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bayouhazard wrote:

mojo84 wrote:So, you think it would have been appropriate for the child, which is 6 years old, to show up for the hearing without the parent that has legal custody?

It seems no less appropriate than the child living for months on end without the parent who has legal custody.

children living without their parents for months on end all around the country. this little girl apparently has a step-mother who loves her dearly and was willing to represent her in court. The child has a life, goes to school and has friends, have you considered that? SOMETHING caused a judge to remove her from her bio mother! Her father will come home....submariners are actually in one of the safest jobs out there. If he's on fast attacks he might only be go for weeks at a time. you don't know, it's none of our business.

My father was a submariner. gone for 3 months at a time for several years at a time. Then he'd do something else for several years. You get use to it.

EEllis wrote:

SewTexas wrote:well, the judge delayed the case because "she didn't know the sailor was serving" even though she was told a multitude of times by a plethora of people. right.....I'm thinking her plan backfired, she got the national attention she didn't really want, and she had to backtrack.

No that is not what happened. There was an order for the father or the daughter to appear before the court. The judge said that the court was not informed that he was deployed an unable to attend until that hearing when no one showed. No his side says they did submit paperwork so who knows for sure but either way the child could of still been there so the order could of been fulfilled regardless of his deployment status. The attention she got is from people who have little interest in reporting what actually occurred and obviously are just trying to push a narrative.

EEllis,

I read the articles, many articles, I also read several comments on the articles by people who read the court transcript. His COB (Chief of the Boat), and several others had sent a letter to the judge stating that he was at sea....the judge knew, she just didn't care until there was an outcry.

I will not argue with you about this.

well, the judge delayed the case because "she didn't know the sailor was serving" even though she was told a multitude of times by a plethora of people. right.....I'm thinking her plan backfired, she got the national attention she didn't really want, and she had to backtrack.

tbrown wrote:

Jumping Frog wrote:

tbrown wrote:With all due respect, if he's not home he's not the one raising his daughter.

True. The step-mother is. But with all due respect, the mother already lost her parental rights when child protective services removed the child from the mother's custody. That is how the father was awarded permanent custody to start with. So it is hard for me to see how the child's best interests are served by being given back to that same unfit mother.

I don't know enough about the history of this case to have any opinion of the mother's fitness as a parent. For the sake of argument, if the mother is unfit and the father is absent, perhaps the best interest of the child would be for one set of her grandparents to have custody. Or perhaps the right place for her is with the step-mother.

I don't see anything wrong with the courts re-examining custody if the home life situation has changed. Obviously it's absurd to expect a submariner to attend a hearing in person while deployed, but that's a separate issue from whether a custody hearing is a good idea.

A) a judge felt that the situation was good and awarded him custody.
B) the mother waited until he was AWAY and filed, the new judge issued this order on a FRIDAY, LATE, knowing that 1) he couldn't be present, 2) stated that skype was not acceptable and 3) there wouldn't be a decent news cycle to cover it.

both the mother and the judge are deserving of words a Texas Lady just doesn't say in public.

C) I truly hope that a JAG lawyer is able to file some sort of something on Monday to halt the proceeding maybe under the Service Members Relief Act. Personally I'd like to see the Judge charged and thrown in jail, but I doubt that will happen.