Author: Joomlafreaks

February 9th, 2012 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
A California Court of Appeals has upheld the largest award of sanctions in the history of the state against a mother of two children.  Read about it here (Daily Business Review, 2/7/12).  The trial court awarded the father, Drew Perkins, the sum of $552,153.28 against his ex-wife, Dr. Loretta Wahl, but the appellate court didn’t stop at approving that sum.  It also awarded him $15,000 for Wahl’s frivolous appeal, but the court still wasn’t finished.  It also sanctioned her two lawyers $5,000 each for their involvement in the appeal.

Now, the linked-to article doesn’t begin to fully describe Wahl’s behavior that led to such a huge sanction against her.  Here’s what it says:

The case stems from December 2005 when Santa Clara County Superior Court issued an order mapping out custody and visitation rights for Wahl and Perkins and their two young children. What followed were more than six years of cross-country legal filings and accusations of bad behavior between two wealthy people.

Now, given that description, you might think that Loretta Wahl and Drew Perkins were equal-opportunity abusers of each other and the legal system.  But you’d be wrong.  In fact, only one person was sanctioned by the courts – Loretta Wahl – and reading the appellate court’s ruling on the case, it’s easy to see why.

The court’s opinion is 23 pages long, almost all of which consists of a litany of Wahl’s outrageous behavior regarding the court, her ex-husband and their two children.  Not surprisingly, the result of her behavior was to keep the children away from their father for long periods of time.  I suspect that wasn’t an accident.

As the linked-to article states, this drama played out over a period of six years.  During that time, Loretta Wahl violated just about every possible judical rule for the conduct of litigation.  The main problem, though, arose from the one agreeable thing she did in the entire case.  In March of 2009, she actually agreed to an order of custody, visitation and the like.  She was represented by an attorney and she signed the document giving her all but exclusive custody of the children, but requiring her to put the children on a plane once a year to visit their father in California.

Despite getting everything she could possibly have desired, Loretta Wahl decided the very next day that her signature on the agreement had been coerced.  She proceeded to unilateraly attempt to abrogate same.  What that meant was that she spent the next almost three years ignoring and disobeying court orders.  She figured she had the right to do that because she had decided that the agreement she’d signed and that the court ordered simply didn’t apply to her.

So she hired and fired lawyers and then represented herself.  She announced, without supporting legal authority, that her home state of Pennsylvania was, and ever after would be, the proper jurisdiction for deciding the issues she sought to raise.  She sued the Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court under legal theories as yet unknown to the profession.  She refused to abide by any of the trial court’s orders, routinely refused to appear for hearings either in person, by counsel or by phone.

Although ordered to do so, she refused to accept Perkins’ phone calls and disabled her fax machine.  The court ordered her to provide cell phones to her children, but she immediately filled their voice mail boxes so their father couldn’t leave messages for them.  When she finally sent the children to California to be with their father, she demanded that he pay her $500 for clothing for them.  Amazingly enough, he paid the money, but when they arrived, they had no clothing.

She filed lawsuits in Pennsylvania against the Chief Justice and Perkins, in both state and federal courts.  In addition,

On January 5, 2010, Pennsylvania Judge David Wecht ordered appellant to pay respondent $1,500 in attorneys’ fees and costs for filing the same request three times. 

Also on January 5, 2010, appellant filed a federal lawsuit against Judge Wecht and the Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County, seeking protection under the Americans with Disabilities Act.  Respondent’s federal counsel also represented him in that case.

Face it, when you’ve got a litigant who responds to a minor adverse ruling by attempting to sue the judge who issued it, you know there’s a loose cannon on the deck.

At one point, when Perkins was due to travel to Pennsylvania to see his kids, Wahl demanded that he pay her $250,000 “as a retainer,” whatever that means.  She then informed him that he could not come to her front door to pick up the children, but had to do so at the end of her driveway.

Meanwhile of course, Drew Perkins had to hire attorneys both in California and Pennsylvania to hang on to what minimal parental rights he had.  Each filing by Wahl meant more attorney’s fees for Perkins and more time wasted.  Each hearing she refused to attend meant the same. 

During much of this time, Wahl was representing herself and transparently had no idea of what she was doing.  Her spelling and grammar were bad and her legal acumen non-existent.  Her entire work product consisted of little but a blizzard of paper whose sole intent and sole accomplishment – in addition to angering the trial and appellate courts – was to come between a father and his children.

One of her favorite tactics was to file documents in court with the requisite statement that the filings had been served on Perkins’ counsel when in fact she’d done nothing of the kind.  That required his attorneys to carefully monitor all filings in the various courts in Pennsylvania and California just in case Wahl was making yet another frivolous claim.

So the trial court came down on her with both feet.

The superior court found that respondent had met his burden of showing that appellant had “frustrate[d] the policy of the law to promote settlement of litigation.”  It stated that respondent’s declarations were “replete with examples of [appellant’s] behavior that has frustrated the letter and the spirit of the Permanent Order.”  As to her attempt to rescind the parties’ agreement, the court observed that appellant had not filed a motion to set aside the parties’ agreement, she had not followed the court’s orders, she had not appeared in court, and she had not accepted the court’s authority to make orders.

