In the beginning of April, I saw this tweet.:
Emma is a big advocate of shared parenting, just like I am. I found this tweet rather surprising and startling. I replied and we had a twitter discussion for a good half hour.
I said:
“Hmmmm. “ no or minimum back-and-forth between parents' homes.” Interesting. Well, maybe I should have kept the kids for the entire 5 weeks from my ex-wife instead of sharing them equally. I’m not sure she would have liked that.”
Her reply was:
I then asked: “If parents can’t agree, then what?”
We went on and on.
I am seeing how people thing they can pick and choose when to follow orders during this pandemic. All rules are to be thrown out I guess. Well, that never sat right with me. In fact, my ex almost decided to write her own rules. I refused to allow that to happen. I share my kids equally with my ex-wife.
This crisis has led to many other child custody issues. The New York Times finally wrote a story about it.
It seems when women are affected, an issue that normally affects men suddenly gets national coverage. Family Court shenanigans and parental alienation have been hurting fathers for decades. All of a sudden we have the right type of victim and the problem is amplified.
An excerpt from the New York Times piece:
Last month, Dr. Bertha Mayorquin, a New Jersey physician, told her soon-to-be ex-husband that there was a change in plans. After two weeks of providing treatment by video as a precaution against the coronavirus, she would resume seeing patients in person.
But when she left work on a Friday to pick up her two daughters for the weekend, her husband, Wendell Surdukowski, presented her with a court order granting him sole temporary custody of the young girls. His lawyer had convinced a judge that Dr. Mayorquin could expose the children, 11 and 8, to Covid-19.
The doctor, an internist, had intended to spend the weekend celebrating her younger daughter’s birthday. Instead, she spent it frantically assembling 50 pages of paperwork to try to reverse the order.
“Many people working in the hospitals — doctors, nurses, so many of us — are parents,” said Dr. Mayorquin, whose hospital had asked her to start treating non-coronavirus patients at an urgent care center to ease the burden of the pandemic. “Are our children going to be taken away from us because we are on the front lines helping people?”
Parents all across the nation have begun to withhold access to their children from former spouses or partners over fears of infection. Is it a public health issue? Should parents not allow people access for the duration of the pandemic? How long will that be? For essential workers and people in the health care industry, that may be for months or years. Should they be punished for doing their job?
What about parents who go overboard and feel children shouldn’t be outside at all? Some suggest no custody exchanges should take place at all.
In the above scenario, the husband said, “If there’s an imminent threat to the kid’s well-being, you must take action, whether that’s something like drug abuse or a virus.” “Watching the news, looking at the cases of doctors being sick, you cannot tell me that they are not at a higher risk.”
Does that mean his wife cannot longer see her children? Did they not think about this when they married?
The husband is using the excuse that he has an underlying condition. He told the judge that he was also concerned about his own health.
Mighty convenient for him isn’t it?
Other mind boggling stories are in this article. A mother wants to deny her firefighter fiancée access to their 21-month-son. She kept watching the news and grew increasingly alarmed. He tried to assure her that he and his station were taking the proper safety measures, including wearing personal protective equipment while at work.
On her lawyer’s advice, she filed an emergency motion asking a judge to grant her sole custody for the length of her state’s shelter-in-place order.
In another example;
In Monterey County, Calif., Lisa Chu filed an emergency motion seeking sole temporary custody of the 11-year-old twins and 9-year-old son she shares with her ex-husband, Steven Biakanja, a firefighter. He would have to produce a negative result from a coronavirus test every time he was scheduled to see the children — an impossible demand, given the limited availability of screening.
Most of these unreasonable requests have been denied or overturned. I’m happy to see that happen.
People have lost their minds.