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A personal diary about my daughter. Yesterday the appeals court upheld the decision of a lower court which decided my grandson could stay with his dad, because they have formed a family after the 2.5 years of legal prosecution in the custody case.
Conclusion:
One year after their marriage, my daughter gave birth to a wonderful son. Unfortunately, she underwent Post Partum Depression (PPD) and sought professional help to get through this difficult period. The young couple promised to stick together. Her partner was a lawyer and decided differently after six months. When my daughter was sufficiently recovered to spend 24/7 in the family home, he announced the divorce, took the child and barred my daughter from seeing her son at 16 months of age. He had a legal procedure fully prepared and was granted temporary custody of the child within 4 weeks. A Childcare Organization was asked to investigate all circumstances of parenting after the initiative of the father to separate from my daughter. Instead of the judge’s order to report within three months, it took another year before the organization started their investigation. Their conclusion was that both parents could take care of the child, due to the period child is with the father, it would be best not to change the present situation. The judge in the local court of Family Affairs accepted this conclusion: available time for lawyer arguments before the single judge: 20 minutes!
There were sufficient deficiencies in the court’s decision to appeal. In a number of earlier decisions, the time allocated of the child with his mother had been increased. The father tried all tricks of lies and delays to win time before the court. My grandson celebrated his 4th birthday one month ago and now the Dutch legal system has sanctioned the theft of my daughter’s child. Both parents will have equal custody rights, however the child will primarily stay in the city of Leiden and will start school in mid August under daily care of his father.
The legal action was initiated at a time when my daughter was still recovering from PPD. She was unable to defend herself and just barely managed to survive this raw deal in her life. Fortunately, we were in a position to give her our full support on a daily basis. I took care of the necessary coaching of the legal battles and discussion with the (very expensive) lawyers who made the arguments before the court. I’m dumbfounded in the legal result of the Family Affairs court system in The Netherlands.
My daughter has an amazing son whom we all love very dearly. It’s wonderful to have the little fellow around, he is very sociable, quite intelligent and loves to sing, play act and be with people. I’m happy he adores my daughter and finds it very difficult to separate when his father comes to take him away. Every week he protests when dad shows up at the front door, we’ve tried everything to ease the exchange. The little guy is hurting and no judge will listen until he reaches the age of twelve.
It’s very fortunate that the U.S. Congress recently passed …
We have spent the past weeks celebrating the historic passage of The Melanie Blocker Stokes MOTHERS Act initiatives in healthcare reform; but there is one more step of advocacy we need from everyone RIGHT NOW that will greatly benefit the work all of you do for mothers and families in your communities!
While development/assignment of the initiatives for research and public awareness campaigns are already law and will be budgeted accordingly, the 3 million dollars for grants to fund responsive community programs from many sectors needs to pass through the appropriations committee.
There are many fantastic organizations and programs out there whose funding could mightily contribute to the sustainment and formation of national, replicable blueprints for programmatic response to postpartum depression issues.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
