Monday, September 12, 2011

Advice to get the dad cut out

Here is the latest Dear Margo newspaper advice:
Dear Margo: My ex and I had a daughter 10 and a half years ago. He was verbally abusive and extremely controlling, and I ended the relationship during my pregnancy. ... The outcome was that her father is able to take her for a few weeks during the summer and has visitation every other weekend ... he has continued to be inconsistent and does not follow the order. ... I feel completely shaken and angry each time he sends me a message. ...

Dear Want: I would document what you have told me about his being inconsistent, not following court orders, and being abusive and delinquent. Rather than gaining full custody, I suspect you might be able to get him cut back or possibly cut out.
... If you document the history, I believe you might even get an order that he not text you. Good luck. — Margo, proactively
Margo is Ann Lander's daughter, and has been married four times.

It used to be that a pregnant woman would not leave her man so lightly. My hunch is that she is the control freak, because she complains about him not following court orders, while she has no complaint about how he treats their daughter. The letter tells an obviously one-sided story.

At any rate, Marko's advice is extreme. She tells the mom to try to use the courts to have the dad "cut out" of their daughter's life, and to get a reatraining order against text messages.

I believe that if a couple shares a child, then no court should ever issue a restraining order against text messages. Not even if one of them is criminally insane. Nobody is making her read those messages.

I post this because I think that it is typical of the bad advice that women get today. Better advice would have been to tell the mom to not let her personal animosity get in the way of the dad having a good relationship with the daughter.

Meanwhile, in NY political gossip:
As the unexpectedly heated race for Anthony Weiner’s old seat draws to a close, POLITICO has obtained a 25-year old child custody ruling that paints Democratic candidate David Weprin in a searingly negative light. ...

“Both parties have exhibited the arrogance of sovereignty in asserting their claims to their child, as though the little boy is a thing at auction presided over by the court,” he wrote.

Wright ruled against Weprin, and added a specific instruction that he not wake the child up or end his feeding prematurely to take his time with his son -- though the case would be resolved, three years later, in the opposite direction.
All I get out of this is that the judge was a jerk. It was the judge who treated the boy as a thing at auction, and arrogantly asserted sovereignty over the boy. Changing custody after 3 years would indicate that the judge was probably incompetent.


Anonymous said...

Yeah, the advice from Margo is sort of like " don't work it out, just go to court and get the father cut out of the daughter's life." If it's any sort of nuisance to you, eliminate him." Besides, the less she's with the father, the more child support you'll receive, too, most likely."

Omnipitron said...

Years ago, she had advised a woman who was having another man's baby NOT to tell the father and to consider strongly the idea of letting the real father know.

A real class act she is. The female commenters on that site regularly disgusted me which is why I've never gone back.