Can A Dad Prevail?
I’ve gotten a lot of calls lately from fathers who want to know if judges will “give them full custody”. After I explain that “full custody” is not a term used under Missouri law, I go through the types of custody — joint legal, joint physical, sole legal, sole physical, and the variations that result from combining those concepts — joint legal and joint physical, sole legal and joint physical, joint legal and sole physical, and sole legal and sole physical.
If they aren’t confused after that recitation, I give them my standard mantra: In SOME cases, a father will be able to prove that he should be the “principal residential” parent, just as in SOME cases, a mother will be able to prove that she should be the “principal residential” parent. What the fathers REALLY want to know is “Do judges AUTOMATICALLY ASSUME that the child should “live” with the mother?”And the answer to that question is: I don’t know, but probably many of them do.
That’s a hard fact to push into someone’s consciousness, but no one should be surprised. Judges are humans. For centuries, women have been the “main” parent, and even today, you will hear people refer to “working mothers” but never “working fathers”. It is hard to change people’s perceptions of role models, even if the statute says that gender should not be a determinant of custodial placement.
To fight this gender bias, one has to examine what gave rise to the bias in the first place. My son often tells me that stereotypes have a basis in truth. This stereotype is no different. Mothers have traditionally been the PTA member, the room mother, the fixer-of-dinner, the wiper-of-noses, the kisser-of-skinned-knees. In this era, mothers are often expected to do all those things whether or not they “work outside the home”, and believe it or not, people still look askance at mothers if their children “get into trouble” while Mom is at work, raising an eyebrow which silently suggests that if “Mom had been home”, the trouble would not have occurred.
Such biases do not follow fathers. Because the “traditional” role of fathers has been to go to work and only be home in the evenings and on weekends, we do not harshly judge a father if the child gets into trouble in the same way that we harshly judge the child’s mother. Whether that judgment is spoken or unspoken, it is there: If Mother had not been (fill in the blank) instead of being at home, the child would not have gotten into trouble.
The downside of this stereotype for FATHERS is an ingrained belief that the father does not, and cannot, do those things that the mother typically has done. And, following from that, that the father does not, and cannot, serve as the principal home-base parent for the child.
Mothers have been striving to break the stereotype as to them for years. Fathers should take their cue from mothers. Mothers strive to break the stereotype by proving they can do all the things they are presumed to do AND earn a salary too. Now, I am NOT in favor of putting that type of pressure on women, but, at the same time, in a splintered family, that pressure will exist — the principal residential parent will have to do the stereotypical duties of EACH parent: Fix dinner and earn the money to buy it, too.
Fathers, then, who want to be the principal parent, should make a list of everything the mother has done and add those duties to their plate along with earning a living. The ideal situation for a separating or divorcing set of parents would be for them to make a list of all of those duties and figure out how they can assist each other in getting those duties done. You take Johnny to soccer on Tuesdays; I’ll take Mary to volleyball on Thursdays. I encourage my clients to work out such a schedule with the other parent of their child or children. But a father who wants to be the principal residential parent should be assertive in filling these roles. Figure out what Mom has been doing, and start doing those things.
And, finally, the best approach would be to start doing them BEFORE your lawsuit is filed — that is, not BECAUSE there is a custody fight occurring, but because it is the right way to parent. Kids need the involvement of BOTH their parents, and you will PROVE you are a better parent more easily if you are one.