Shared Custody. Do fathers matter in a divorce?

I am not kidding. You made the accusation, now back it up (if you can).

I apologize if I have attacked you personally. I would honestly like to see an example of this (where I attacked you, rather than disagreeing with your ideas).

The whole point is that disagreeing with ideas or ideology is part of intelligent discussion. Personal attacks and name calling are not. People seem to be getting these two things confused.

Different states have different ages - low as eight.

I don't have the time.
To solve this, review your own threads and posts.

The defense rests.

For the record, Osso, I don't have to go through "all" of your posts to find an example of you name calling or making a personal attack, there are several on the past few pages.

You poor thing.

This is what I said -
I know I don't know you, and I might like you, somewhat do, but that is how I have read you.
You may not attack individual women but you smash feminists often. I take it you are extremely angry and like to repeat that all over the place. You seem to know close to nothing.



I haven't changed my mind since then. If you want to track and categorize my posts, go to it.

I only regret that you and I can't seem to have an intelligent respectful discussion on anything we disagree about. C'est la vie.

Disagreeing with Feminism is not the same as "smashing feminists".

If I were to say, for example, that "Feminists are extremely angry... and know close to nothing"-- that might be an example of me "smashing feminists". But I haven't said anything close to that.

If we could disagree respectfully without personal attacks, then we could have an intelligent conversation. I don't see your need for this, Osso.

I am just looking for intelligent, respectful conversation on an area where we might not agree. That should be possible, shouldn't it?

I'd have been inclinded.

You do not get feminists at all, while being super angry at the rigid ones.

This is an annoying trait.

I personally would not want to put an eight year old in the position of choosing between her parents. I certainly wouldn't want to put my daughter in this position. I have made every effort to keep her out of our issues, and for the most part it has been successful.

sorry.

ok, if you can get the takes.

I'm presently roiling with more layers of understanding, from my reading, from a non fiction book.


Reminds me of a quip from my gallery partner, can't we stop learning now?

As some may know, I am an attorney by profession. A family law attorney, specifically. So I do divorces, and child custody matters, etc. I have done this for a good many years, in different states here in the US. Currently in Arizona.

It is an unfortunate reality that there are a lot of divorce attorneys who tend to encourage acrimony and make things as adversarial as possible. They believe that to be better for their bottom line, I suppose. I'm not one of those kinds of lawyers. I would probably be a lot richer if I were. I try to facilitate settlement and resolution. That is almost always the best course of action for the parties, and always best if there are children. But settlement is not always possible, and the system we have is adversarial in nature. Collaborative divorce is out there, but it does not have much of a foothold.

Arizona has recently changed legislation to make the presumption to be joint decision-making (custody) -- both parents jointly make important decisions affecting the children. That's where you start, and then one of the parents can try and rebut that presumption and show why it would be in the best interests of the children for there to be a different decision-making arrangement. When there is joint decision-making, the parenting time schedule can be equal, but it doesn't have to be.

In our adversarial system (and here I'm speaking only of Arizona), the children do not EVER get to choose where they want to live. The wishes of the children are important, and the older the children are, the greater weight their wishes will carry. The wishes of a 12 year old will carry greater weight than the wishes of a 5 year old. But ultimately, if the parents don't agree, the judge makes the decision. Agreement between the parents is best, of course. The biggest difficulty for children in a divorce is the conflict they see between their parents. Parents going through a divorce should attempt to minimize conflict as much as possible.

When you have been doing this as long as I have, you see similar fact patterns come up. Very often I represent the father, and the mother will often believe they should be the primary parent. Why? Because they are the mother. That's it, that's the sole reason. We litigate the case because mother will not concede that father should be as active and involved in raising the children. And until recently, the judiciary had bought into that belief -- this notion that children are better off with their mothers. Well, the truth is that sometimes they are, but sometimes they are not, and very often the children are best off with both parents, equally. Each family and situation is different.

Thanks for writing that.

You said I was like Oralloy. You can't get more insulting than that.

You are like Oralloy, the point being that we are all human beings here. When Oralloy is correct on a topic, I am happy to agree with him. When you are correct, I am just as happy to agree with you. I don't believe in personal attacks... or in holding a grudge.

Of course when I disagree with either of you, I will say so and argue my position. But there is no need for personal attacks.

Thank you Finn, you do a good thing.

My lawyer's philosophy was that divorce should be civil. I chose him for this reason and I really appreciated his calm when my wife's lawyer started to get legally aggressive. My first goal was to keep my daughter out of the divorce, and I was willing to make concessions to pay more money to my wife to make sure my daughter wasn't sucked in.

I appreciated having a lawyer who supported this goal but also knew where to draw the line.

In Massachusetts we have pretrial memos (I don't know what other states do). I found them interesting. They are pretty good indications of what each side plans to do as they can be used to put pressure on the other side during negotiation. I don't want to ever go through the process again.

And you repeat the insult. You really are the most duplicitous person on A2K, passive aggressive to the N'th degree. You lie all the time, about yourself and about women. You make stuff up, and constantly try to claim some moral superiority. The fact that you never challenge some of the vilest things put out by the likes of Coldjoint and Oralboy shows a lack of moral fibre, not any superior behaviour on your part.

And when you're found out, you bleat on about your feelings, as if your feelings are the only ones that matter. And even when you get what you want you're never satisfied, as this thread demonstrates. People like you just suck the joy out of life.