Quebec dad, sued by daughter after grounding, loses his appeal

Link doesn't work, Laura.

And Martin, while you're likely right about the journalist's quoting just one side of the story, I'm impressed (as always) at how you manage to "fill in" the other side of the story...

The judgment is available here (in French).

I learned a lot reading it and suggest it is read before we go on speculating about who is being excessive here. The facts in the case are significantly different from what we have been hearing from the father's lawyer.

A few points. It was established that the father "showed the child the door" after a spat on May 14, 2008 (five weeks before the field trip). The father has since refused to speak to his daughter until she "acknowledges his authority". She is thus de facto in her mother's custody/guardianship, and not by her own choosing. The fact that the mother is now the custodial parent, has asked that this be acknowledged, and is not meeting with opposition to that claim from the father seems to have decided the issue for the trial court when it ruled that the father should not be entitled to block the mid-June field trip from afar, the child having been sufficiently punished by having been kept from participating in an early June school dance show when Dad refused to give her back her costume!

That's interesting.  I can't read it myself, unfortunately.  But if that's true, and Martin isn't leaving any other details out, then yes, that changes things completely.  It also changes things if the parents had joint custody (the article seemed to indicate otherwise) and the father was not consulting the mother on issues he should have been. 

It's like it's a completely different story than the one reported in the article in the opening post, and as it turns out, Martin, you are absolutely right.

Don't crow too much, hey? :D

Perhaps the girl's lawyer did, but the media chose to ignore that as well?  And the parents had joint custody, as that has been stated from the beginning. I refuse to believe anything the media says, pretty much about everything, but especially in respect to women/girls, as it is quite obvious, and I have noted this before elsewhere here, that there is a very real movement afoot, that the media (and not just the news media) is also actioning, against women's rights and women in general. Buying into their version of anything should be cautioned against.

You have a right to be angry michelle.

Hey, of course, I left some other details out - the judgment runs for pages and I only glanced at it for a few minutes! But I didn't try to present a biased view. Try running it through an automated translation website before you write the CBC. You will get pathetic English, but most of the facts and analysis.

To get back to the bridge-blockers Gazette story, another sentence - the very last caught my eye:

"Dumas objected to introducing his previous convictions into the court record. He he is to make legal arguments on that issue and his sentence on May 5."

If we assume that there was good reason for Leroux to get slapped with a protection order and we have the other F4J spokesperson trying to keep his criminal record out of the picture, isn't it awesome that the Quebec fathers' rights movement cannot seem to find men without some kind of a criminal background to act as its spokespersons? Can we not envision that there may be very good reasons for some men to be kept from their children, not by vindictive mothers or traditional legisation as they are always railing, but by the courts?

"UK: Fathers rights campaigner jailed for abusing young child"

Unionist: "What is not clear from either account is exactly on which date the father decreed that the class trip was off, but it was clearly within a few days on either side of May 14." Still, the question remains as to whether it was excessive for the mother to authorize the trip three weeks later, long after the daughter had moved in with her. The legal contest does rest on whether a non-caretaking parent can block such decisions by the caretaking parent.

Michelle: "I'm also appalled that the child's lawyer didn't make the facts of the case more clear." It seems to me that the party who goes to the media - or answers its questions, moving the litigated issue into that sphere - is usually the one with the weaker case. I also doubt whether the child's lawyer was mandated by her client to get into this arena by answering the father's charges. Women or children facing an angry man generally tend to avoid the limelight, hoping rather to simply get justice in the appropriate sphere, on evidentiary bases, and hope that the situation will wind down. Laura could provide more enlightened input about that. My letter to Irwin Block was to the effect of what protocol journalists should apply to these unequal playing field situations where one party gains by a certain amount of histrionics - if not outright mud-slinging - while the other just wants to stay out of the picture and see the harassment peter out.

IMV any parent that has showed a  child the door has no say!

Ya again that is the father's lawyer making statements, moreover you do not deprive children of a graduation trip when they have already been punished for said transgression, and rather meanly too.

I know this is waaaaayy off topic, but we have never given a punishment without a follow up opportunity to make amends.  So in this case a reasonable parent would do something like ban the internet use.  If that failed then perhaps take away a special treat.  However, we would always give our children the chance to 'earn' that special treat back by doing extra chores, helping out at a charity event, letting their mother know their father is a better parent (kidding)- something that has meaning to them as being 'extra' and doing something postive to overcome a transgression.  Sometimes they get to choose the 'extra' and sometimes we have to help them come up with something.  The key is to never do this when either side is mad.  To date we have never had to actually take something away.  And if I do say so myself our kids are pretty responsible and not particularly fearful of talking to us about things that go wrong.  Well except for the time they broke our $1000 power washer trying to launch baseballs into the air.  In that case they had to pay us each $20 from the money they earn helping out at the market.  That money obviously didn't make a big dent in the repair bill, but it was meaningful on their level.

What this father did, even on the face of it, was never giving his daughter a chance to grow and learn

"You know, it's easy to blame the lawyers in these types of cases. I always say that lawyers who practice in family law do not need to multiply proceedures and create all these problems they're accused of creating just to make as much money as possible.  Clients are willing to do that all on their own."

I agree. But what's behind all this?  Right now, the system is rigged so that people in my economic strata have obligations and entitlements that actually outstrip abilities to fully meet them.   The seeds of conflict are not sown in the lawyer's office, but in the legislature.  Legislatures dominated by, you guessed it, lawyers.  