As to the amount of the award, the court indicated that it had reviewed the lodged
billing statements.  It found that, in light of appellant’s reckless conduct, $552,153.28 was not an unreasonable amount of attorneys’ fees and costs to have incurred since issuance of the Permanent Order.  The court stated:  “Respondent cannot be faulted for aggressively litigating the enforcement of a custody order that [appellant] seems determined to ignore.  By attempting to ‘rescind’ the Permanent Order in California, and by commencing custody litigation in Pennsylvania, [appellant] has forced Respondent to fight to retain his custodial time (and his bond) with his two children.  By refusing to comply with discovery requests and by absenting herself from this sanctions proceeding, [appellant] has forfeited her opportunity to present evidence that such a sum is unreasonable.

As you may have guessed, neither Perkins nor Wahl is hurting for money.  When she pays it, Wahl will barely feel a sting at the loss of half a million dollars.  Conservative estimates have her net worth as in excess of $18 million and more like $30 million.

One final point worth noting is the fact that her last lawyer, Richard Ducote was sanctioned by a court in Louisiana for using similar tactics in a divorce case there.  Now, Ducote committed next to none of the bad behavior in Wahl’s case.  He only began representing her in 2011.  I suspect that the court sanctioned him $5,000 for aiding and abetting the obviously abusive behavior his client.

But Ducote looks to be worse than simply an overzealous attorney.  He also seems to be one of the true believers in the club that claims that (a) family courts unfairly discriminate against mothers and in favor of fathers, (b) any claim of abuse by a mother must be taken at face value and (c) parental alienation syndrome is bogus science that seeks to tear children from innocent mothers and give them to abusive fathers.

I say this because he’s a member in good standing with something called the “leadership council” many of whose members are a rogue’s gallery of exactly the above. 

So I find it interesting that a lawyer who just entered the case less than a year ago and who engaged in few if any of the abusive tactics Wahl did should have been sanctioned by the appellate court.  Could it be that they’re sending a message not only that such tactics can’t be allowed to work, but that the absurd beliefs of the “Leadership Council” can’t be either?

One can hope.

Thanks to Jim for the heads-up.

February 9th, 2012 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
The Arizona Legislature has begun considering a bill to change the way the state deals with cases of severe abuse or neglect of children.  Read about it here (Tucson Citizen, 2/8/12).

The bill, HB 2721, would create a new unit, apparently within child protective services.  It would consist mostly of members with backgrounds in law enforcement who would supplement case workers in severe cases of abuse or neglect.

The bill is in response to findings by the Child Safety Task Force empaneled last year by Governor Jan Brewer.  The task force came about due to numerous cases of severe abuse, some resulting in the death of the child, that had already come to the attention of Child Protective Services. 

It was the failure of CPS to prevent those injuries and deaths that stirred the press to call for reforms.  Law enforcement agencies, particularly the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office responded by writing the legislation that is now before a House committee.

But there are problems.  First, the bill, if enacted into law, would add a law enforcement presence to a situation that already has one.  Currently, local CPS caseworkers are empowered to involve the police if they think a child’s situation warrants it.  Just how adding another group of individuals to the mix would improve matters remains unexplained.

Second,

It’s unclear exactly what the investigators would do. Brewer’s budget says they would travel with CPS investigators and train CPS and police, but the bill says they also would be authorized to receive reports, respond, remove children and submit investigative reports.

In other words, they’d be doing what CPS does only without training in child protection, only in law enforcement.  Into the bargain, they apparently would have the power to remove children from families even when case workers reached a different conclusion.

Worse, as far as has been reported to date, the new “unit” would have no mandate to keep families together where possible, as CPS currently does.  Inevitably, that would mean that police-trained members of the unit would tend to err on the side of family break-up to prevent what they would see as the main problem – danger to the child.

And that of course is the main problem with the proposed bill.  It seeks to create a “unit” with the power to break up families but with no mandate to maintain family relationships and no training in how to decide when or when not to take children from their parents.  For example, will these individuals be informed of the large body of science showing that children tend to do worse in foster care than they do in parental care, even when those parents have been shown to be abusive or neglectful?

As one of the many articles on the shortcomings of CPS in the Arizona Republic explained, for years now, various governors have vowed to take bold action to increase the effectiveness of CPS and reduce the level of child injury in the state.  All have done something, but none has done anything that worked.  If this bill passes, Jan Brewer will take her place at the end of that growing line of governors.

The simple fact is that law enforcement personnel are less equipped even than CPS caseworkers to decide issues of child maltreatment.  By giving law enforcement greater power to decide child welfare issues with no corresponding understanding of or fealty to the family, the bill would make matters worse, not better.

Another thing.  Across the nation, more and more CPS agencies complain that people who are supposed to report child abuse and neglect fail to do so.  Many of those are “mandated reporters” like doctors, teachers, coaches and the like.  Those people fail to report child injury at the risk of their jobs, and yet many do not.  The question many people are asking is “why?”

