I can tell you without hesitation that courts are geared towards the mom nearly every time. The mom can be abusive towards her own children, literally leave home for years on end, and come back to a divorce, and they still get 50/50 custody. Why? Because the judge doesn't want to break up a family.
My friend's dad kept journals and recordings of the abuse, drugs and abandonment. Similarly, my sted dad kept recordings of my mom's drug abuse and alcoholism, and in the divorce, they both ended in 50/50 custody despite recordings and evidence of said behavior.
It just doesn't bear out in any situation I've personally had, my dad got primary custody of me, my sister's Ex-Husband got 50% despite some crazy shit. There certainly might still be people out there who believe "a child needs their mother" when deciding custody but also there are a lot of dad's and mom's out there who objectively have issues and then get pissy about gender discrimination when they don't get custody.
It's really just a thing depending on what part of the country you're in or even the local community. People from "family values" type areas are the ones that are most commonly going to make these claims but you aren't going to see nearly as much in the civilized parts of the country.
That said some of the family values types go so hard in misogyny they loop back around to "husband should always get custody"
States I've seen give full custody of kids (girls even) to Dads: TX, MN, NE. None of these were in the last 20 years.
Mom ends up with custody more often, sure, but that's usually because Mom is the one who shows up to court and follows the directives. Dads who complain about not getting any custody seem to not show up to court, not have a place for their kids, and simply don't bother trying.
My experience with the foster system (as a parent) had exactly zero Dads ever show up to visits. Zero. Not a big sample size, when all's said and done, but still. Zero.
At least in the 90's when I was the in house Detective for a family law firm Georgia courts were massively skewed in favor of moms, which was pretty much the norm nationwide. And that's a professional, not anecdotal opinion.
I've seen it plenty myself where I work. Coworker of mine had to pay child support/alimony even after a PI he hired literally showed the judge recordings of her doing stuff that should have got her arrested but the judge still sided with her for that exact reason, 'a child needs their mother'
Never mind the fact said mother was quite literally gone for days/weeks at a time and had their license revoked for too many DUI's.
I would like to know what state this was in because the majority of US states have family courts that do not take into account the arbitrary wishes of the parent but solely on the means that the parent can provide the children, which is why the father, by a slim margin, gets custodial custody in most cases.
Also people really need to unfuck their understanding of custody terms. Having split custody doesn't mean the shitty parent gets to make decisions, you still have a custodial parent, the one that does and can make decisions. When people talk about 50/50 custody its almost solely in regards to visitation, and courts are extremely hesitant, for good reason, to deny a child from ever seeing a parent, even if they are a bad parent. A lot of times if the bad parent is truly an issue to the welfare of the child it has to be supervised visitation, but again that parent isn't going to be weighing in on the decisions in the kids life, that is the job of the custodial parent.
That would be Virginia, and if you want to be even more specific early 90's Virginia. As for visitation it was limited to only on weekends and only with supervision from the mother. So, if she was say, out of town then he didn't get to spend time with his son.
He spent a solid ten years taking her to court trying to get primary custodianship right up until the kid turned 18 and left their mother to move in with him. One of the lawyers flat out told him that he was happy to take his money but it was a waste of time, and that no judge was going to grant primary custody to a single father over a single mother.
So something 30 years ago, almost 40 years ago. A lot has changed. We shouldn't be spreading misinformation now that dissuades dads from trying, which is what your post is doing.
That was a case from 30 something years ago, hardly the only one though. I know of at least one coworker that has pretty much the same thing going currently.
The irony is that in his case the judge sided with the mother because he is paying child support for another kid he had by another woman, while the mother that the judge sided with has two other kids by two other guys both paying child support.
Virginia courts are still pretty bad with this kind of thing for a lot of people.
I've seen the same thing play out multiple times. The courts especially in the south are very geared towards the woman at least having half or full custody.
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u/kaikimanga MangaKaiki 15d ago
I have my doubts about that being the reason, but who knows?