Court gives dad custody to protect children from overprotective mother.

2011-07-15T09:15:50+00:00

He told the court the older child would not even feed himself, insisting that he be hand-fed.

I caught my ex hand-feeding our 6 year old once when I went round to visit. I was livid. I told my daughter that next time her mother did that she should politely inform her mother that she is not a baby and quite capable of feeding herself.

Malthius · 2011-07-15T02:14:41+00:00

I thought this one might be of interest. A few times recently I've taken other MensRights readers to task for generalising the experience in whatever state of the US that they live in to the rest of the world. People seemed surprised that in Australia women didn't automatically get full custody of children.

This one is an example of how it works in Australia. The starting presumption is that it is in the best interests of the child to have equal contact with both parents and that both parents should share in making the major decisions in the child's life.

One of the big things to take away here is that the judge found that the children wouldn't be able to have a relationship with the father if they lived with their mother - so the father has been given sole parental responsibility and the mother only has supervised visits.

Also, another possible surprise for those readers in the USA is that the judge ordered that the children attend school - the mother's intention to home-school the children was seen as potentially damaging to the children and another reason not to give her any parental responsibility.

Anyway, again, I just thought this might be an interesting perspective on how a country that is closely allied with the USA and superficially culturally similar has very different outcomes on child custody matters.

Malthius · 2011-07-16T23:53:08+00:00

Rantgrrl pointed out that some of the provisions of the current Family Law Act are likely to be amended that could affect the outcome of this case. For visibility, I thought I'd copy my response from a comment here.

I'm not sure that it is thrilling reading, but the Australian Parliamentary Library published a digest/summary of the responses to the bill and an explanation of the contents of the bill here:

It lays out each of the interest group's positions, but it doesn't really contain any surprises - mens rights groups opposes, women's rights groups say it doesn't go far enough, etc.

Title	Court gives dad custody to protect children from overprotective mother.
Author	Malthius
Upvotes	5
Comments	10
Date	July 15, 2011 2:08 AM UTC (15 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/iq12g/court_gives_dad_custody_to_protect_children_from/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/court-gives-dad-custody-to-protect-children-from.1037282 https://theredarchive.com/post/1037282

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