I would suggest that the answer lies in part with CPS itself.  If people generally trusted CPS to do the right thing, my guess is they’d be more likely to make those reports.  But the fact is that people fear the unbridled power CPS has to tear families apart.  Understandably, they hesitate to place a family in CPS’s crosshairs, rather hoping the family will work things out on its own or that things aren’t bad enough to call in the power of the state.

If I’m right about that, adding yet another police agency to the situation isn’t likely to encourage people to report their concerns about child abuse.  My guess is it’ll do the opposite.

There’s an answer to all of this – an answer that no one in the state seems to have considered.  The answer is not greater state power but less.  The answer is not more children taken from their parents but fewer.  The answer is to take money currently spent on foster care and direct it toward services for parents who may need nothing more than some expert advice or training in how to properly parent their children. 

That won’t do away with foster care and it won’t protect all children from injury, but it will keep families together and likely improve children’s outcomes overall.  Into the bargain, it’ll help CPS regain the respect in the eyes of parents and the public generally that it long ago squandered.

February 10th, 2012 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
The Portland, Maine District Attorney is facing civil charges that she improperly used her office to intervene in a custody dispute between a father and mother.  District Attorney of Cumberland County Stephanie Anderson has been sued in federal court by the father, Igor Malenko.  Read about it here (Portland Daily News, 2/9/12).

So far, some of the facts seem to be undisputed and some have yet to be proved.  What seems clear is that Malenko and his ex-wife,
Lori Handrahan, have been in a running battle over custody of their daughter for a long time.  Malenko, who has remarried, has been awarded primary custody of the girl while Handrahan has moved to Washington, D.C.  He also has a court order prohibiting Handrahan from having contact with the girl except for the supervised visits she’s permitted by the family court’s order.

But on January 27th, Handrahan appeared at the child’s daycare center in Cape Elizabeth demanding that the child go with her.  Malenko’s lawsuit alleges that Handrahan attempted to forcibly take the child from the center.  The girl’s stepmother, Malenko’s wife, resisted and an altercation ensued.  The police were called and, on viewing the custody order, sent Handrahan on her way.

Why she wasn’t arrested for violating the restraining order is anyone’s guess, but whatever the reasoning of the police, that should have ended the matter.

But it didn’t.

It was sometime over the course of the same day that [Malenko’s attorney]Waxman says Anderson called police and told officers to hand the child over to Handrahan. The phone call was made after Anderson told police she would “pull the court order and review it with the judge,” reads the lawsuit.

The young girl was ultimately placed back in the care of her father after the officer involved in the incident contacted the Department of Health and Human Services — she was not released to Handrahan.

In the claim, Anderson allegedly confirms to Waxman that she reviewed the order with the judge, which is the basis for Waxman’s lawsuit against the district attorney.

“She asked the judge to interpret or clarify the decision … (and) that’s not how our system of justice works,” Waxman said.

Waxman accuses Anderson of getting involved with the case after police already determined it was a civil — not criminal — dispute.

“Somebody clearly asked her to become involved in this case and that somebody, in my view, was not the police officer,” he said. “Somebody in Handrahan’s camp asked Anderson to get involved with this case. She agreed to do that and she agreed to work on behalf of Handrahan.”

In short, a county official who’s job is to prosecute criminal cases, used the power of her position to intervene in a civil matter, order the police to turn the child over to the non-custodial mother and then attempt to intimidate the family judge by demanding that he/she “clarify” an order that was already sufficiently clear.  Such, at any rate, is how it looks from here.  All doubtless will be made clear in the discovery phase of the federal case against Anderson.

And let’s not forget; Handrahan’s behavior toward her daughter and her ex-husband has already been sufficiently bad that the family court has granted her only supervised visitation.  That likely means either that she’s a danger to the child or a danger to kidnap the child in the view of the family court judge.  It’s bad enough that the District Attorney should abuse the power of her office in any case, but to intervene in a custody matter on behalf of a mother who’s already been found to be possibly dangerous to the child is outrageous.

Anderson says she’s never been sued in 20 years as DA.  But that doesn’t mean she’s never abused the power of her office before on behalf of litigants in custody matters.  Will other parents read about the lawsuit against her and be emboldened to come out of hiding and raise similar issues?  We’ll see.

 

February 10th, 2012 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
The anti-father bias of family courts is clear enough.  How could it not be given the daily litany of fit fathers losing custody and contact with their children all with the blessing of family court judges who never stop reminding us that they’re acting “in the best interests of children?”  But you might think that other governmental institutions would be less anti-dad.  If you did, you’d particularly think that of agencies whose main function is just gathering data.

But, as this article reminds us, if you thought that, you’d be wrong (New York Times, 2/10/12).  It seems that, when the U.S. Census Bureau wants to know about the parenting and childcare arrangements of Americans, it makes the assumption that fathers aren’t – you know – parents.  It does so because it makes the parallel assumption that mothers are.

