Read it and Weep

Here's a lovely little piece about a man who fought for several years to get custody of his son (Argus Leader, 1/8/09).  The mother was given custody during the course of court proceedings, but the trial court ended up giving custody to the father.  Why?  Because the mother had tried so hard to alienate the boy from his father that the judge decided she wasn't a very good parent.

But the South Dakota Supreme Court decided otherwise because the father hadn't paid all the child support he owed.

To appreciate the outrageous quality of this decision, you need to understand the emphasis appellate courts traditionally give to findings of fact by trial courts.  Appellate opinions are loaded with the idea that trial courts are better equipped to decide the facts of a case than they are because the judge at trial can ascertain the veracity of witnesses, etc.

So when the Supreme Court overruled the fact finding of the lower court that the father would be the better parent, it really went out on a legal limb.

There's one other thing it may have done, though.  (The article doesn't say.)  It may have simply ruled that, as a matter of law, a man who doesn't pay 100% of his child support may not be given primary custody.  And that would be really scary.

Steve Moxon's The Woman Racket The Woman Racket is a serious scientific investigation into one of the key myths of our age--that women are oppressed by the 'patriarchal' traditions of Western societies. Drawing on the latest developments in evolutionary psychology, Moxon finds that the opposite is true--men, or at least the majority of low-status males--have always been the victims of deep-rooted prejudice. As the prejudice is biologically derived, it is unconscious and can only be uncovered with the tools of scientific psychology. Moxon reveals this prejudice in fields as diverse as healthcare, employment, family policy and politics.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 29th, 2009 at 1:59 pm and is filed under blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. | 316 views | Trackback | Print this page |

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