Posted by
Playful Walrus on Wednesday, December 30, 2009 10:54:39 AM
Here's a very real example of how a political agenda meant to massage the feelings of a few adults is having a harmful impact on the well-being of a child.
The biological, birth, and custodial mother of a seven-year-old girl has been ordered by a Vermont judge to turn over custody to a woman with whom the mother was in a civil union during the pregnancy/birth. The women have not been together since before the girl turned two years old, but that is legally trumped by the fact that they were in a civil union. This is a perversion of the "assumption of paternity", where a man has default legal responsibility for a child born to his wife, even if the wife was having an affair. That is to protect the child and ensure that the child has a social father - and to make it less likely that the state will have to financially support the child.
I understand that the other woman claims to be frustrated by lack of visitation to the little girl, despite the court's order of such visitation (many fathers are in the same boat), but is it really in the girl's best interest to deal with that problem by taking her from her mother? Visitation is supposed to be for the child's benefit, not so that the visiting adult can feel a sense of equality.
Read my analysis and join the discussion over at The Opine Editorials.