 When both parents are present in the household, the Census Bureau assumes for the purposes of its “Who’s Minding the Kids?” report, that the mother is the “designated parent.” And when the designated parent is working or at school, the bureau would like to know who’s providing child care.

If the answer is Daddy, as it was 26 percent of the time when these numbers were last released, in 2005, and 32 percent of the time in 2010, the Census Bureau calls that “care.” But if Mom is caring for a child while Dad’s at work, that’s not a “child care arrangement,” but something else. Parenting, presumably.

In short, as “Who’s Minding the Kids?” understands it, fathers, nannies, babysitters, daycare workers and the like, are all on the same plane.  They’re the parenting fall-back position for mothers who are the real parents.

As the Times Motherlode blogger K.J. Dell’Antonia makes clear, that’s doubly sexist; it assumes mothers are caregivers and fathers aren’t.  As such, it tends to reinforce both gender roles.  But while mothers have jumped into the workforce in great numbers, fathers have had a much more difficult time convincing courts that they should be recognized as important in the children’s lives and continue to play an important role therein post-divorce.

As I never tire of saying, we’ve known the vital importance of fathers to children for decades now, but family courts still haven’t gotten the message.  So however much the Census Bureau’s categories tend to keep mothers at home with children, the greater problem is fathers’ judicially-mandated separation from their kids.

Now, the Census Bureau has an explanation for its sexist view of mothers and fathers.

[The Census Bureau’s Lynda] Laughlin assured me that the Census Bureau is just trying to collect accurate data on how “designated parents” arrange care for their children while they’re at school or at work based on “gender norms.” Yes, as Sara Mead notes on the Education Week Policy Notebook blog, it’s important to track changes and trends in who is caring for children while their parents work. But fathers (apparently this needs to be spelled out) are parents too. Work support goes both ways, and if parents are going to work, parents – of both sexes — need support.

I’d suggest one other thing.  If the Census Bureau wants to track childcare and working arrangements between partners, maybe they should just ask their subjects what they do about that without “designating” one of them the “parent” and the other one the “care.”  Why not ask each parent how much time they care for the child and how much time the child is cared for by someone else such as another relative, daycare, a nanny, babysitter, neighbor, etc.?  Couple that with who’s working for pay and how many hours, and you’d have more information than they’re currently getting without pre-deciding roles based on sex.

The whole thing puts me in mind of one of my latest peeves – the notion that because fathers do, on average, less hands-on childcare than do mothers, what they do for their children is in some way less important than what mothers do.  The fact is that, although family arrangements have changed a lot since the 1950s, men still do more paid work than do women and women still do more housework and childcare than do men.  All added up together, the two sexes spend about the same amount of time in those activities, but men are still more likely to do most of the earning in the family and women most of the childcare.

When divorce comes along, that translates into “Mom gets custody.”  After all, she’s the one who’s cared for the child, right?  But why should the one dictate the other?   

Let’s look at Ward and June Cleaver.  Ward earned the money and June raised the kids.  Ward put a roof over their heads, food on the table, clothes on their backs and sent them to school, the doctor, etc.  June changed their diapers when they were little, fed them, bathed them, read to them, dressed them, soothed them when they cried, etc.

It seems to me that both sets of parental behaviors were necessary to the wellbeing of Wally and the Beaver.  But had Ward and June divorced, with even a little ingenuity and the assistance of the family court, June could have arranged it so Ward saw little or nothing of his sons.  Why?  Because the court, like the Census Bureau, regards typically maternal behavior as parenting, and typically paternal behavior as, in some way, irrelevant to children’s wellfare.

Needless to say, children need the food, shelter and clothing that fathers’ work provides every bit as much as they need mothers’ loving arms.  And yet courts, legislatures and now the Census Bureau, are loath to admit the obvious fact.

Indeed, in states that rely on a checklist of factors a judge must consider in deciding custody, one of the most important factors is some version of “which parent has provided the majority of the children’s care” up to the time of separation.  As far as I can tell, that’s invariably interpreted to mean who’s done the hands-on care, while who’s earned the money to protect, shelter, nurture and educate the child doesn’t enter into the discussion.

There are many ways to keep fathers and children separate.  Family courts have found them all and even invented a few of their own.  And it’s all a product of a state of mind that finds mothers to be the only legitimate caregivers for children.  It’s a mindset the Census Bureau shares.  That’s not just anti-father, it’s anti-mother as well.   Most important, it’s anti-child.

Thanks to John for the heads-up.

February 12th, 2012 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
When a major national magazine asks the question “Do Mothers Matter,” it’s bound to be provocative.  Indeed, my guess is that was the purpose of entitling the article that way; it’s clearly a backhanded reference to the Maureen Dowd type of commentator that makes a living by snark and little else.  But unlike Dowd, Elizabeth Marquardt actually has something to say and some facts with which to back up her argument.  Here’s her article (The Atlantic, 2/10/12).

