When the parents agree to joint custody they are also more likely to coparent significantly now, which is more a consequence of improved societal attitudes than of legal innovation or reform.

However, if an unscupulous mother wants to nix joint custody she usually can, and in at least some states is gaining in the extent to which the law assists her designs.

Although one can still find, e.g., teachers and pediatricians who will condescend to all fathers, it’s mostly accepted now that fathers can be fully competent parents; but if he’s forced to go up against the mother, she’s given the stronger, upper hand.

The idea that family law was juster or more rigorous in some mythic past is wrong: an inversion of the actual history. The reforms we seek now will be a first, if we ever get there.

She doesn’t give a rats ass about the kid. She wants to be in control of the money. And in all honest, I think the father may have somewhat a sweet tooth for the money as well.

Sad.

TMOTS

The Census Bureau observed it, and the IRS `discovered’ it in the course of its data mining looking for tax fraud: at first it was suspicious when it saw steadily increasing numbers of single men claiming child dependents and credits, etc.

That fathers do often have to unnecessarily fight to establish paternity and gain custody reflects the inertial lag in the legal system in coming into line with reality, and such nonsense as the persistence of the archaic husband-as-putative-father rule. It is time for the legislatures to act and put an end to the bullogna that the lawyers and judges continue to grind out.

Of course if the mother isn’t dead or materially unavailable, and elects to reject coparenting, a father still has no practical chance of being a parent to his children in any real sense.

The proper response to the spurious but frequently disingenuously raised claim that a child’s rights stand in a reciprocal or zero-sum relation to his parent’s rights, is to note that while children certainly have rights in a colloquial sense, and have moral rights, they have _no_ legal rights because they don’t have _standing_ to petition, file motions, etc., in court. The issue thus always devolves into: who speaks for the child, the parents or someone else? Those who shout that respecting children’s rights means restricting parents,’ are in effect answering that it should be a judge.