When Judy Sheindlin was
on Larry King Live last week, the issue of joint custody came up.
Here is an excerpt from the interview:
SHEINDLIN ("Judge Judy"): I was a lawyer in the
family court for ten years. I worked for the corporation counsel's office of
the City of
I remember the first day that I took the bench. It was in the Bronx and the
court officers, if was pretty formal back then, court officer said, you know,
say "All rise" and I stood up because I was accustomed to they say
"All rise." We stood and finally the court officer said "You can
sit down now, judge. They're standing for you. You can sit down." So, even
when you have experience you need time to get comfortable in your chair.
KING: I had a judge who became a federal judge told me once that the
hardest thing to decide was custody cases. First he had no experience. Who has
experience with custody cases? He's been happily married, has children. Who
gets whom? Isn't that the hardest to give a child from one parent to another?
SHEINDLIN: Yes. Sometimes it's relatively easy because the choices are
clear but I've always thought in this country we do a terrible disservice to
fathers. You know there was a time many years ago when we had what we called
the Tender Years Doctrine, which meant children of tender years, young
children, always went to their mother.
And then all of the courts in this country said that's not fair. We have to be
equal. So, on the books there is a law that says no one parent is favored over
the other, now that's honored more in the breach than it is honored in
actuality. And, I have been a proponent for many years of there being a presumption
in this country for joint custody of children. That's where courts should
start.
KING: That's where you begin?
SHEINDLIN: That's where you begin and if you're going to deviate from
that, you have to demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence that there is
some valid reason why you're going to deviate from that because one parent is
crazy, one parent has a drug problem, an alcohol problem, something's wrong.
But that should be the standard joint custody because children are entitled to
be raised by two parents even if the parents don't get along anymore. I mean I
think it's horrendous when one parent picks up and moves out of the state or
moves 250 miles away and some judge in the family court, the domestic relations
court usually if it's the mother who has moved away says, "Well, we'll
have a hearing to determine whether it was the right thing."
No, no, no, no, no. You can't say to people who you've lulled into this sense
of I'm equal, you're an equal father. You can take off paternity leave. We
expect you to participate in the rearing of your children, to go to open school
night, to be out there to play with them. Very often there are two people
working in the household. They divide authority and you're equal except when
there's a divorce.
And then, how often, Larry, I ask you the question, do you hear it quoted in
the paper "He lost custody of his children"? You don't hear that. You
hear "She lost custody. There must be something wrong with her."
Well I think that that has to change in this country because it was my
experience in the family court, and I left the family court ten years ago, but
even my experience on the television courtroom suggests to me that there are as
wonderful a group of fathers out there as a group of mothers and it's about
time that this country recognize that in not only the letter of the law but the
spirit of the law as well.
