, they are universal and their stories, our stories, are universal.  Good or bad they are a treasure for they are the stuff from which our riches are made.  There's a blog that's getting underway, The Twisted Family at  http://www.thetwistedfamily.com/2011_01_01_archive.html  It is about blended, no twisted, families, our families.  Real people.  Real stories.  Our stories.  Check it out.

Full disclosure: my wife writes it.  Look out, she might write about our family from time to time. Enjoy.

Michael Manely
http://www.allfamilylaw.com/CM/Custom/Attorneys.asp

A Very Happy Thanksgiving

Though Thanksgiving is now last week's news, I want to share events of that week with you as it relates to one 12 year old boy.

On the Friday before Thanksgiving, late in the afternoon, 4:31 to be precise, I was just starting to watch the premier of Harry Potter with my three boys when my cell phone buzzed.  I usually will ignore such stimuli when engaged in family activities, but the movie hadn't yet grabbed me and I was out of the office early.  So I pulled the phone from my pocket and checked.

An Opposing Counsel in a very contested divorce matter had emailed me an attachment.  I opened the email then the attachment which was his letter.  His letter informed me that his client, the opposing party in a divorce action, was high tailing it back to her homeland in Nigeria the next day, Saturday, with my client's  and the opposing party's 12 year old son.

I immediately called The Firm.  We sent a letter to Opposing Counsel; we called Opposing Counsel; I sent an email to Opposing Counsel, all to object in the strongest terms possible to the removal of this boy from the State of Georgia, not to mention the United States of America.

When you file a divorce, the Court grants an automatic Standing Order.  The Standing Order sets some ground rules that all the Superior Court judges think are a good idea in every divorce.  The first section of the Order says that children of the parties are not to be removed from the jurisdiction of the Court.  This means you can't take kids out of the State of Georgia, absent approval from the opposite party or the Court itself.

And here the opposing party was taking off to Nigeria, which is quite outside the jurisdiction of the Court.

Further, Nigeria is not a signatory to the Hague Convention.  This means that if the opposing party decided not to return, she could never be forced to return the child, even though he was born here, raised here and had never set foot in Nigeria.

The silence from Opposing Counsel was deafening.  We had ample reason to worry that the opposing party was, in fact, running.  My most excellent team sprung into action.

Associate Jeremy Abernathy drafted a quick Motion for an Emergency Hearing; Paralegal Robyn Midanaky checked every corner of the Courthouse for a judge at that late hour.  Sadly, none could be found.  All our judges had left for the day and would not return to the Courthouse until after the child had been successfuly spirited out of the country and into hostile territory, from the Hague's perspective.  Opposing Counsel had timed his strike perfectly.

Next, paralegal Nora Stocks came on board.  She, too had been spending a late afternoon/early evening with her family but left all of that aside and spent the next 18 hours working closely with the United States' State Department, Customs, Homeland Security, Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Atlanta Police Department coordinating everyone's activity and obtaining and providing them with the necessary documents to stop the opposing party from fleeing the country with the boy the next day. 

After dozens of calls and hours upon hours on the telephone, at 11:00 on Saturday night, United States and local officials intercepted the opposing party at the gate and explained to her in no uncertain terms that she was not stepping onto that airplane with that boy.  The boy was saved.

The opposing party decided to fly on to Nigeria that night.  She left the boy behind in the care of her 22 year old daughter from a prior relationship, who had also been booked on that Nigeria bound flight.

By Monday we had filed our Motion.  By Tuesday at 8:30 a.m., the Judge assigned to the divorce case heard the weekend's history and Ordered Opposing Counsel to turn over the boy to my client.

That Thursday, in the middle of the afternoon, my client bowed his head with his son to pray, thankful that his boy was with him, feasting at the table in this most American holiday. 

I want to express my sincere and deep thanks to my most excellent staff, and particularly Nora.  Their hard work and dedication to our purpose saved this boy and provided our client with a very happy Thanksgiving.

Michael Manely
http://www.allfamilylaw.com/PracticeAreas/International-Family-Law.asp

Familiarity has a value.

Tonight is a post authored by our own, Jeremy Abernathy.



Recently, I made the trek northwest to Cherokee County Superior Court.  Our firm had several cases on the Court’s calendar.  At 9:17 a.m., the Judge called the uncontested cases first.  Uncontested cases involve parties that have entered into an agreement on all issues.  Typically, these matters are short and sweet- but not in Cherokee County!

