Baby girl taken from mother to live with dad and his boyfriend

[Darcey2105]

I'm horrified!! Have you seen this story this morning?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32603514

A baby girl was taken from her mother and is now in sole custody of the dad and his boyfriend. The reason being that he said the baby was conceived to be their surrogate child. but she says he agreed to be her sperm donor so she could have the baby.

What is going on? Surely even if the mother had changed her mind about surrogacy she could still be allowed to keep her own baby. I am totally appalled. The men had a top female lawyer fighting their case. And it looks like it was a woman judge who ruled it was in the baby's best interest to live with the dad and his boyfriend - even though the baby was still breastfeding!!

how can there be so little support of mothers? Please tell me I hallucinated the whole awful story.

Archery, why do you have a problem with that concept? She led him to think that he would be able to have the primary parental role, and it was on that basis that she was able to get pregnant by him. She admitted that she never intended that that would be the case, and she registered the birth without naming the father. Her entire case was that she viewed him as a sperm donor but neglected to tell him that. How was that not "using" him?

"She led him to think that he would be able to have the primary parental role, and it was on that basis that she was able to get pregnant by him. "

personally, from what I have read in the court judgement, it's more complicated than that.

Her stance was that the agreement was between her and him, not her and the couple. Yes she got him to father the child and yes he has rights to contact with that child - joint custody - but the whole situation was far more complicated than just an agreement between him and her. There are lots of things about her evidence and behaviour which are awful and which did her case a lot of damage but that doesn't mean everything she said is a lie.

I still think, if I had just had a baby and I felt threatened by court papers and the might of the father's finances and legal representation then I might behave stupidly too.

And - I think I understood this right - the judge and the guardian had access to information about the mother's parenting of her older children, which the judge ruled was not pertinent to this decision and so is not included in this judgement. But clearly it would have had an influence on how the judge and guardian viewed the mother.

I do feel sorry for the mother. As I said upthread, years ago I was so desperate to find someone to make me pregnant I could have ended up in a similar situation. But one of the hardest things about parenting is rising above our own desperation to make the right choices for our children. I am also an adoptive mother, and I can't tell you how often you come across the phrase 'inability to put the children's needs and interests first' in child protection proceedings.

Interestingly, I knew another gay couple who went through a similar situation about 15 years ago. Back then, of course, the law couldn't be less interested in gay dads and they simply never saw their daughter again.

Surrogacy irreverent - it was specifically decided to judge this case as for any child with parents who are not together.

So it's not relevant to argue who is the one using who, as whatever happened they made a baby together and therefore the child has both of them as parents.

There seems to be some idea the mother has lost her child from some of the posts on here. That's not the ruling, she has supervised contact, on a schedule to be decided, which will move to unsupervised if the mother behaves in a way that shows she can be trusted.

So, we don't know how often contact will be, as it will be decided after this main ruling and with consultation with both parents.

To put to put this in context:

In the past, the father has offered a much more favorable arrangement than the court appointed guardian asked for, even though this was mid conflict. It was one of many times that the mother could have accepted an agreement that allowed shared care. And is one of the many reasons that the mother doesn't come out of this looking reasonable or caring about her child beyond herself. This is also hard to square with him being the bad guy using the law to take the child away from the mother, and does fit with him just wanting to be in his childs life as well as the mother vs instead of

The judge rules that to begin with there was to be limited contact, and supervised contact. His reasons seem clear and also, it's not permanent. If she starts behaving in a more trustworthy manner, she can get back to a more equal arrangement.

Limited contact was because: ghe child needs stability, less drama and an attachment with both parents. It's so that the mother can't deliberately create confusion in the childs identity, home or carry on her campaign of homophobic hatred.

It's also supervised for the moment as she cannot be trusted not to take her child out of the country, as she has in the past when she sent her children away and denied them either parent in the process. She has lied previously about passports and the embassy haven't confirmed or denied the existence of a Romanian passport, so the court couldn't establish a lack of flight risk.

The judge spends some time debating whether the mother can behave in a way that puts her childs needs first, and concludes she cannot from weighing all the evidence.

The ball is in the mothers court now. If she can bring herself to stop behaving in such an extreme way, and harming her baby by her behaviour, then she'll be able to take a bigger role. If she cannot contain herself, then the child needs protdcting from her.

On a side note, I suspect the lack of confirmation by the embassy is a deliberate statement rather than some kind of admin hold up.

A 'no answer' is rather revealing. They wouldnt lie outright and giving evidence that could be used against one of their own nationals can be avoided by giving no answer, and I suspect that's what happened.

