Aliliz - try turning it around

"It‘s difficult when an abusive partner leaves and it means having to leave your children in her custody all the time except for one weekend per fortnight (or she moves away and you never see your kids). And no mother is refused custody of her children simply because she was violent to a former husband."

The issues you raise also apply to fathers. Men end up with abusive spouses as well and they have to live with the knowledge that if the relationship breaks up they will be dealing with a system which will almost always give her the benefit of the doubt.

The issue of breast fed infants is difficult, again no reason to reject a default position of shared care with criteria for variations (and some rules to ensure that as the child gets older the father has more of the care). The current system does not have viable safeguards to allow for the kind of changes you mentioned. If mum gets the custody early there is no simple review process which adjusts that residency as the child grows older.

We might also take the possibility of changes in care arrangements into account when dividing property. I've now got a lot more care of my son than when our property settlement was done, should I now get to retrieve some of the former family assets?

It's not only women who do it tough with former partners, many of the same issues confront men. Start thinking of solutions that protect the innocent rather than just solutions that just protect women.

How does a man with a job prove how much of the out of hours care he provided or for that matter how much of the stay at home hours his ex actually spent caring for children?

Sometimes such a process will leave kids at risk, until we get reliable lie detector technology that will always be a risk.

I do believe that a default position of shared care and responsibility is a much lesser risk than what we do now.

R0bert

Get off the grass Aziliz!

Pregnancy and childbirth are similar to a medieval torture chamber. Get real.

reading the rest of your post sounded more like "Maternal Gatekeeping" (google it) or Maternal Chauvinism.

There are always ways around difficulties. I work with women who are breastfeeding their child and they express before work etc.

Intact couples make compromises in relation to child care arrangements, so why is it any different to separated couples?

"Is it fair to give the non-primary carer a right to have more of a role in the care of the child after separation while the primary-caregiver will wind up with both less of their children and none of the money?"

Is it fair that the non-primary carer be deprived of contact with their child? Money! god I hate that word! There is something more precious than mere money. It is that emotional contact with children.

It's being able to watch children grow and develope. It's sharing the highs and the lows of child and parenthood, which many mothers want to jealously guard. the tooth fairy, the cuts, scrapes and bruises.

The joy and pride in their little eyes as they practice new skills. Their wonderment at the world.

There are some men who do a great job at parenting and there are some women who do it very badly. Just because a person is a bad parent does not mean that the children should not have contact with them.

If women own the children then fathers should not be responsible for paying them for the privilege of getting pregnant.

You guys just don’t get it. I already said I signed a 50/50 access agreement on separation and I have also said the 50/50 after separation could be made fair by having 50/50 before—something that should suit someone like Seeker with his insistence that women in the home is an unhealthy dependence.

If the relationship has a stay-at-home mother and a full-time working father there are more difficulties in the 50/50 access *transition* (emphasis transition) and if men want to have a fulltime career they need to either marry a woman who wants one too or they need to acknowledge there are more inequalities to work out on separation with this arrangement and there should be a transition time for them taking 50/50 so the woman and the children can adjust. The breastfeeding relationship of young babies causes extra complications which I will elaborate on in a later post.

Seeker, I emphasised ‘A1’ didn’t leave or want to break up the marriage only because many men made posts accusing the woman of *always* breaking up the marriage. To me whether a person is the leavee or the leaver doesn’t explain whose at fault—yours is the fairytale with your ‘falling-out-of-love/ogre’ comment—-who thinks that? Not me. The rest of your post equally applies to all the male ‘stories’ on this site so you didn’t score any points with that.

Robert, to say to me to *start* looking for solutions that protect the innocent and not just the women isn't honest when I already suggested a 50/50 split before separation would make 50/50 after a smoother and fairer transition for ALL. Wake up Robert! Stop being so reactive and look at everything I say as a whole and not just focus on the things you don’t like as though that is all I say. I will suggest more solutions next post.

You’re also not thinking things through-for instance many non primary caregivers would rather hire a nanny, use daycare or put the children in the care of the new partner than leave them in the fulltime primary caregivers care.

Aziliz reading your earlier post

"I also have experience at 50/50 share of custody. I have experience of completely losing my children with little chance of getting them back including being denied any access let alone every second weekend so I do know what that feels like."

and in your case it sounds like you did not want the marriage to end.

Welcome to the reality which affects many more men than women.

Unfortunately amongst men and women there are very few saints.

Sure there are parents of both genders who would rather put their children in child care rather than let the other parent have them.

the only winners in divorce are lawyers, unless parents start to act like adults, then people can emerge winners.

My suggestions as Robert requested:

Prenups:

With a clause covering custody on separation that’s enforceable by law.

That solves the problem. You don’t like what the other person is offering you don’t get married.

Premarriage mediation:

--ten sessions as a prerequisite to complete before qualifying for a marriage licence.

The purpose to make the participants really confront what they expect out of marriage, childrearing, marriage breakdown and custody, working responsibilities, housework arrangements, how to handle mental or physical illnesses if they arise, what happens if a partner dies, etc. A component would be working out the prenup which would write up all the agreements over the above areas—some enforceable by law but others just a personal undertaking.

Some basic rules to prevent a totally imbalanced prenup should be in place and no prenup can be drawn up outside these properly guided ten sessions.

If the woman gets pregnant before marriage then the man would have no rights or responsibilities over that child. He would be under legal obligation to supply a medical family tree only, unless the couple marry. (Suggested alternatives?)

Any parent who completely abandoned all financial and access obligations in the prenup and the law proved unable to enforce them then they would lose any rights to the child after one year (unless they can prove extenuating circumstances).

Any man who marries a woman with children without a ‘legal’ father or whose step-children become ‘legally’ fatherless during the marriage would automatically become the legal father with full obligations and responsibilities equal to any biological children—that would be non-negotiable. In the case of their being step-children that are under a prenup the new partner would be required to honour that arrangement.

What to do about any children born within the marriage that were not biologically the fathers would be a prerequisite to work out in the prenup covering both cases of rape and affairs and the blurry line in between.

The prenup could be renegotiated under mediation at any time with the agreement of all parties involved including any subsequent marriage partners/step parents.

Aziliz, a thought provoking list. The only one I can see being an issue (more for single mums than men) is

"Any man who marries a woman with children without a ‘legal’ father or whose step-children become ‘legally’ fatherless during the marriage would automatically become the legal father with full obligations and responsibilities equal to any biological children—that would be non-negotiable. In the case of their being step-children that are under a prenup the new partner would be required to honour that arrangement. "

Make that one an item in the prenup as well or a lot of single mums might find it that much harder to repartner.

The overall approach is one I support, I'd tweak the details - an opt in or out clause for 'dads' of kids born outside marriage so dad is not automatically excluded and mum knows what support she will have if she proceeds with the pregnancy.

What you are suggesting is a fairly significant shift in the way people approach marriage but then what we are doing at the moment seems to be causing a lot of grief so we need to look at alternatives. Am I correct in thinking that you have discarded the legalities of defacto relationships in this approach? I don't like the way that they can creep up on people with fairly serious consequences.

R0ber