What a terrible story...
Not the first time I've heard of something similar happening but it's the first time I've read such a detailed account of it.
Reminds of an email conversation I had with my US attorney about actually litigating custody in the US when my abducted son returned and where she said:
"for the court to somehow “get past” the idea that she abducted your child. This is unlikely to happen for a long time."
I left it at that even though I wanted to say I know all about how fathers are guilty until proven innocent and courts often care more about the welfare of women than they do the children.. ("Women and children first..." ...in that order after all.)
I've read a number of similar decisions outside the context of international abduction cases where the courts declared mom unstable and decided to give her full custody anyway because she might go over the edge otherwise. Really begs the question of whose the parent, whose the child and whose best interests courts are really pursuing.
I, rather smugly I'l admit, told my father-in-law in Mexico that, in a way, I was actually lucky. As dishonest and immoral as my wife has proven herself willing to be, if she had been a little more intelligent she would have just walked over to our local family court and said I was a rapist and pedophile and that she wanted a divorce and permission to relocate to Mexico to practice her career as a Mexican attorney (a "career" she's never practiced and has no intention of doing so.)
The judge would have quite likely taken everything I own, given her permission to drive to Mexico in my car and ordered me to pay $1000 to her per month in chalimony whilst a US court ordered restraining order prevented me from ever seeing my son... And if I tried to leave the country to avoid rewarding my wife for her crimes the State Dept. would vigorously pursue me across international borders forcing me to "take responsibility for my child."
As screwed up as Mexican law is in many ways, family law in the US is often worse. A working father who wants his children to have their mother with them as much as possible when they're infants and agrees to her not working can easily find that his wife has affairs with everyone he knows, the file for a "no fault" divorce, get full custody as the "primary caretaker," get to keep the house, cars and a huge, tax free child support check in order to "not disrupt" the lifestyle the child is used to (in their "best interests" of course,) Since it's all for the children though, it wouldn't matter if there was a pre-nuptial agreement... it's going to the kids, not the wife. And he will come to realize that the courts don't put much priority on enforcing his "visitation" rights. Hence, through "no fault" of his own a father can lose, literally, everything and keep paying the person who took it all from him for the next 18 years and when his child turns out badly, no surprise with the type of person who raised him, get blamed for "abandoning" his child.
And through it all the court rewards the person who destroyed the family home, the one place that offered the child the best possibility for a bright and successful future... and people act surprised when men are afraid of commitment.
I have a good friend getting married in a couple months and I'm fighting hard not to seriously advise him to run even though I've never met his fiance. Knowing my friend I'm sure she's a wonderful person... but then she could watch a lot of Oprah and in five years, decide she's not feeling fulfilled enough, want to "have it all,"and realize that the court is dangling all sorts of incentives in front of her to push him into the meat grinder.