Unfortunately, it takes her a while to get to the point and her piece hits several bumps along the way.  Her question, “do mothers matter?” arises from the phenomenon of assisted reproductive therapies like surrogacy and egg donation.  One obvious fact that Marquardt never gets around to mentioning outright is that, just because a child is conceived via egg donation and gestated by a surrogate doesn’t mean he/she doesn’t have a mother.  It only means that the mother the child sees every day couldn’t conceive and/or carry a child herself.

So what Marquardt is actually worried about are men who become “single fathers by choice.”  That is, they find an egg donor and a surrogate, and, when the child is born take it into their own care as per their agreement with the surrogate.  They do, in other words, what “single mothers by choice” have been doing for decades now – choosing to raise a child without a partner.

Of course, some of them do have partners.  For example, some gay couples have gone the surrogate route in order to become parents.  Why they don’t just adopt, I’ve never been able to figure out.  If adoption in the U.S. is difficult for gay men, foreign adoptions are not.

And Marquardt’s take on gay men becoming parents via surrogacy has the uncomfortable ring of anti-gay bias. 

Picking an egg donor and a surrogate, gay couples from the obscure to the wildly famous — examples include Elton John and David Furnish, or Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka — can do this too. Generally moneyed and armed with a team of baby nurses, nannies, and house cleaners, most of these fathers probably do fine in providing material comfort, opportunity, and a loving home for the children.

Reading that, I found myself wondering if Marquardt believes that (a) all gay men are wealthy or (b) they don’t actually parent the children, but just turn them over to their “team of baby nurses, nannies, and house cleaners.”  If Marquardt doesn’t know any gay fathers, maybe she should take the trouble to meet some.  I can introduce her to a few who strike me as exemplary parents.

Another thing Marquardt fails to mention is how many children, conceived by egg donation and carried by a surrogate actually end up without mothers.  Of course the biological mother isn’t part of the child’s life, but I’d wager that far more often than not the day-to-day mother is present and accounted for in the child’s life, very much like an adoptive mother would be.  So Marquardt wants us to believe there’s a major problem, but is there?  Here’s her one and only stab at making the case: 

Today we are witnessing an equal opportunity run on deliberately conceiving motherless children.

A “run?”  Really?  Are there no statistics on the incidence of motherless children via single or gay men using a surrogate?  If there are, why didn’t Marquardt let us know what they are?  If there aren’t, why does she believe this is a significant phenomenon?

In short, there are a lot of problems with Marquardt’s article that need to be sorted out.  Still, eventually, she gets to some points worth making.  Marquardt has joined the crowd of researchers, historians and people of good will and common sense who understand that fatherless children generally do worse in life than do those who grow up in intact families.  And she suspects that the same would hold true of motherless children as well.  My guess is she’s right.

We are now learning more than ever before about the experience of an arguably similar class of children, those deliberately denied their biological fathers via sperm donation. In studies such as “My Daddy’s Name is Donor: A New Study of Young Adults Conceived Through Sperm Donation,” which I co-investigated with University of Texas sociology professor Norval Glenn and donor-conceived adult Karen Clark; or in stories posted at the popular AnonymousUs.org website; or found in a newly-released documentary, Anonymous Father’s Day, we are hearing that being deliberately denied your father can be both painful and bewildering, especially in a society that says your loss should not matter.

Based on a representative sample, in “My Daddy’s Name is Donor” we reported that most sperm donor-conceived persons strongly object to anonymous donation of sperm. Nearly half feel troubled by the role of money in their conception. Most want to know about their biological father’s family, and they wonder if that family would want to know about them. Compared to their peers raised by biological parents, sperm donor-conceived persons are more likely to struggle with delinquency, addiction, and depression.

Clearly, at least some of these kids are not really all right. It seems entirely plausible that at least some conceived never to know their mothers might share the feelings of the sample in our study. For decades we have debated whether fathers matter. Must we now debate whether mothers matter, too?

I certainly hope not.  Rather, what we should do in the case of motherless children is the same as what we should in that of children without fathers.  We should point out at every opportunity that children need both parents, preferably both biological parents, in order to optimize their well-being.  That’s what the science has taught us beyond question.  It’s the failure of public institutions – most notably courts – to grasp that most basic of concepts that continues to haunt the days of millions of children and to make American society far less than it can be.

February 13th, 2012 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
“Miss Lonelyhearts” columns are one good way to keep track of the zeitgeist, or at least part of it.  Partly due to their anonymity, people write in to strangers like Abigail Van Buren and say everything from pouring out their hearts and souls to asking advice about the accepted method of installing a roll of toilet paper.  So the letters are sometimes interesting and so are the responses by “Abby” or whomever.  And, if one were inclined to read them, all those letters and all those responses would give a pretty fair idea of the tenor of the times about certain subjects.

Now, most of those “Miss Lonelyhearts” columns are written by and for women.  Most of the letters come from women and most of the responders are women as well (“The Loved One” and Nathaniel West’s “Miss Lonelyhearts” notwithstanding).  So the part of the zeitgeist revealed by those columns tends to be the distaff side of things.  Men aren’t very well represented because they don’t tend to write in.

