General legal information furnished as a service of Fort Lauderdale / West Palm Beach family law attorney Janet Langjahr
Once upon a time, non-parents might have visitation or even custody rights, most commonly grandparents.
Then the US Supreme Court ruled that such third party rights trampled the rights of parents, which should be superior - provided the parents are fit parents.
Since then, some states have tried fashioning constitutional statutes granting third parties visitation or custody rights.
The most popular third parties are still grandparents. But there are other beneficiaries as well.
Stepparents. And the gay parent who is not the biological parent.
Utah is one such unlikely state to pass a new law allowing a non-parent to seek visitation or custody rights.
Arguably, in defiance of local court rulings.
Read more in this Salt Lake Tribune article: Measure would boost rights of stepparents.
A millionaire and his wife are pitted against each other in an ongoing custody battle … over their dog.
The “father”, who has no children, has spent over $60,000 to win custody of the pooch.
At first, the couple engaged in roughly equal timesharing, by agreement.
Then the “mother” accused the “father” of abuse.
The judge didn’t buy it, and the “father”’s timesharing resumed …
Until the “mother” moved to Connecticut.
Since then, the “father” has had no time with their pet.
The “father” is filing an appeal.
Read more in this New York Daily News article: Fur flies over dog custody.
A father has not seen his son for more than a year.
The boy’s mother took the boy on a vacation to India.
And never returned.
India is not a party to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. And India does not view child abduction as a crime.
As a result, India law enforcement reportedly will not act in cases such as this father’s.
As his last resort, the father has sought the aid of India’s apex child’s rights council because, he argues, his son has been denied contact with his father. He has also contacted the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights.
The boy in this case is a US citizen, and lived in the US for years prior to his abduction. Even under Indian law, his case should be heard in the US.
But …
Read more in this Telegraph - Calcutta article: NRI dads fight for ‘abducted’ children.
In recent years, the national (and international) trend has been one of increased tolerance of the notion of rotating custody, or timesharing that is more evenly distributed among parents than in traditional visitation schedules.
That is why the situation in Norway is so noteworthy.
Norway has an Ombudsman for Children, a government official who is supposed to be a mixture of spokesperson and advocate for kids.
And Norway’s Ombudsman doesn’t think children should have to “commute” between their parents’ respective homes after divorce.
He thinks this puts the parents’ rights above the children’s needs. And that the “commute” is too stressful and disruptive to most children.
The Ombudsman points out that some separated parents even want their children to attend different schools.
A Norwegian politician criticized the Ombudsman for failing to “equate the positions of mother and father”, concluding that therefore “it will continue to be the fathers who are discriminated against”.
The politician expressed no opinion as to the best interests of children though, arguably conceding the Ombudsman’s argument.
Read more in this Norway Aftenposten article: Child custody spurs debate.
Dad has 4 hours of visitation every other week, supervised by the child’s grandmother.
An old Arizona statute allows judges to award visitation to grandparents.
The grandmother here was awarded visitation of her own.
Later, Mom gives notice of her intent to move out of state to care for an ailing relative.
Another, newer, Arizona statute allows a noncustodial parent to object to the custodial parent relocating their children to another state.
Dad apparently did not object to the relocation under that statute.
Instead, Grandma, in essence, did, by seeking to block the relocation, by relying on that statute.
An intermediate Arizona appeals court said the statute blocking relocation was only available to the noncustodial parent, not to grandparents.
The grandmother’s attorney intends to appeal to the state’s highest court, with the argument that this ruling allows the custodial parent to thwart grandparent visitation rights simply by relocating.
A ruling elevating grandparent visitation rights would be against the weight of federal and state court rulings entered after the passage of the grandparent visitation statute in Arizona.
Read more in this East Valley [Phoenix] Tribune article: Ruling could affect grandparents’ visitation.
French mother and British father and two boys lived in England near London.
Mom and Dad divorced. Mom got custody of the eleven and twelve year old boys.
Although the boys didn’t speak any French, Mom decided to move them all to France.
Boys not happy. Boys complained to Mom.
Boys go on summer vacation to England for visitation with Dad.
Boys announce they will not return to Mom in France.
Mom brings return proceeding under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.