My client and I sat on the wooden pews in the Courtroom, and witnessed the uncontested case immediately preceding our case.  The lawyer firmly, but respectfully walked to the lectern, and his client gingerly and nervously approached the witness stand, seemingly dressed in his finest suit.  After being given the nod from the Judge to begin, the lawyer swore his client in and began asking him very short leading questions while simultaneously presenting evidence for the Judge.

Out of nowhere, the Judge interrupted and exclaimed to the client, “Would you appreciate being shifted back and forth between two households as often as you are asking your child to do so in this settlement agreement?”  The courtroom silenced.

In fact, the only thing you could hear was my client’s sheepish and nervous rhetorical question, “ Hopefully, the Judge won’t ask us all of that, will he?”

The lawyer and his client were frozen by the Judge’s barrage of questions.  They emotions seemed to go from amazement, to disgruntled, to desperate.  In fact, the client’s wife, who appeared for the uncontested divorce hearing was sworn in as a witness!  (This rarely occurs at an uncontested divorce hearing because only one (1) party, or in some case, neither party (like in Paulding County), is required to appear!)

Despite the wife’s testimony, client’s testimony and lawyer’s argument regarding the appropriateness of the custody arrangement, Judge asserted, “I refuse to approve of this agreement without expert testimony regarding how this arrangement provides stability for this child”  A disappointed client, opposing party and lawyer left the Cherokee County courtroom dismayed and utterly bewildered.

Perhaps if the lawyer on that case was familiar  with Cherokee County uncontested cases, he would have known that they can become quite eventful.   He would have known how to steer clear of that pitfall.

Our law firm, The Manely Firm P.C., provides the value of familiarity.  We handle only family law cases all around metro-Atlanta.  Our familiarity and specialized knowledge is the product of our commitment and focus to only family law cases.

Oh, by the way, the uncontested case that we had on the calendar that morning was done in 7 minutes.

Like I said, familiarity has a value.

Jeremy Abernathy
http://www.allfamilylaw.com/Bio/JeremyAbernathy.asp

The bane of our existence.

I spoke with a young woman today who had an interesting, though not terribly uncommon tale to tell.

She is 26 years old.  Her parents divorced when she was six.  Her mother received primary custody of her.  Her mother's favorite sport around the house was to bash dad: what a scum he was, what a deadbeat he was, what a horrible human being he was.  To say that dad had no value in mom's house would grossly overstate the situation.  You get the picture.

One day, it sounded like about seven years after the divorce, out of desperate need to retain some  boy's attention, this young woman accused her father of a heinous act.  Her accusation was private, to the departing beau.  He, then, told his parents who told the young woman's mom who called the police.

Months later, tens of thousands of dollars on defense counsel later, district attorney investigations and polygraphs later, the charges were dismissed. 

According to the police, the young woman made it up.  And why not?  It's not as if dad had value, anyway. This once little girl had learned that lesson well.

Though exonerated, the father langished.  He let his business go.  It was heading in the ditch anyway since it was a rather public operation and the public wanted nothing to do with him in light of the once pending accusations.  He fell into despair and depression.  He lost his house, his cars.  He nearly lost his mind.

He saw nothing of his daughter.

Years passed.  He worked at recovering.  He started a new business, flegling at first, but used it as his vehicle to re-engage with his life.  He threw himself into the business and it prospered.  Still he remained haunted by the absence of his child who had turned his world upside down.

Years passed and the young woman grew.  She graduated from high school.  She left her mother's home.  She attended and graduated college.  She got her first real job.  She  moved into her first real apartment.  She bought her own car.  She even became invested in her spirituality on her own terms.

And, as the years passed, as her spirituality deepened, she began to mature.  As she moved farther from her mother's world, she began to construct her own.

And she eventually came to realize just how she had wronged a man she once lovingly called Daddy.

So, after a painful series of starts and stops, she called him.

He took her call.

They met.  They cried.

Now, not terribly long after their grand reunion, they dine about once a week.  Usually Daddy buys.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Oh, the things we do to each other in families.

Adolf Hitler Campbell

A New Jersey couple have lost custody of their three children.  The parents named their children Adolf Hitler, Aryan Nation and Honszlynn Himler. The authorities became aware of the couple when they asked a supermarket to inscribe a birthday cake with best wishes for their son, named above.

In its ruling the Court of Appeals did not reference the birthday cake, but did find that the couple had significant physical and psychological problems. The Court found that both parents had been victims of childhood abuse and neither "have received adequate treatment for their serious psychological conditions."

The father, age 37, cannot read.  The mother only finished the 10th grade.  The Court considered a letter the mother admitted to have written.   The letter stated, in part, "Hes thrend to have me killed or kill me himself hes alread tried it a few times.  I'm afread that he might hurt my children if they are keeped in his care."

