Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:As a divorce attorney, I have seen fathers get primary custody only in three circumstances:
(1) Mom doesn't want custody (used to be unheard of early in my practice, but now, in my 23rd year of practice, roughly once a year, I come across a mom who doesn't want custody).
(2) Father is a stay at home dad or works very little and has been the kids' primary caretaker for a long time.
(3) Mom has severe and documented mental or substance abuse problems. If the problems aren't documented, the man will need a slew of witnesses with nothing to gain (so, for instance, kids' teacher but not dad's meddling mom who is eager to edge out biological mom).
I have never seen a man get primary custody against an involved, normal mother who is fighting for custody. The most he can hope for is 50/50.
Can you bracket normal for us? Is averagely flawed, with cause for the occasional nothing-to-gain-witness's disapproval OK? The story upthread of the mom with very little visitation rights because "she came across as angry and vindictive" is terrifying. If someone was using expensive lawyers that I couldn't afford to take my kids away from me, in addition to whatever had led to the divorce, I just might come across as angry and vindictive too.
PP divorce lawyer here. I always roll my eyes when friends or relatives of the parent who lost custody claim their friend/relative was amazing and lost custody just because the spouse was richer or the non-custodial parent made a minor error like seeming upset in upsetting circumstances. There are certainly very biased, awful judges out there, but it is RARE that custody comes down to such simplistic factors. A lot of times friends and families aren't aware of the skeletons in the non-custodial parent's closet and are just speaking out of turn.
If your anger and vindictiveness make you do crazy things like go nuts in court, stalk your ex, or say insane things to the kids that your ex finds out about, then that's going to hurt your custody bid. If you can't control yourself when you have so much on the line, then maybe you really aren't the person little kids should be left with. But even that likely won't be dispositive of your custody fight unless you do something really crazy like physically attack your ex, have a series of outbursts in court, AND your ex has other documented instances of you being unstable.