Mother Gets Jail Time Over Son's Last Name

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 2010-02-10 17:36

Article here. Excerpt:

'(CN) - A mother must spend 10 days in jail for allowing her son to use his stepfather's last name in his baseball league, the Alabama Court of Appeals ruled.

As part of her divorce decree, Lisa Preston was required to have her son use the last name of her former husband, Matthew Saab, when playing sports.
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The mother admitted that she had allowed her son to choose which last name to use. He had his first name on the back of his jersey.

The trial court found the mother guilty of five counts of criminal contempt and sentenced her to five days in jail for each count. The Alabama Court of Appeals affirmed on two counts, but reversed on the others. Preston must spend 10 days in jail -- five days each for the incorrect name on the registration and on the baseball roster, the court ruled.
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The original sentence was 25 days, but the judges reversed the ruling on the mother's contempt charges for the clothing tags, the magazine subscription, and for allegedly not allowing sufficient telephone contact with the father.'

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Comments

I am commenting on this because the 'which last name' issue is of interest to me, as everyone in my family has a different last name and it bothers me at times.

But I believe this woman was wrong and is deserving of punishment. It obviously is an important issue to the father as it was even mentioned in the divorce decree.

It says she let "her son decide". but she is the adult and needs to make the divorce as easy as possible for her child and should not burden him with such decisions**. It sound like she is trying to sway the child towards his step father and sever ties to his biological father.

The father can't win in this situation. He may even be shed in bad light for "making" the mom serve time in jail.

I would even consider this part of "parental alienation syndrome".

** I assume this is a young child. As I do believe most older children (15+) have the mental capacity to make informed choices as to what last name they want to use. If a step father has been more of an influence on the child's life due to the bio father's own choice to be absent then I can understand why an older child may chose to use the stepfather's surname. In most (all?) states a child can change his/her name w/o parental consent at 16.

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Submitted by Kris on Thu, 2010-02-11 05:51

I have a few friends who have "matrix families" due to divorces (or just couplehood if they didn't get married in the first place) that have kids all mixed with one another under the same roof, different kids depending on what days of the month we are talking about, sometimes kids from as many as three distinct couples (or crossed couples as the case may be - it can be hard to calculate exactly how many couples are involved depending on how you define "couple").

It is most certainly very confusing both logistically and emotionally and must require constant vigilance regarding the calendar and who has what scheduled visitation rights. Ugh, what a mess. But when there is a specific and explicit order handed down by a judge over things like this that are clearly part of a divorce decree, then indeed these need to be enforced. And I am glad to see that *finally* some judge somewhere is enforcing one of such of terms when the offender is the mother of the child in question.

Mark your calendars and celebrate the date next year.

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Submitted by Matt on Thu, 2010-02-11 16:33