It seems undisputed that the birthday cake incident is how the authorities, New Jersey's version of DFCS, learned of the Campbells.  That the couple would saddle their three children with Nazi names is easily beyond  what reasonable parents would do.  But is that the issue?  If DFCS disagrees with your political persuasion, no matter how reprehensible, is that grounds for seizing your children?

I have a distant cousin named Reagan.  I have friends who've named their child Barak.  Are we sliding down a slippery slope when DFCS becomes a political police?

I deal with this issue in my family law practice.  For example, I represented a couple who lost their five children to DFCS a year before they hired me.  Their little boy had been playing doctor with an older, little girl.  Another family whose son had played the same game with the girl complained to the police.  DFCS spoke to my clients in developing a case against the little girl.  What DFCS found was that my clients had very odd familial behaviors which I won't go into here.  Long story short, when DFCS learned of the family's behaviors, they seized the children and would not let them come home.

After a year of begging, pleading and following every single DFCS instruction, the children were still being kept away from their parents, a year of the children's lives, lost forever.  Then the parents hired me.  I realized that the parents' peculiar conduct was entirely cultural.  Though it was not behavior that middle class white folks engage in, it was my culture's perjorative interpretation that determined that the conduct was harmful to the children.  There was no universal condemnation of this conduct.  Under a different value system, there was nothing harmful about it.

I immediately scheduled a meeting with the case officer, the DFCS supervisor and the Cassa. I would like to believe that I showed these folks the error of their cultural blinders and they became enlightened from my impassioned narrative, but I think the fact that my clients were Native Americans and that the treaty between the U.S. Government and their tribe required that all children seized had to be immediately returned to the tribal elders for determiniation and placement and that DFCS was therefore in violation of international law, probably had a lot more to do with DFCS surrendering the children back to the parents that very afternoon.

Our cultural and political norms define much of our comfort level.  I find naming a child Adolf Hitler personally repulsive.  I can probably correctly guess much about the stunted upbringing that child would have in his parent's care.  But taking a child is a huge step.  Our nation once took children just because they were Native American and wouldn't receive a proper Christian upbringing in their tribe.  I'm not so sure that telling Nazi's that they can't raise their children isn't somewhat the same thing.

Obviously the letter from the mother takes today's case in a different direction, but discovery of the letter came later.  Remember, what started it all was Adolf Hitler's name on a birthday cake.

Each case is wholly dependent on its facts.  Maybe these parents are really wacked out.  Maybe if anyone met them you'd get cold chills and agree with the Court that these parents were in no condition to raise their children.  I'm not saying the New Jersey Court of Appeals is wrong.  I don't know.

I'm just saying go slow.  Be careful.  Respect diversity.  After all, I don't think diversity fits in the Nazi playbook anyway.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/05/adolf-hitler-campbells-pa_n_672045.html

Michael Manely

Kids

I am painfully aware that I have taken an unacceptably long hiatus from this blog.  As you can tell, in part from the last post, the events of the month and our trial schedule has kept me occupied and away from this nightly duty.

_____________ 

I once handled a matter that involved a teenage girl who was the bane of her parents' existence.

Of course, many of my cases involve kids.  Usually the questions are who gets the kids, who spends time with the kids, who makes important decisions about the kids?  Often enough the children are involved on some level.  The kids almost always know about custody questions and, particularly if they are of age, often want to have a say. The gal I'm writing about tonight wanted to run the whole show.  She caused great trouble in her parents' divorce and she was quite aware of it.

Somehow, somewhere, the parents had put her in charge.  Everything had to be cleared by her.  What she didn't like, didn't happen.  "How would this be for you, dear?"  "Mommy, I don't like it!"  "Okay, then, we won't do it."  You can imagine. 

So here her parents were divorcing, I presume with her blessing, but she insisted on running that show, too.   And, in little girl fashion, her interference was not marginal, not subtle, but had to be center stage, occupying all energies and manifesting huge crises. 

It was a nightmare.

As time wore on, one parent began to get it, began to try to reign the child in.  The other parent continued to carry out the child's bidding.  Do you want to guess which parent that child wanted to live with?  When a teenager is given a choice between rules and absolute freedom to do what she wants, it is the rare teenager who knows that rules are in her best interest.

But the law gives that teenager a choice.  And judge's are somewhat loathe to deny a teenager's wishes, particularly as they get older. 

So the parent who enforces boundaries loses and of course the child loses.  And the parent who is laissez-faire prevails. 

And yes, sometimes the legal outcome makes no sense.

