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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   26095 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

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I disagree. If the court got it wrong somehow, no responsible parent would let their kid stay in an unsafe situation just because the law said they had to.

Of course plenty of irresponsible parents think they're responsible, so it's almost impossible to tell from the outside without an investigation and trial.

I disagree. If the court got it wrong somehow, no responsible parent would let their kid stay in an unsafe situation just because the law said they had to.

A responsible parent with a reasonable predictor of the external world would realize that violating the order will lead to their child shortly being returned to that unsafe situation with less chance of ultimately getting a better solution.

You have statistics on overturning custody agreements to back that up?

I have an extremely strong prior that courts very reverse custody agreements in favor of a parent that violated their previous order. In fact, there is standing caselaw that violating of a family court order is unfit.

See, e.g. here and here.

I'm also kind of shocked. The statement "if you violate a custody order you are more likely to be judged unfit" is so much the default presumption that I think the burden really ought to be on the contrary of "the court will not construe violating an existing custody order against the violating party".

In any event, there is sufficient citation to it in existing caselaw.

I think you may have misunderstood my argument.

if you violate a custody order you are more likely to be judged unfit

I agree with this. P(judged unfit | violate order) is significantly higher. Hence my comment about requiring a trial.

But we're talking about a theoretically individual case. Statistics don't matter to the individual.

Let's take someone who was given no custody and has a child in an unsafe situation. A few days out of that situation might be better than none. I'm not sure that parent is automatically irresponsible.

Sure, there is some outlier case that is possible. That exceptional case is both extremely rare and inconsequential to the point.

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