Friday, January 29, 2010

This makes me sad

An old friend of mine is going through an extremely difficult time right now. I've been following through her status updates on FaceBook. She has two daughters and while I knew that she was divorced, I didn't know that her ex husband is from India.

Apparently, he sought passports for their daughters, for which they have 50/50 custody. He was granted the right to obtain the passports from a judge in their county. She is panicked that her husband will take the children and never come back. Rightly so it seems, her latest posts are about Indian law in regard to international parental child abduction...as in it isn't a crime there. Can you imagine?

Maybe this hits home for me more deeply than some, as my husband is from Iran, and we have all seen the Sally Field movie. While, I know now that my husband would *never* do this...I'm not sure I would have been able to say this with as much confidence when I was younger, dumber, and blinded by love.

As it were, several years ago we hit a rough patch, and separated for a time. I recall someone asking me if I was afraid he would run away with our children. I remember laughing, pretty hysterically at the time and saying, "the only way I think he would go back to Iran is if the judge granted him anything more than supervised visitation...and then he would run to get away from the children." Which really isn't a dig at my husband, he would tell you the same thing if you asked him. My husband is a very loving father, but our children scare the hell out of him, and exhaust him, the latter probably influencing the former.

Anyway, the moral of the story is this? How can you protect the rights of both parents where conflicting interests is a problem?

3 comments:

  1. It's a hard situation. One that I think people feel is resolved and that it would never happen because of one reason or another. However, people change, circumstances change. Honestly I suppose the only way to possibly prevent something like that is to work up documents similar to a pre nup stating details such as where and how long the other partner can take the children. Then put in details that if one person became abusive etc then the privileges would be null.

    Not sure any of that would hold up in court, but maybe it's an idea.

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  2. Wow, I don't have words. That is just unthinkable.

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  3. That is tough. If she hasn't already, she should talk to a lawyer and see if she can go back to court to get some sort of injunction.

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