I think maybe the judges think the child is so far along and too far gone, that telling the child "no" on that particular judgment day, has very little lasting value.  Insofar as the judge, a stranger, can step in and change family dynamics with a solitary judgment is concerned, it would be an exercise in pure hubris for that the judge to believe he would really make a difference.

And so the child is lost, at least temporarily, until the day she is tested, weighed, measured and hopefully on that fateful day, not found wanting. 

We never really know.  Only time will tell. 

I can only hope that time will be kind.

Michael Manely

Parents are people, too

Perhaps you've heard the story of Abbie Dorn, mother of triplets born to her in 2006.  Abbie and her husband Daniel wanted children and were tickled to learn that they were expecting.  Oh, man were they expecting.  All was going swimmingly in their lives. 

Then it was time for delivery and something went terribly, terribly wrong.  A medical mistake during delivery left Abbie severely mentally incapacitated.   One year after the triplets were born, Daniel sought a divorce.

Abbie has been cared for by her parents in South Carolina while Daniel raises the triplets in Los Angeles.  Daniel has denied all visitation between Abbie and the children contending that he wants to be the one parent for the children and will consider telling the children what happened to their mother when the children get older and are able to understand.  Some years in the future, he might even let the children visit if he receives medical evidence that Abbie can communicate with her children.  Abbie's parents contend that she can communicate, albeit quite sparingly. 

The children turn four in June.  Daniel thinks the children can handle their mother's situation better when they are older, apparently when they can grasp their mother's medical condition and its limited and perhaps non-existent prognosis for improvement.  But I disagree.  I vehemently disagree. 

The key to assessing this matter is Daniel's "one parent" line.  Granted, this phrase was spoken by Daniel's attorney, but attorneys do not get too far afield of their client's expressions and further, the attorney's assertion is whollly supported by Daniel's actions.  He wants to be the "one parent."

But children have two parents.  Daniel's frail ego cannot change reality.  These three children have a mother whether she is exemplary or impaired.  The children have a right to see her, have a right to develop a relationship with her.  Daniel's actions are an infringement of that right.

The relationship will undoubtedly be incredibly different from the relationship most children develop with their mothers, but these children are entitled to the relationship they will develop with their mother, whether she can sing an aria or whether she is in a nearly vegetative state.

And Daniel's argument about waiting until they are older is disengenuous at best.  If the children had seen their mother from the beginning, they would have grown up with a mother in that condition.  It would have been a part of life, their natural order of things.  With each passing month that the children are denied access to their mother, the children's increasing cognizance cannot help but create drama.  Daniel is creating the children's trauma.  Perhaps his next step will be to claim it is too late, "now they will be traumatized."

Daniel operates from the paradigm that he owns the children.  Unfortunately, I see this often.

For Daniel, the children are his and only his.  He will determine all facets of their lives right down to whether they ever get to so much as gaze upon their mother's face.

In my cases in which parental ownership is an issue, while I don't often address circumstances with brain injured parents, I do work with many mentally and emotionally impaired parents.  But even when there is no medical or psychological component, even when there is no claim of such an issue, the parent who claims ownership operates the same way.  "I am the one parent." 

The owner parent acts unilaterally, denigrates the other parent, often does not include the other parent in activities, perhaps even refuses to provide the other parent with notice of school events.  By the time I see them, there may have been so much history that the non-owning parent needs an opportunity to readjust his paradigms and prepare to re-enter the relationship on much healthier terms.   I feel for these parents.  They have been excluded from their children's lives.

And the children need these parents included.  The children seem to feel a real void without the presence of that missing parent, even if the void is just psychological from a physically present but emotionally neutered parent.  I am writing in male terms, but this condition sometimes also occurs with women, when the men gain primary custody.

And this situation is atrocious.

So you can guess how I feel about the plight of the Dorn children, and how I feel about their father's arrogant attitude. 

For a child to be wholly separated from one of their parents there better be an exceptionally good reason.  And that reason better not be because dad is Hispanic, or dad doesn't earn enough money, or mom has bi-polar disorder or because mom became brain damaged during delivery.  That is a new definition for "sucks".

Michael Manely

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/04/22/california.triplets.visitation.lawsuits/index.html?hpt=C2

Hearing Voices

Joe Stack is the latest husband gone mad.  He's the guy who flew his plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas.  Apparently he burned down his house first.  Reports have it that his wife took her daughter to a motel the night before so that they could be safe.

Stack lost control.  He's not the first; he won't be the last.  His loss of control was particularly newsworthy, but many spouses lose control in less spectacular ways.

