'Custody' may mean 'not dad's
By Ross Werland <rwerland@tribune.com>
When given a chance to write in this space, I vowed never to use the
words "I," "me" or "my," because my life is not
so fascinating that
anyone needs to read about it. But one personal subject I cannot avoid.
One day about 15 years ago, a stranger, a judge, decided that my
children would not live with me anymore. This was a mutually agreed-upon,
no-brainer divorce: two young boys, no real assets, plenty of bills and
two adults who couldn't get along. No violence, no shouting. Just a
marriage that was way over. Two people who married too young but who
loved their children. I would be given the window dressing of "joint
custody," but the boys still would not live with me, because I'm male.
Sparing you the details of a parent-child relationship as intertwined as
anyone's, I wasn't just an "involved" father (would we say someone
is an
"involved" mother?). My kids were everything, and no longer would
I be
in their lives every day. I wouldn't be sleeping under the same roof. There
was no way that this could feel right, but in Cook County in the
mid-1980s, the children of divorce were expected to live with the
mother. To fight that would have taken thousands of dollars I didn't have.
Furthermore, did I want to hand over money to a lawyer so he could buy
things for his kids, or did I want to take any resources I had left and
use them for my own children? Duh!
I'm confident that if I had gone for primary custody, I would have
started a battle that would have forced the children to side with me or
against me. Either way would have been bad. Why would a parent who loves
his or her children force them to choose one parent over another? My
children had become hostages not of a person but of a situation. If I
wanted to save the best part of our relationship, I had to surrender.
Fighting could have escalated into a winner-take-all scenario I couldn't
risk. So without a battle I gave up the most precious pieces of my life.
It never felt right, but people - overwhelmingly men - are expected to
endure this routinely.
Within a couple of years, though, their mother gave me custody - just
like that. Someday I may come to understand that as a heroic act on her
part; but then, wasn't it a heroic act on my part when I gave them up?
Anyway, I got my happy ending. I ended up with two of the greatest boys
a parent could want. They now are two tremendous young men.
So I have experienced both sides of the custody issue. I can tell you
that if you love your children, there is no substitute for having them
with you every day. Whoever says one day a week and every other weekend
is enough "visitation" is a liar.
That said, are we as a society actually bewildered when fathers in
divorce run away? Regardless of fault in the divorce, we take away
everything they have loved and worked for, then tell them how much we
will be deducting from their paycheck and offer them no guarantee that
they will be able to have even an uninterrupted conversation with their
children, let alone see them.
The better men don't run, and doing so is absolutely wrong, but it's
easy to understand why some do. Do we suppose that women thrown into this
situation would behave differently? Our only clue is that when mothers
are ordered to pay child support, federal statistics show they are less
likely to pay than men are.
So if we can agree that all people are created equal, meaning equally
flawed, maybe we could try to be more humane for everyone, unless we're
married to the idea of trying to drive some parents away.
Michigan lawmakers have been debating legislation similar to laws that
have popped up across the country to make joint legal and physical
custody the norm, barring harmful circumstances.
Some women's organizations have resisted such legislation, saying it
gives abusive males an excuse to continue to harass their ex-wives. With
all due respect and sympathy to victims of any kind of abuse, are people
like my children and I supposed to be governed by a system that
separated us because some animals don't know how to treat their fellow human
beings? Isn't it for the courts to keep an eye out for such monsters? Or
are we trying to conclude that all men are inclined to evil and should
be separated from their progeny?
Ultimately, no matter what Michigan or any other state legislates,
divorce is not easily accomplished. A divorce is not a solution; it's an
amputation, and it will feel like that to the children. It takes both
parents to deal with that hurt, and that comes only by loving their
children more than they despise each other.
But at least some lawmakers out there are looking for answers, because
perpetuating a system in which parents of equal or nearly equal value
are forced to wage a damaging battle for the simple privilege of being with
their children is just plain sick. It's an American disgrace. Can't we
be more creative than this?
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Send email for Ross Werland to rwerland@tribune.com