UK Court rules that the boys were quite firm in their strong objections to living in France, making for a “very exceptional” situation that warranted allowing them to remain in England without any ruling from a French court.
The Mother’s argument that the boys were habitually resident in France within the meaning of the Hague Convention and therefore France had jurisdiction to determine custody was all but ignored.
The British Court prohibited the Mother from appealing it’s ruling.
One reason the boys gave for wanting to remain in England was that they “would not have as much homework”.
What better basis for a child custody ruling?
Read more in this London Daily Mail article: Two boys take mother to court because they don’t want to live in France.
A therapist gives some concrete examples of parental alienation:
And the possible effects on the child:
Alienation isn’t just damaging to the child’s relationship with the other parent.
It is damaging to the child’s psyche.
Read more in this [Riverside County, CA] Press Enterprise article: Put kids first in divorce.
An Australian mother consented to her two little girls, eight and nine, taking a summer vacation trip to the US with her ex-husband last June.
She has not seen them since. And has only been able to speak to them on the phone a few times in all those months.
The children’s father reportedly initially suggested that the girls’ stepfather had molested the older girl. But that allegation was withdrawn.
Only the children still are not home with their mother.
But, thanks to the internet, the mother has finally tracked the girls and their father down. Now she will at least be able to press an application for return of the girls under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.
The mother has learned that getting children returned under the Hague Convention, even if ultimately successful, is a frustratingly slow and expensive process - particularly if you don’t yet know where your children are.
This mother hopes to warn other mothers not to consent to overseas travel by their children with the other parent.
Of course, that strategy won’t protect a parent if the Court will or has already granted permission for the overseas travel - as is fairly common today …
Read more in this Mackay [Australia] Daily Mercury article: Mother fights to get her daughters back.
A mother and grandmother allegedly abducted two little girls from Texas to Ireland in violation of the final judgment of divorce of the mother from the father.
The father had to hire a private investigator who, after several months, tracked them down. To secure return of the girls, the father commenced a return proceeding under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.
For purposes of the proceeding, the little girls, who had not seen their father in over a year, were briefly interviewed together by a psychologist. The psychologist opined that the children disliked everything about living in the United States.
Their father finally had a short visit with the girls during the proceedings in Ireland, during which he alleged that they were extremely hostile toward him.
Under the Hague Convention, children are normally ordered to be returned to their place of habitual residence. But, as with any rule, there are exceptions.
When more than a year has elapsed, the Court may decline to order the return of children if it finds that the children are “well settled” in their new location.
And that is precisely what the Court did in this case.
The father contends that the mother alienated the children from him, that is, willfully and methodically campaigned to turn his children against him. But, he insists, the Irish courts don’t “believe” in parental alienation. And, hence, the outcome in Ireland.
The article has an interesting discussion about parental alienation, aptly characterizing it as a form of child abuse, and suggesting that children are extremely and quickly susceptible to it.
The article is one-sided, written from the standpoint that this was a particularly severe case of alienation by the mother. And much of what is reported in the article appears to support that conclusion.
It really should be noted, however, that early in the article it is glossed over that the Court ordered that exchanges of the children for purposes of visitation were supposed to take place at a police station.
That is not where exchanges take place in the typical divorce / separation. Normally, police station exchanges are reserved for cases where there is a history of domestic violence.
So the case in question may not be as cut and dried as it may appear at first glance.
Either way, the father has not given up. Since the removal in this case was in violation of court order, Texas law enforcement can charge the mother, among other things, with custodial interference, a felony for which the mother may be extradited back to Texas.
Read more in this Plano Courier Star article: Kidnapped girls found but not returned home.
A disturbing editorial rendering accounts of adults who were victims of parental alienation as children and the parents from whom they were alienated.
One particularly haunting account was of a young father who was being alienated from his children … and his sudden insight that what he was going through now was what happened to his own father when he was a child.
The morsel of hope to be drawn from the piece is that many children eventually come to understand as adults what went on when they were children - and re-establish bonds with the parent from whom they were alienated.
Sometimes lost in the shuffle is that the children are also victims of parental alienation - and that they are often scarred by the alienation. Even if they eventually re-attach to the alienated parent.
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