From time to time, a client will tell me that their spouse is crazed.  My first job is to determine the accuracy of that characterization.  Is this just an angry spouse talking or is there some substance there.  If my client tells me, "he's crazy because he doesn't discipline our child," I'm thinking he's not crazy, he just has a different standard.  If my client tells me, "he's crazy because he hears voices and calls me up from work in the middle of the day, crying on the phone when he doesn't know why," I'm thinking there's probably something there.

I'll try to get as many specifics as possible.  Not just, does he suffer from mood swings, but are they dramatic?  What does he do when he goes through mood swings?    How do you know that he hears voices? What voices does he hear?  What do those voices tell him? 

When I'm satisfied that there's something there, my job is to get my client ready to explain it to the judge, who is always skeptical.

Testimony about specific conduct is essential.  Conclusions will never work.  Everyone contends their spouse is crazy.  Even more valuable than the client's testimony is independent evidence of conduct such as eye witnesses or the spouse's writings.  Audio or video recordings of the extreme behavior are excellent so long as they don't run afoul of any prohibitions against making the recordings. 

A history of psychiatric treatment is beneficial though, often people who need help don't seek it.  Psychiatric records are well protected but a party can always waive the protection.  The party is then faced with a grave choice, waive the record and air the issues fully and candidly, or maintain the protection and let the judge assume the worst.

When the matter involves custody or visitation, I want a psychological evaluation.  The process of establishing the sanity or insanity of the party should be about getting an objective view, not a subjective view.  Too many experts want to testify to what the paying party wants to hear.  I feel strongly that objective data is essential from an expert.  I've known experts to spin normal behavior to suit their benefactor's purposes.  I've had one psychological expert testify that he saw himself as nothing more than a Washington spin doctor.  I've even known experts to make stuff up.  I want the truth, not what an expert thinks I want to hear.  And I can trust objective data much more than subjective opinion.

Cases involving emotionally impaired spouses are the exception.  That is why so much additional work needs to go into getting the judge's attention and assistance in gathering the information necessary to establish the truth of the matter.

Bottom line: when you are trying to protect yourself and your children from an emotionally impaired spouse you need witnesses, you need evidence, you need fairly specific instances of conduct that bear out your claim before the judge will understand that your claim is something more than sour grapes or an attempt to gain an advantage. 

When you are trying to escape from an emotionally impaired spouse, you need help.

...and my children live in Canada.

What do you do when your ex, or even your ex soon to be, wants to move, and doesn't just want to move to Lilburn, but wants to move to another country?  Maybe that doesn't sound bad at all, but how about if your ex wants to take your kids?

Your first thought? "Fight for custody!"  And you'd be technically right, but infrequently, practically right.  Before you launch into such a war, you need a thorough evaluation of whether you are going to win such a war.  I'm a firm advocate of only starting fights you can finish.  I reason that you aren't much good to your kids when you're dead, and losing a custody battle can be a similar fate.

But I don't mean for tonight's entry to be about the intracacies of custody battles.  That tome can be saved for another day or series of days or even weeks.  Tonight I'm writing about your ex moving the children to foreign lands. 

Almost always when the ex says it's time to move to a foreign country, the country is not foreign to the ex.  The ex is from there.  And almost always, the American spouse knew that before the marriage.  Usually the American spouse has visited the homeplace on at least one occasion. So this announcement is seldom a surprise.

The American spouse often thinks that the foreign spouse will run off with the kids, never to be seen again.  However, that is seldom the case.  There are certainly great examples of bad moms running away to the far reaches of the Earth, but that is not the common experience.  The Hague Convention renders that option a fools choice.  Foreign parents don't get far by running home.  The foreign courts will enforce United States' Orders under the Hague Convention.  If the foreign court gets a bit sluggish, the State Department will remind them of their legal obligation.

Getting your kids home can take more time than you want it to take (doesn't almost everything?).  But when the children are shipped home, your ex is likely to only see them in extremely limited circumstances for years to come.

That's why foreign born parents rarely run.  They take the good situation they have and make it far worse. 

In this day of international travel and relocation, Courts increasingly look upon foreign relocation as they might long distance United States relocation, such as moving to Oregon or even Alaska.  Courts are not overwhelmed by the thoughts of the children living in Germany or France or Malaysia but they are interested in maintaining the relationship between the children and the non-custodial parent. 

Not only do the children come home as often as possible, the non-custodial parent develops a new holiday spot.

I don't mean to make this sound peachy.  It isn't.  But it isn't much different than your kids moving to Vermont or San Fransisco.  Moving to a different country isn't the issue.  The distance is.

I'll write more on that issue soon.