Legal Question in Family Law in New York

Re: Visitation Fight

You close your post with the cry: "Help", but one doesn't know enough about the "operative" status of the case to do much more than make sympathetic noises. Put otherwise: these cases, like coins, always have two sides to them {plus the 'edge'} & there is almost always more to them than what one side chooses to describe in a forum such as this.

There is this, you write: "The man has never done anything wrong except not get out sooner."

Some Family Court judges {and many Child Protective Services units} have come to rely a great deal on the notion of "protective ally". This concept is sometimes used by Child Protective to 'deal' with mothers {typically} who do not leave abusive homes ... the core of the theory being that the children have a right to a parent who will be their "protector" & that a parent who stays in an abusive home with children cannot be counted on to be the children's 'protective ally'.

Extending this notion {and this is, obviously, only 'wild guessing' on my part} it could be that the father is having a hard time more on account of not having done *enough* - - for instance, odd though it may seem, IF the mother is such a 'horror' and the father so nearly a 'saint', it might be that he would be viewed less critically if he were petitioning for outright custody, instead of just visitation.

Regards, etc.,

J.M. Hayes

>>--> The foregoing amounts to musings and observations based on some years familiarity with the 'day-to-day' operation of the law with regard to the issues involved In The Most General sense; my remarks should not be thought of as "legal advice and counsel" in the formal sense of that phrase, since there is, in fact, no 'attorney / client' relationship existing between us. <-<<