For my money, some of the columns give pretty good advice.  Much of it is common sense, but often enough, that’s all people need to help them through whatever difficulty they’re inquiring about. 

Then there are some advice columns in which it looks like it’s the advice giver who needs help as much as it is the letter writer.  Here’s Exhibit ‘A.’ (Huffington Post, 1/25/12).

It’s written by one Iris Krasner and I find myself wondering who’s gone more totally off the rails, her or her advice seeker, Cindy from Dallas.  The piece is all about love (or the lack thereof), marriage and what makes a marriage work.  Krasner touts herself thus:

My conclusions about the see-saw between hate and love come not as a psychologist or as a minister who counsels her flock. I am an author of five relationship books, including The Secret Lives of Wives, to whom women tend to tell all, about joy and sorrow and cheating and lying, about hot sex and no sex – and lots of dish in between.

Hmm.  Maybe a little training would help Krasner notice a few obvious things, not only about Cindy, but about herself.

It seems Cindy recently emailed Krasner asking advice.

“Help! I hate my husband.”

Sounds like bad news indeed, so Krasner asked her a few questions to get some details about just why Cindy hates her husband, and that’s where it gets interesting.  In the entire article, Cindy actually describes her husband in just two places.  Here’s one:

[H]e’s a gentle man and a hands-on father. I have never been suspicious of him being with other women. He makes a good living, and that has enabled me to stay home with the kids.

This is the guy she hates?  She has children with him, he’s a good father, faithful to her, a good earner whose earnings allow her to do what she wants which is be a stay-at-home mom.  Cindy goes on to say that she finds him sexy and enjoys sex with him although it doesn’t happen very often.  Again, this is the guy she hates, so you’re probably wondering what her husband does that is so awful that it overwhelms all those other positive attributes.  Get ready for it; here’s the one negative thing Cindy told Krasner about her husband:

My husband chews his food loudly.

Yep, that’s it.  And the remarkable thing is that Krasner, the writer of all those “relationship books,” doesnt’ quite notice.  Oh, she seems to grasp the fact that Cindy’s husband could be worse and gets Cindy to see that too, all of which is fine.  But here’s what Cindy’s problem is that Krasner manages to miss:

Anyone who says she hates her husband and goes on to describe him in quite glowing terms, doesn’t hate her husband, she hates something else.  In Cindy’s case it’s boredom; she describes herself as “bored.”  Well, here’s some unsolicited advice for her: your boredom isn’t your husband’s fault, it’s your fault.  If you don’t want to be bored, do something that interests you.  Get a career, go to school, start a non-profit to combat misandry in popular culture.  There are a billion interesting things out there in the world to do.  Find one and do it. 

But the fact that Krasner missed the obvious isn’t the worst part of her piece.  The worst part of it is that she and Cindy agree that a husband is responsible for his wife’s emotional wellbeing.  Of course there are things husbands can and should do, or refrain from doing, that can understandably affect how their wives feel.  But Cindy’s husband’s got those covered.

What Krasner never lets on about, is the fact that Cindy needs to start acting like an adult and take responsibility for her own emotional state.  No, neither Krasner nor Cindy grasps the concept that, if Cindy’s unhappy, she just might have something to do with it. 

What Krasner does advise is that Cindy shouldn’t go looking for love elsewhere.  That’s probably a good suggestion, but the reason she gives is that the next guy would probably be worse than her husband.  In other words, it’s the man’s job to make the woman happy and, as luck would have it, Cindy’s husband is doing about as well as can be expected, so she should stick with him.  Nowhere in the piece does the concept appear that a wife might look to herself to cure her own emotional ailments.

In the same vein, nowhere in the piece does either woman mention that Cindy’s husband may have gripes too.  He almost certainly does.  For example, he may think to himself, “I’m a good husband, a good father, a good provider, but Cindy’s never satisfied.  It’s as if she hates me.”  But the idea that anyone in their relationship suffers but her never registers with Cindy or relationship guru Krasner.

Given that absurdly skewed view on male-female relationships, it’s no surprise that Krasner’s description of marriage would make the the most passionate person hesistate before tying the knot.

What wife among you hasn’t occasionally sucked down too much wine to numb the pain of grinding against the same person, in the same house, every day, for weeks, months, years?

Well, all I can say is that, if that’s your understanding of marriage, stop giving advice on relationships and make an appointment with a qualified therapist. 

No relationship is all sweetness and light, but if you love someone, you want that person to be happy and give what you can to make it happen.  That said, there is a line beyond which you are unable to make a difference in the other person’s life, health and well-being.  Apparently, neither Cindy nor Krasner understands that.  From her description of him, Cindy’s husband is doing a fine job of being a good husband.  If Cindy hates him, she’s the one with the problem, not him.  In fact, here it is:

When we got married I imagined this great life we would have together and instead we seem to always be fighting, about the kids, about the fact that he is so remote, about the stupidest things.”

