The fathers’ rights movement is often extremely critical of family law judges. While I think this criticism is excessive and overblown, some of it is certainly legitimate. The biggest problem is that family law judges often don’t respect the loving bonds between fathers and their children. One example is the Traub case. In The Future of the American Father, my address to the 2004 Men’s Rights Congress, I explained:
“In the case of DeBrenes v. Traub, a divorced custodial mother remarried and seeks to move with her 13 year-old daughter. Get this–first mom moved, and dad uprooted himself and moved to be with his daughter. Then mom moved again, and dad uprooted himself and moved again to be with his daughter. And now mom wants to move again–to Costa Rica! Yes you heard right, Costa Rica! They have no ties in Costa Rica, the girl doesn’t speak Spanish and doesn’t want to go, but mom remarried recently and her new husband lived in Costa Rica 58 years ago–yes, 58 years ago–and he wants to go back.
“In any rational country the judge would have laughed the mother out of the courtroom, told her she must be joking, or suggested she put the wine bottle down and go sleep it off. Instead the court GRANTED her request, only stipulating that the girl, who is learning disabled, be allowed to finish her studies at her special school. In other words, Eric Traub’s 13 years of loving fatherhood are to be bundled up and thrown away the moment the strong, loving bond he shares with his daughter became inconvenient for mom.”
I do try to be fair, however, and in between criticizing judges and their rulings, I think it is also important to point out when judges get things right. One example of a judge getting it right is a ruling by a Jefferson County Kentucky family court judge named Virginia Whittinghill.
In my recent blog entry Finally, Finally, Finally an Important Point about Paternity Fraud I discussed the case of Ren Hinshaw. According to an article in the Louisville Courier-Journal, Hinshaw is “fighting to retain joint custody of a child he helped raised and loves as his own, even after finding out the boy is not his biological child.â€ÂÂ
“‘He is my son, and I am his dad,’ Hinshaw said in an e-mail to the newspaper.
“The child’s mother says Hinshaw should have no right to custody…
“Hinshaw was in the delivery room when the boy he thought was his son was born in 1999.
“He cut the umbilical cord and later changed the boy’s diapers, taught him to talk and volunteered at his school, according to court records.
“Hinshaw, a technology consultant at the University of Louisville’s Kornhauser Health Sciences Library, described the boy in court records as the most important thing in his life.
“But when the child’s mother, Jacqueline, divorced Hinshaw in 2003, she disclosed he wasn’t the biological father and asked Jefferson Family Court to deny him custody.
“Judge Virginia Whittinghill ordered a counselor to meet with the child. She concluded he had bonded with Hinshaw and that it would be ‘very devastating to him if he was not in his life.’ She described Hinshaw as the boy’s ‘psychological father.’
“Whittinghill not only granted Hinshaw’s motion for joint custody, she also made his home the boy’s primary residence and ordered his ex-wife to pay him $25,000 in attorney’s fees.”
Whittinghill is one of the heroes of this story, standing up for a loving father’s bond with this child against the mother’s selfish demands and family law machinations. I salute her, and she is the initial entry into the Glenn Sacks pantheon of “Judges Who Get It Right.”
Let’s hope her inclusion doesn’t hurt her career…
www.GlennSacks.comÂÂÂ
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