My wife is a successful career woman. She has moved up rapidly
in a competitive field, and is advancing her career by attending
law school at night. I work out of our home and I do most of the
child care. If I decide I don't want her anymore, should I be
able to move our kids 2,400 miles away from their mother?
The California National Organization for Women thinks I should.
California NOW, the California
Women's Law Center, and the dozens of other feminist
organizations who recently argued the LaMusga move-away case in
the California Supreme Court support granting primary
custody to the children's primary caregiver (that's me), and
contend that custodial parents should have the presumptive right
to move as stated by the Court in its 1996 decision in In re:
Marriage of Burgess.
Burgess, which involved only a 40 mile move within the
same county, is being interpreted by California courts to permit
moves of hundreds or thousands of miles. In some cases, these
courts have even allowed children to be moved out of the
country, as far away as New Zealand and Zaire.
In LaMusga, a Contra Costa County custodial mother sought
to move with her two young boys first to Ohio and later to
Arizona because her new husband allegedly had better job
opportunities in those states than in California. The father
fought the moves, arguing that moving would be harmful to his
children because it would damage their relationship with him. He
is unable to move with them because he operates a small business
in Northern California and has stiff child support obligations.
Switch the genders and it is not hard to see how LaMusga
and other move-away cases should be decided. What would readers'
opinion of me be if I explained that I am moving our children
2,400 miles away from their mother because my new honey got a
better job offer? The Letters to the Editor section would be
filled with women wanting to tear me limb from limb--and they'd
be right. All us of would agree that it's harmful to take
children away from one of their parents, even if that parent was
not the children's primary caregiver during the marriage.
The Georgia Supreme Court recently "switched the genders" and
made a just ruling in the Bodne move-away case. In
Bodne the court ruled in favor of a mother who sought to
block her ex-husband, who had primary physical custody of their
children, from moving them out of state. The majority condemned
the move-away father for "placing his interests first" and said
the move "affected Ms. Bodne's ability to continue her equal
involvement in the children's lives and also had a direct
negative effect on the children." The mother's attorney noted
that the decision will "even the playing field" in a game
currently stacked in favor of custodial parents.
Of course, there will be no divorce in my home. Even if there
were and I had the upper hand, I wouldn't dream of hurting my
children by moving them far away from their mother and pushing
her to the margins of their lives.
Yet today hundreds of thousands of fathers have been pushed to
the margins of their children's lives because of move-aways. My
wife and mothers like her don't deserve to have their children
taken from their lives simply because they have pursued careers
and supported their families. And if mothers don't deserve to be
treated this way, neither do fathers.
This column first appeared in the Sarasota
Herald-Tribune (2/23/04).
Glenn Sacks is a radio talk show host and
columnist on men's and fathers' issues.
His nationally syndicated radio show,
His Side with Glenn Sacks,
can be heard every Sunday in Los Angeles and Seattle.