I’m sure everyone fantasizes about an ideal life together when they marry.  But adults understand the difference between fantasy and reality.  The fantasized marriage is the one in which everything works easily, no jagged edges, no hurt that’s not effortlessly salved by the balm of perfectly like-minded individuals.  Adults understand that even the ones we love the most are different, autonomous people from ourselves, with their own wants and needs. Only children hate the other because he/she doesn’t give them what they want.

And that, as they say, is the bottom line.  Cindy’s not behaving like a grown-up.  She’s bored and all she can imagine is that it’s her husband’s fault.  Krasner essentially agrees but cavils that hubby is better at doing the job of ensuring his wife’s happiness than are most men.

My guess?  Back in the day, Dear Abby would have set Cindy straight in under 100 words.  But these are different times and, if columns like this one are any indication, not better ones.

February 13th, 2012 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
Last Friday I reported on the case of Igor Malenko and Lori Handrahan.  They’re the Maine couple who have a daughter who’s now five years old.  My piece reported that Handrahan had attempted to take the child from her daycare, her stepmother (Malenko’s wife) resisted, the police were called and the child was eventually returned to her father, the custodial parent.  That set-to got the attention of the local District Attorney, Stephanie Anderson, who intervened with the family court judge in an apparent attempt to sway the outcome of the ongoing custody/visitation case.  Malenko, through his attorney Michael Waxman, has now sued Anderson in federal court for abusing her office.

In my original piece, I said that Handrahan had only supervised visitation with Mila and that Malenko had gotten a restraining order against her having any contact with the child outside of those visits.  Well, a reader alerted me to the fact that Handrahan in fact has visitation with Mila that is unsupervised, and I’ve located what appears to be the most recent custody ruling in the case that verifies the fact.

What’s far more interesting is that, assuming Handrahan’s visits to be supervised, I concluded that the court issuing the order must believe she’s a danger to the child or possibly a risk to abduct the child.  Strangely enough, I was wrong about the terms of visitation, but right about what the judge in the case must think about Handrahan.  Such, at any rate is a fair conclusion to be drawn from this court order issued February 1, 2011.

When they first divorced, the judge gave Handrahan primary custody for reasons I can only guess at.  The linked-to order changes all that for what should be obvious reasons.

The judge begins by saying that both parents clearly love Mila and that she’s a happy, healthy child who likes being around Dad and Mom separately. 

 Unfortunately, all of the evidence presented to the court also shows that an effective co-parenting relationship between the parties has never developed since the Divorce Judgment was issued. Mila needs both her mother and”her father to be engaged with her individually as a parent. She has that. Mila also needs both her mother and her father to be committed to work together to collaboratively and
cooperatively love her and guide her through her childhood. She clearly does not have that. The fact that her parents are not able to co-parent her is harmful to Mila, and it will undoubtedly become increasingly harmful to her as she gets older. In Mila’s interests, the conflict between her parents must stop, or at least it must be significantly abated.

You get the picture.  The parents are at each others’ throats, can’t get along and the child is at risk as a result.  Well, not exactly.  In fact, according to the judge’s clear findings, there’s just one person who’s at fault for the failure to co-parent – the Defendant, Lori Handrahan.

Unfortunately, the evidence demonstrates that, at least presently, a co-parenting relationship between the parties is not possible. It is not possible because the Defendant either refuses or is unable to let it happen. Whether the Defendant “refuses” to co-parent with the Plaintiff, or whether she is “unable” to co-parent with the Plaintiff is unclear. The answer to this question may lie at least in part, to the Defendant’s narcissistic personality diagnosis…

The testimony from the parties at the most recent hearing was very similar in tenor to their testimony at trial in December of 2008. The court finds the testimony of the Plaintiff to be credible. He was forthright, his testimony made sense, and his testimony was corroborated by other evidence. The court does not find the testimony of the Defendant to be credible. The Defendant was very evasive in her answers to questions, and she made a strange and unsubstantiated claim. She testified that, “pedophiles use decongestants to sedate children.”  No credible evidence was presented at all to indicate that Mila was provided any drugs or was
influenced by drugs. Nevertheless, the Defendant suspected that the Plaintiff had drugged Mila. Consequently, the Defendant had a test done on Mila’s urine in February of 2010. She claimed that there “was “meth” in Mila’s urine that was documented at a national lab.” She offered no credible evidence to corroborate this claim. The Defendant indicated that the Department of Health and Human Services refused to intervene regarding her claim, so she contacted the Drug Enforcement Agency (it was unclear whether the Defendant contacted the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency, or the Federal Drug Enforcement Agency). Apparently, the DEA refused to intervene as well. Based upon the evidence presented, the court does not find the Defendant’s claim to be at all credible.

When the court issued its Divorce Judgment, it was hopeful that the Defendant would be able to co-parent Mila with the Plaintiff, but there were clear signs, based on the Defendant’s pre-divorce conduct, that this hope might be ill founded. Specifically, the court was concerned about the Defendant’s ability to co-parent Mila with the Plaintiff in light of the fact that the Defendant had continually insisted that the Plaintiff was mentally ill and that he required treatment (when he was not mentally ill at all). Moreover, the Defendant insisted that the Plaintiff take certain medications for “his mental illness” (that Plaintiff did not need, but which he nevertheless took to avoid difficulty with the Defendant). Additionally, the Defendant tried unsuccessfully in two instances to have the Plaintiff involuntarily committed for mental health treatment.