Obviously though I'm speculating and no decision was based on my line of thought!

This story has haunted me, mainly cos I imagine the mothers pain

I think thats part of the problem with some posters, they are imagining themselves in the womans position and can imagine her pain. Apparently can't imagine the fathers pain.

I have seen time and time again on the relationships board on MN mothers urged (in the absence of abuse) to consider the needs of the child to have a relationship with their father however painful they find it to be apart from their child.

All this mother had to do was to take the view urged by MN on the whole and this case would never had even gone to court. She seems incapable of putting her childs needs first. That is also the conclusion the judge came to (and apparently another judge in another jurisdiction with other children).

This mother has created a rod for her own back - she even presented as evidence a video of one of the handovers to prove what unfit parent H &B were and the judge commented that actually it proved nothing of the sort and that only H (from memory) came out of it with any kind of dignity.

The judge met all concerned parties and read through 3 lever arch files of evidence as well as listening to all legal representatives and the guardian ad litem.

I too can imagine her pain. Being misguided does not preclude you from feeling pain and her pain must indeed be immense but that doesn't trump the need for their child to grow up with the parent who is most likely to deliver the best outcome for him over the course of his childhood and in the end be most beneficial

DuellingFanjo, her stupid behaviour started before the birth, surely? She was pulling away from him during the pregnancy and excluded him from the birth and the naming. By then it was clear to him what was going on, and he had to move quickly - if he'd left it a few months the court would have had a dim view of his claims to be a primary carer.

I think her behaviour is understandable. But so is his. And the judge needed to decide what parenting arrangement is most likely to be stable and optimise the chances of the child growing up knowing all her parents.

Hmm interesting case. Read the judgement. This is a weird judgement by the judge, very anti-attachment parenting!

"Ultimately the role of a parent is to help the child to become independent. This is a child who at 15 months old is still carried by her mother in a sling on her body. M spends most of her time with her mother who does not set out any timetable for returning to work, as S would have to, to provide for M and for herself. There is a potential for enmeshment and stifling attachment rather than a healthy outward looking approach to the child’s life. The question is who benefits most from this chosen regime which points towards an inability to put the child’s needs before her mother’s need or desire for closeness."

I'm sure most people have realised (and I'm afraid I haven't read the middle couple of pages of the thread, so apologies if it's mentioned), but a few people are talking about the Judge and the decision he made. The Judge is female.

And the decision was plainly the least worst decision, based on the facts as they appear in the judgment.

This is a weird judgement by the judge, very anti-attachment parenting! the judgement wasn't about the attachment parenting but that it was being done excessively for the benefit of the mother and to the detriment of the child, it was being used as a method of control and to prevent the father from spending time with his child.

That's probably a pretty good summary FromParis, reading between the lines.

Maryz

I'm not quite sure whether to admire or be exasperated by Buxhoeven's stubborn insistence that there is more to this

That isn't what I've been saying. I'm saying that some aspects of this are open to different nuances of interpretation.

The interpretation in which the mother is utterly unreasonable and motivated purely by spite and the men (father and partner or fatherS) are above reproach and entirely reasonable (see the CCTV footage description) doesn't ring wholly true and is at least open to question.

"DuellingFanjo, her stupid behaviour started before the birth, surely? "

Yes, I believe in the December she had already changed her mind about it. Though this wasn't treated as a surrogacy case I think there is evidence that both believed it was and certainly the father did. She changed her mind about that I am sure, and wanted the child to live with her and the father to have a part to play.

I just think that given the father then started court proceedings days after the birth it spooked her and from that point on her behaviour became more damaging to her case out of fear and i can understand why this might happen because I am not devoid of sympathy towards a woman who has just given birth feeling like her child might be taken away by someone who seems to have more money and more legal assistance.

"I think thats part of the problem with some posters, they are imagining themselves in the womans position and can imagine her pain. Apparently can't imagine the fathers pain."

I am a mother not a father but I can imagine his pain. I just feel like my experience as a mother means I will naturally have more empathy for how it would feel the threat of having a newborn removed from my care.

Clearly the abduction threat is a really serious one and so I can totally understand the court's decision on that but my issue with the whole case is that when a woman with very little money or legal power feels threatened by the father of her child's wealth and legal representation, then perhaps some of her behaviour is more understandable?

I think thats part of the problem with some posters, they are imagining themselves in the womans position and can imagine her pain. Apparently can't imagine the fathers pain.

I think it is all too easy to imagine the pain of ALL the adults Kew.

The distress to the 15 month old of a complete change of residence and carers (and name....) seems to have minimized (albeit apparently considered against predicted longer term outcomes) in that judgement, though.

