#ChildCustody #UnfitParent #CourtRuling #RhodeIsland
Hey everyone! 👋 So, I have a friend who is in a bit of a sticky situation with her new partner. He’s been deemed unfit to be a parent by the court, but not because of anything extreme like abuse. 🤔
Here’s the deal:
– The dad claims his ex-wife’s fancy lawyers and financial advantage played a role in the court ruling.
– He was deemed unfit because he was “too busy with work,” which seems odd.
– My friend is skeptical, but I’m worried about the safety of the kids.
Can someone actually be deemed unfit without posing a direct safety risk? What do you think is going on here? 🧐
Possible solution:
– Sometimes courts consider factors like stability, financial responsibility, and the ability to provide a safe environment.
– It might be helpful for your friend to talk to a legal professional or seek a second opinion to better understand the situation.
Let’s discuss and share our thoughts! 🗣️💬
> He was deemed unfit to be a parent by court because he was “too busy with work”
That’s not a thing. You’re being told tall tales.
Best case scenario, he just doesn’t care about the kids and stopped trying to see them after he got over their mother but he doesn’t like that narrative about himself. Makes the women he wants judge him and they’re less likely to date/sleep with him. So he blames the mother, invents some story, makes himself the victim. Instant good guy juice!
Worse case scenario, he did something really fucked up.
Being actually deemed **unfit** is rare and generally requires some history of having done something wrong.
There are many other possibilities for why he might have no custody and be fudging the details. As mentioned, one possibility is that he just doesn’t care about the kids, walked out on them, and is lying about the evil ex to explain why he never sees them.
Another thing that’s possible is an ex with rich parents and fancy lawyers making a court case miserable enough that the other partner throws up their hands, and says “never mind, you’re willing to destroy the kids’ lives to keep me away, I give up” – though if it were that you’d think he’d say so rather than claiming it was about being “unfit”.
The *nicest* possibility would be if he’s kind of dumb and truly does have a work schedule that makes a regular custody arrangement difficult-to-impossible. I’ve seen people end up with basically no custody because they are truckers/pilots/etc, always on the move, shifts assigned with little notice, and they can’t provide a reliable schedule for the other partner to plan around, so it’s decided that it’s in the kids best interests for the unreliable person to have no official custody. THis isn’t the same as being deemed “unfit”, but could theoretically be misunderstood or misrepresented by someone confused. **However** if someone is losing out on custody because of actually being too busy with work, that would not usually translate to him being not allowed to see them at all.
I mean if it helps he probably wasn’t deemed unfit. Most of the time people just lie because they don’t want to look bad. Every research study done and anyone that works in family court will tell you that fathers that actually fight for custody usually do better than mothers. Even stuff done in the 90s. However, any other person will tell you family court prefers mothers. Why? Fathers agree to give mothers custody before ever getting in front of a judge and lie a lot about what actually happened.
Did google show any arrests?
He was deemed unfit because he was too busy with work…but now he’s unemployed? Does she really want to be with someone that won’t fight for his kids? Clearly he’s lying but even if that is true, she’s just okay being with someone who abandons their kids?
NAL- (but does have friends who work in child services) Being deemed unfit isn’t just something that magically happens…he did something…and it wasn’t because a mean expensive lawyer was involved either. There has to be concrete proof and evidence before terms like that are enforced.
Either he abandoned the kids without supervision, denied them food or other basic necessities, addicted to drugs, he had no housing himself or abusive either verbally or physically.
If he gets zero visitation (not even supervised) he endangered the children somehow in a very serious manner. Visitation is only revoked in very serious cases in most states. Even nonpayment of child support is not a reason to revoke visitation in most states. Even visitation with supervision is not a good sign. There’s a good reason why.
If your state has a sex offender website, you should check there first. Even some non sexual offenders might be listed for things like child endangerment. You can always check online for criminal records via your circuit clerk or even newspaper articles. Google may flesh something out concrete for your friend.
Having a high demand career won’t get you labeled as unfit. That’s BS. Most judges split custody 50/50 unless one party has a time commitment issue due to a job. Even then, holidays and Christmas are divvied up between them.
OP, you said he was unemployed…is he a hobosexual looking for a couch and she’s letting him live with her? If so, she’s purposely ignoring the danger signs of what she’s involving herself in.
The family law case is public record. Once you track it down, you can look at the documents in the case to see what the true story is.
The constitutional definition of fit parent builds from page 68 of Sandra Day O’Connor’s majority opinion in the landmark case of Troxel v. Granville. It’s a simple definition: a fit parent is one who adequately cares for or provides for their child. States accrete additional meaning from there, e g. providing a stable, nonviolent environment for children, etc.
Being judicially deemed “unfit” is, as you might guess from these simple, low-threshold definitions, a big deal and is the point at which all presumptions about shared parenting are rebutted.
For these reasons, he either: (1) Did something he won’t admit to; (2) wholly failed to act as a parent at all (i.e. provided no financial support and spent no time); or (3) he’s not telling the entire story.
That he is a danger to your friend is always possible. That possibility should be analytically eliminated, not ignored. But it doesn’t seem like the most likely reason he doesn’t see the children.
Yes! If you are not involved with your kids at all some states consider that abandonment and rights can be revoked.
I’ve litigated a number of motions to terminate parental rights. In my state, it requires 2 separate hearings: fitness and best interest. At the first, the parent(s) have to be found unfit parents. There are many different reasons my state will find a parent unfit (around 20). The most common reasons I’ve seen parents found unfit had nothing to do with doing something bad or not. The main reasons are a failure to make sufficient efforts or progress to fix the conditions that brought the children into care. If unfitness has been proven, the second step is to prove that it is in the children’s best interest to terminate parental rights.
CPS, having taken children from parents, will make the parents jump through hoops to get the kids back. This can include parenting classes, mental health counseling, drug abuse counseling and many others. All of these things take time. And sometimes money. If the services required lack a lot of options, parents can be forced to choose between going to work and doing their services. Some parents choose work. After all, if they lose their job they lose their house, and will CPS give kids back just to make them homeless?
So yes, it is theoretically possible to be deemed an unfit parent for working too much, when working too much translates into not being able to do the services required to get the kids back.
That being said, the ex wife would have had nothing to do with this determination. It would have been the state.
Given the details your friend shared, I’d put good money on him deciding that if he couldn’t see the kids on his terms, he just wouldn’t see them at all.
In general, to not even have supervised parenting time, he either was subject to a restraining order due to abusing the kids, or he refused to take the mandatory 4-hour parenting class that all parents are required to take before they’re awarded parenting time in a divorce.
Yep. My adoptive family used the probate court to steal custody of my two biological kids. We weren’t allowed to defend ourselves or be present. The courts will believe whatever they’re told, whether its true or not.
My mom was deemed unfit for custody of my sister because her dad had a very expensive lawyer and we had none. And during the process my sister’s grandmother beat her and blamed the marks on my mom. I witnessed the beatings myself but my testimony wasn’t taken seriously because of how old I was at the time.
So not for no reason in this case but it’s possible to be framed. Though if that was the case he could have said that.