Since the Divorce Judgment was issued, the Defendant has continued to demonstrate that she will not cooperate with the Plaintiff in the parenting of their daughter. She has unilaterally removed Mila from her day care arrangements. She has refused to inform the Plaintiff of where Mila attended day care, or who Mila’s medical care providers are. In August of 2009, the Defendant simply relocated to Sorrento, Maine, a town four hours away from South Portland, where the parties had been residing. She did this without any notice to the Plaintiff. All of these
actions were in direct violation of the Divorce Judgment.

The court finds that the Defendant lacks the capacity to allow and encourage continuing and frequent contact between Mila and the Plaintiff, and that she lacks the capacity to cooperate or to learn to cooperate with the Plaintiff in caring for Mila. The Defendant has shown no interest in seeking out methods for her use in cooperating with the Plaintiff or for her use in resolving disputes with the Plaintiff relating to the parenting of MIla: the Defendant has simply resisted the Plaintiff’s efforts to be Mila’s father at nearly every turn. Conversely, the court is more optimistic that the Plaintiff has the capacity and the willingness to co-parent with the Defendant. He understands that Mila needs both of her parents, and he has expressed a willingness to cooperate with the Defendant. Further, the Plaintiff has
not disobeyed the court’s orders, as the Defendant has, and the Plaintiff has been very patient and appropriate in his response to the Defendant’s recalcitrance. The court finds that Mila has spent enough time with the Plaintiff to be very comfortable with him as her dad. The living arrangements that the Plaintiff provides for Mila are quite stable and adequate, and Mila is comfortable with her life with the Plaintiff in South Portland.

The court went on to find that it is in Mila’s best interests to be in the custody of her father and so ordered.  It went on to order that Handrahan have visitation with Mila and that she pay child support.  Tellingly, the judge ordered Mila’s passport to be placed in her father’s hands.

So, while I was incorrect in saying that Handrahan’s visits were supervised ones, I must question why they aren’t.  After all, this is a mother with narcissistic personality disorder who -unsurprisingly given that diagnosis – refuses to co-parent with Mila’s father whom the court finds to be a loving, responsible man who would cooperate with Handrahan if it were possible to do so.  The judge says it’s unlikely that Handrahan’s behavior will change and fears for the child’s emotional/psychological well-being because of it.

Given all that, the only questions are why Handrahan got primary custody in the first place and why her current visitation isn’t supervised.  My guess is that it should be.

February 15th, 2012 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
The following was written by the always excellent and inspiring Paulette MacDonald.  She’s Co-President of the Canadian Equal Parenting Council whose website is here.

Are Canadian parents okay with the emotional and mental child abuse that occurs in our divorce courts? Our government is, apparently. In a 1998 report,
For the Sake of the Children, the product of the Special Joint Committee which put forth forty-eight recommendations for change to the Divorce Act is still the focus of divorce law reform some thirteen years later and not one of those recommendations has been made into law. Yet our government claims the Best Interest of the Child (BIOC) is paramount in our “dysfunctional” Family Law System.

At first glance, the BIOC seems like common sense. Of course parents want what is best for their child or children during divorce and study after study clearly illustrates that children fare much better with a continued relationship with both parents after divorce or separation. Yet in Canada, mom gets sole custody in 90 percent of cases and that is not in the best interest of anyone except our million dollar divorce industry.

Equal\Shared Parenting in instances of divorce or separation is best for everyone involved and equal parenting polls these past several years have demonstrated that the public understands that the law is grossly unfair. Yet our government continues to ignore the rights of our children by forcing them to choose to love just one of their parents in our “dysfunction” family courts.

Let’s be clear, equal parenting does exist, just not in our courts. It exists when divorcing parents put the needs of their children before their own and come to an agreement without the courts intervening. That is not the case when they end up in the adversarial, winner-take-all approach in our courts; they are focused on feelings and emotions of anger, hatred, misunderstanding, mistrust, failure, and revenge, rather than what’s best for our children.

Tens of thousands continue to suffer under a legal regime which is oppressive and inequitable, particularly for children, fathers, second wives and grandparents.

Why? Because of vested interest groups called Canada’s Divorce Industry, Incorporated. The more families they destroy the more money they make and apparently that’s more important to our government than our children’s rights to a continued relationship with both their parents and their emotional and mental wellbeing.

In previous sessions of parliament we have put forth equal parenting motions, equal parenting bills and several Parliamentary reports such as, For the Sake of the Children 13 years ago. It’s time for our majority government to legislate its own policy regarding shared parenting and the right of both parents to raise their children unless clear evidence-based due process demands otherwise.

Please urge your MP to champion a Government Bill for Equal Parenting.  Tell your MP that our children have a right to the love, care and attention of both parents while the marriage is intact.  Why is that right taken away from our children when the marriage ends?