Well, the judge may not have a good understanding of attachment parenting. But I don't see that that makes her ruling wrong. There is an obvious contradiction between attachment parenting and co-parenting with someone you don't live with. The mother is on her third child, she would have understood this, and yet made promises she didn't intend to honour.

Nothing wrong with bf, sling-wearing or co-sleeping at 15 months (I have done all three). But by 15 months I think the benefits of that are outweighed by the need to have strong relationships with all your parents. And the mother used attachment parenting very deliberately as an obstacle to that happening.

When I made my parenting agreement with the father of my child, we agreed that there would be no overnight stays with her father in her first year. I just knew I wouldn't feel comfortable with that - and I was right. But her father was welcome to visit several times a week, whenever he wanted - so long as it was convenient for us. As she grew older, we moved to different arrangements: first one full day a week, then every other weekend. This experienced mother could have made a similar deal, one that allowed her to fully mother her child while enabling her to also spend time with her dads. She chose instead to use attachment parenting as an obstacle, in addition to all the worrying visits to doctors and hospitals.

Incidentally, very few posters are talking about the bio dad's partner. It sounds as though this was a big feature of the case: the men thought they would both be parents, but the mother insisted that the non-bio dad was irrelevant. This seems to me a really important part of the case. We'll never know what the arrangement was here: did the mother think she was dealing with one other parent, only to be suddenly presented with two as a surprise package? Or did the non-bio dad find himself cruelly (and homophobically) excluded from his child's life? In law, he has no rights, so he too will have felt extremely vulnerable and panicked.

DuelingFanjo I had to fight a custody battle in similar conditions ie the father had the wealth and the lawyers etc but it never made me want to behave the way she did. I didn't want to cut him out of their lives just wanted to be their primary carer. I couldn't imagine trying to cut a father out of a child's life needlessly. I couldn't imagine behaving so spitefully to inform his family of his homosexuality knowing they wouldn't approve, hurting not just him and them but also my own child by making it harder for her to know her wider family. These are not the actions of a mother who is trying to do the best for her child but a mother who is trying to possess a child.

Bux the court is obliged to consider the long term though. It isn't about minimising the distress of the child (although there is no evidence that the child is distressed by staying at her fathers so there is no evidence that increasing her time with her father and decreasing the time with her mother with be as distressing as removing a child from one person and moving them on to a stranger as happens with adoption)

There are no winners here.

You can't decide that the father is a better bet for the overall upbringing of the child then not put that into place because its tough.

The view of the court is that the child is better placed with their father. Nothing anyone has said has convinced me so far that they're wrong.

Incidentally, very few posters are talking about the bio dad's partner. It sounds as though this was a big feature of the case: the men thought they would both be parents, but the mother insisted that the non-bio dad was irrelevant. This seems to me a really important part of the case. We'll never know what the arrangement was here: did the mother think she was dealing with one other parent, only to be suddenly presented with two as a surprise package? Or did the non-bio dad find himself cruelly (and homophobically) excluded from his child's life? In law, he has no rights, so he too will have felt extremely vulnerable and panicked.

That was one of the jarring things about the judgement - the Judge spoke about the likelihood that the mother would support relationships with the paternal family and with the family of the DF's DP.

Which is a strange requirement to place on the DM, UNLESS the Law views him as not in fact a step-parent, but a fully fledged parent.

Which is it? It's murky throughout which assumption is being made - three parents or two?

What is quite apparent is that after conception SOMETHING CHANGED. And it doesn't seem to have been just the mother's mind.

The father wanted overnight visits at 4 months old though?

It just seems that each step of the way he was requesting things that would have made me wince (taking a four month old breastfed baby overnight?!) and so I can see how this built up the bad feeling and the fear.

Bux the court is obliged to consider the long term though

Of course.

But has EQUAL weight been given to the trauma of removing a 15mth old from her mother?

Agree with eatshit 100%

(It seemed to me the judgement rather minimized THAT and made a huge deal of assumptions about the long term that were largely based on a single issue - supporting the DF's relationship. Imaine if a therapeutic solution could/would have been ordered instead)

in the judgement you can see that there is an assumption made that the Father's partner had been aware of the insemination and the 'agreement' and so was involved as a parent figure.

Though there seems to be very little, if any, written evidence to back it up.

I think it's all a bit foggy but, yes, a possibility could be that the mother was not expecting the child's father's partner to be as involved.

"I couldn't imagine trying to cut a father out of a child's life needlessly" but one of the reasons she did this, the over-riding reason, was the fact that she was still breastfeeding.