A woman's right to move

Submitted by el cid on Tue, 2013-12-03 03:03

Article here. The story involves a pregnant woman who moved to New York from California and asked a New York judge to grant her sole custody of the child. The judge refused and sent the matter back to California, where custody of the child was given to the father. The woman who wrote the article claims this is taking fathers' rights "way too far, to the point of dangerousness." Excerpt:

'Here's one I haven't heard before: A woman gets pregnant in California by a famous athlete she is casually dating, decides to go to college in New York — tuition paid by the GI Bill — and after she moves there, before the baby is born, gets blasted by a New York judge for "her appropriation of the child while in utero," which the judge calls "irresponsible" and "reprehensible."

I understand that fathers have rights, and I'm all for that. But this ruling took those rights way too far, to the point of dangerousness. It treated a fetus as a child, for purposes of a custody battle. And in doing so, it threatened to limit the rights of a pregnant woman to move and travel.

A New York appeals court has already overturned the ridiculous initial judicial order in this fight between Sara McKenna, 27, a former Marine and firefighter now attending Columbia University, and Bode Miller, 36, an Olympic skier. But the case isn't over, and it's the latest fascinating entry in a series of legal challenges by fathers to traditional assumptions about parental rights and child custody. The old legal problem for single mothers was deadbeat dads. The new one is fathers who are so eager to assert themselves that they run roughshod over women's rights. As the adults clash, sometimes it even becomes hard to consider the child at the center.'

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Comments

This is good news (the fact that Miller has custody and his state has jurasdiction). the mother should be paying child support while the child is with Miller. This is not the first case I know of father-athletes using the court to ensure pregnant mothers do not run off.

I know from my own experiences that my state asks very pointed questions about which state has jurisdiction of the child(ren) wether parents are in agreement or not. I had a break up while pregnant and moved across the country, and later during legal proceedings it took several months to determine which state was the "home state" to the children. Pro-athletes also make things difficult as they rarely live in the state in which they play.

The questions I had to answer before the court would take my case included how many states the children and I lived in including when children were conceived up until present. Did I pay rent or have a lease, was I registered to vote or drive in these states,etc. I specifically remember one question asking if the child(ren) could have been conceived in any other state (difficult to answer when you travel for work).

I find legal policies to be in conflict when they demand the potential father do things for the pregnant mother to retain paternity rights, yet the pregnant mother owes nothing to the potential father. I see this often when fathers lose paternity rights because they did not offer the mother support during pregnancy or attend pre-natal visits.

The Bode Miller case is an example of when shared parenting may not be healthy and too difficult (they each have a different first name for the child which is an indication they cannot compromise) and father seems like the best candidate for full custody.

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Submitted by Kris on Tue, 2013-12-03 06:35