Family Law

Amy Dickinson's Q & A from the  Chicago Tribune.

Dear Amy: I am in a situation that many of my friends have also gone through.

After years of my being a faithful husband, very good father and providing for my family financially, my wife has decided that she is not happy anymore. She says that it's not me, it's her. She has a boyfriend, and she wants to be with him. She also wants custody of our two children.

My wife knows that she can get custody because she has a good job and the courts usually always side with the woman unless the children are in danger.

My male friends in very similar situations have had their children taken away from them, have been forced to become part-time parents every other weekend and Wednesdays, are forced to pay child support, and their dreams of raising their children are shattered because the wife had a change of heart and feels that "she deserves to be happy."

What about me? I did nothing to deserve this.

What should I do? -- Tom in Ohio

Dear Tom: I want to stress that any parent who gets dumped by a spouse gets a raw deal. Even those moms (including me) who are granted custody of the kids end up accepting many injustices, parenting challenges and visitation nightmares just because a spouse decides to walk away. The important thing is to make all of your decisions from here on out firmly centered on what is best for your children.

Depending on what state you live in, the system is still skewed in favor of mothers being custodial parents (many states are moving toward shared custody), and though I think that the jury is still out on what custody arrangement truly works best for children, long term, it is patently unfair to assume that fathers should take a secondary role in child raising.

I read your letter to David Levy, director of the Children's Rights Council, which advocates for fathers' rights. Levy stresses that the best way to cope with this is to get involved with other parents by joining a local parents support group. These groups meet, often with a lawyer present, to strategize and do research on divorce law and custody issues. "Sometimes guys want to go it alone, with only their lawyer supplying advice, but doing research to learn parental rights and responsibilities and advocating for change helps men to get through this," he says.