A mother in Spain has lost custody of a one-year-old boy because she lived in a small village in the “backwards” rural region of Galicia, where he could not possibly “grow up happy”, it emerged in a ruling made public on Monday.
Well, if all decisions are to be made on the basis of the interests of the child, perhaps so.
….the judge said it was sexist to assume a woman has “special qualities or abilities to provide better care”.
The mother must also pay 150 euros in monthly child maintenance and will only be able to visit her son every other weekend in Marbella, some 700 miles away.
Well, yes, it would be sexist to assume that. However sensible we might think such sexism is….
Seems to be a highly dodgy decision. Mother does not work, but lives in a village with family, only 15 minutes drive from a small town with all the facilities the child will need. Dad meanwhile works full time as a doctor in Marbella and plans to use hired help to raise the kid.
The interests of the child are far better served by having a family group to bring him up in a small village, which has all the necessary facilities a short drive away, than being brought up by a succession of nannies while Dad works full time. The judge (in Marbella) decided Marbella plus no family most of the time was better than the sticks plus family. It would be far better for the father to pay the mother to bring up the child than paying strangers.
Also, as Tim says, a child of that age (born last year) is always better off with its mother, unless she is incapable for some reason. Denying this is as stupid as, well, all the other obvious truths we deny.
The Telegraph article has a lot of bitter men saying: “Yeah, well, makes a change to get the decision this way” which makes me wonder about how much their custody battle was about scoring one over the ex rather than the welfare of the child.
“Seems to be a highly dodgy decision.”
It is a decision that follows the law and for good reason. The parents had joint custody and the mother moved to the other side of the country, which meant the father could no longer have the same relationship with his child. In such cases, the parent who chooses to move loses custody. Any other decision would have been akin to condoning kidnapping.
a small village in the “backwards” rural region of Galicia
Illiterate journalist doesn’t know the word ‘backward’ and so sticks an ‘s’ on the end to make a word he does know. But that word doesn’t fit the context so he puts it in inverted commas. The subs are no cleverer and English is probably not their first language.
Kid’s not going to find much happiness in Marbella. Too many English.
Marbella is the town on the coast I dislike most. About 10% of it’s residents at least pretending to be wealthy & the other 90% dedicating their lives to separating them from their wealth. Seems everybody I meet there, about 10 minutes into the conversation they bring up a business proposition I might be interested in.
At least on Tim’s Algarve they aren’t so obvious.
I suggest that it is cruelty to raise a kid in Marbella. The boy will think that it’s normal to wear a ton of bling with your wifebeater and tailored shorts
You got that right, Diogenese. The Marbella fashion statement is to wear the maker’s label on the outside of your clothes. Although, come to think of it, it’s the closest thing here we have to English suburbia.
I suppose he will grow up as one of those vendors of mirror sunglasses, trainers and “designer” handbags. What a place to raise a kid!
Sounds like the judge was trying to justify the decision to himself. He should have stuck to points of law (per KirthWGersen above).