Parental Rights and the Courts

My wife sent me a link to an article about parental rights in Canadian courts.

The facts seem to be:

The twelve-year old daughter of a custodial father who is in divorce proceedings with the child's mother took her father to court to contest his punishment for posting photographs of herself on-line. (Though some American media outlets have described these postings as "indecent," the earlier Canadian iterations do not describe the photographs.) The contested punishment was not being able to go on a sixth-grade field-trip.

The family-court judge took the mother's wish that the child attend the class-trip as sufficient justification to overrule the custodial father's decision and ordered that the child be permitted to attend. (Again, some American media outlets have stated that the daughter also received "unspecified damages" but I have not been able to confirm this from the earlier Canadian sources.)

I have not found the actual decision, if indeed there was a written decision.

The judge made this choice within the larger context of a complex family-law case and, apparently, justifies intervening because she bought the plaintiff's claim that the field-trip was a sufficiently significant event in a young girl's life to justify asserting the non-custodial mother's will over that of the custodial father.

One question... What does "custodial" mean in Canada after this ruling?

I accept that divorce and custody battles, even those which have been resolved, are complex and result in the unique involvement of courts in the decisions of parenting. Having invited the courts to oversee the breakdown of a family, one cannot complain too much about the decisions one receives. However, this case strikes me as being about the definition of Custody and the judge's decision seems to strike at the heart of "parenting."

At the very least, "parenting" is the obligation of one who has custody over a minor to raise that child to be a fully functioning member of society. While parenting styles may be different from family to family or even person to person, the State inserts itself into those decisions at its own peril.

There IS a role for the State... it picks up when the custodial parent steps over the line of decency and the common-mores of the larger community.

Had the custodial parent shackled the child to a wall or beat her with a stick, the State should have stepped in. These would be extreme reactions, out of keeping with the common-mores of society. But, the proper avenue for interrupting the extreme is through law enforcement... through the police.

And this is the point.

We use the police to interrupt child abuse. We use family services and children's advocates to provide a safe environment for courts to figure out custody. We use courts to determine custody.

Had the court determined that the father was a poor parent and severed custody because this punishment, when considered within the context of other actions, showed that the child's mother was a better "parent," I would have no problem with it. Such is the realm of courts and, as I stated before, having invited the State into the resolution of domestic problems, one cannot complain over-much about the decisions those courts reach.

However, the court interposed itself into "parenting."

The judge put herself into the role of a custodial parent and decided that a particular penalty was too harsh. Perhaps it was... but, unless it was so extreme as to run up against the common-mores of society, the State has no authority over the particular act of parenting.

Even if it did, the proper remedy was police intervention and a severing of custodial rights.

No matter how you look at it, the court overstepped its bounds. If an elected position, one can only hope that the voters give the judge the boot for her arrogance and audacity.