Judge takes joint custody seriously

A Hollywood TV actress got mad at her German husband, refused to put his name on their second kid's birth certificate, filed for divorce, and schemed to get him deported so that she would not have to share joint custody with him. So now the LA family court judge ruled for joint custody anyway. ABC News reports:

Enter Judge Theresa Beaudet of California Superior Court, Los Angeles County who, as it turns out, presided over a similar type of case before. Judge Beaudet was left to determine with which parent the children should reside. Custody would be “joint,” but that’s somewhat moot when one parent lives across the Atlantic.

In all custody cases, the court must look to what is in the “best interest” of the children, a squishy standard that dictates that the children’s welfare must come first. There was no suggestion that Giersch was a better parent, just an exiled one. The two choices before the court: New York, where the kids had lived for much of their lives, made friends and had doctors, or the small town of Mougins, France, where Giersch’s mother apparently has a home.

Put aside the fact that neither of the parents are French citizens, both of these children were born and raised in the United States. Amazingly, the legal question was whether the children of a loving American mother should be forced to live in a country where neither parent has citizenship because their father had done something that made him illegible to remain in the United States. Not surprisingly, an independent lawyer retained to represent the children’s interests sided with Rutherford, arguing that the best interest of the children would be served by remaining in New York.

However, Judge Beaudet disagreed and ordered the move: “The best interests of the children will be served because the relocation plan for France is the only plan that offers the possibility of nearly equal parenting time while Giersch can not return to the U.S.”