When I went through my separation and divorce, my lawyer was like you.  And, he helped me deal with the anxiety I got every time my ex's lawyer poked and proded me.  Or so it seems to a person who isn't used to getting letters from lawyers.   And, I really don't know if my ex's lawyer was trying to provoke me into some bad response, or whether I was just paranoid.  Either way, that lawyer was just doing her best to represent my ex's interest, according to the laws, which she's supposed to do.  I have no animosity with either of them.

But, I sure as hell do with the system.

The system, particularly when there is a large disparity of income between the two spouses, is engineered to settle things by moving as much money around as possible, and to create as much personal anxiety as possible.  And that's because every time a largish sum is moved,  the banks get a slice (particularly when pension settlements have to be financed)  and, of course,  actuaries get to horn in on the deal.  (my lawyer's line item fee for figuring out my pension -- $25.00.  The Actuarial fee-- $525.00--- which has gone up substantially since) 

And, compared to others, my ex and I got through it all remarkably well.

Now, people are going back to court in droves because of things like spousal support, because it's determined as a fixed amount and not an easily adjusted percentage of income.

Individual lawyers don't have to goad people into costly disputes.  That dirty work is done for them at the legislative level.

Toddsschneider, it would be nice if you changed that thread title, now that we have established how misleading it is. It could read, for example, "Quebec dad loses appeal to overturn Court decision lifting his daughter's grounding". This girl never sued her father and this is disinformation. 

Our judicial paradigm is mostly that of autonomous individuals and their individual rights. Upon family breakdown, this reference is especially dominant, as there aren't family interests per se anymore - unless of course one validates the primary caretaker and her or his childrem as the surviving family whose interests ought to be protected. But any move in that direction is uniformly denounced as anti-men by the antifeminist lobby which, yes, tireless works the business lunch and behind closed-doors meetings circuit. I don't like lawyers anymore than you do, Tommy, I am just attentive to who pays the piper.

Doesn't "cui bono" (who profits?) point mostly to the people litigating against equalization payments between ex-spouses and acknowledgement of who does the primary caretaking and should therefore be entitled to child support and unimpeded authority? The latter seems to have been the crux of the Gatineau court, with the trial judge deciding that - the child having been sufficiently punished by having her school dance sabotaged - the now fully-caretaking parent was entitled to pay for and accompany that field trip, and the father going ballistic.

I'm sorry, Martin, but you are the one spreading disinformation now.  Your accusations against the CBC seem a little extreme to me.  The lawyer had represented the child in the Court proceeding between her parents. It is not contested that when her father decided she wouldn't be able to go on the school trip, she called her lawyer.  Her lawyer tried to settle the matter and when it failed, she filed a motion in court.  Thus, the child did sue her father.  Also, for some reason, you've decided to believe the child story that her father threw her out of the home. The father says that she left. That point is in dispute. Unless you have evidence that her father threw her out, lets not presume.  I am going to say this though: if her father threw her out of the home, why would he go out of his way, until the Court of Appeal, to have his decision, or his parental authority, recognized. 

I'm sorry to see how this all developped into a big conspiracy about the big bad lawyers.  The lawyers are all in the legislature, and they, for some unidentified reason, decided to make the family law system horribly difficult to deal with.  And now that they see in what mess it is, they are all laughing in their big offices.  Thats exactly what they wanted.  The changes they made to the system in order to accelerate it? To facilitate child custody decisions? Ha! Ha! In fact, its just a front to hide their true intentions which is in fact to sabotage the system so that their pals, the litigation lawyers, could make a lot of money off of people who have none. Ha! Ha! It worked perfectly!!

You may not like lawyers, Martin, but they sure come in handy when you need them don't they?  I'll reiterate my point that lawyers, as a group, aren't to be blamed for the system's failure - uncontrolled emotions are, whether it be one of the parties who wants to fight out of principle, or out of ignorance, or out of hatred or revenge.  People like the members of F4J are the worst thing to make its way into to courts system.  They claim, perched on bridges, that the system is against fathers because they can't see their children, all the while forgetting to mention the little details, like the drugs they like to do while their children are in the other room, or the restraining orders they have because they terrorized their "families" into submission.  One of the most valuable lessons I've learned while practicing family law is that people often omit little "details".  Dig a little deeper and all of a sudden, all these injustices appear so much clearer.

On another point, no, legislation is not crafted for the family.  You know why? Because by the time it makes its way to court, there is no "family". Legislation around custody issues is crafted to benefit the children.  Some of the worst cases I've had to deal with are cases where one of the parties was obessed over this idea that a court decision ultimatly had to benefit the "family".  And as unpopular as this comment may be, evertime it was a man who could not accept a separation and tried to manipulate his ex-partner into thinking about the "family" first, whereas all she wanted was to deal with the issue, so that the individuals could go on with their lives.  Claiming that legislation has to benefit the family is like saying that people can't separate because its not good for the family.  I would even say its pretty irresponsible.

Laura wrote: "if her father threw her out of the home, why would he go out of his way, until the Court of Appeal, to have his decision, or his parental authority, recognized?"

Maybe to win the contest and control the situation from afar even if she will not "acknowledge his authority"! Surely you know that a lot of divorced men do that.

"Her lawyer tried to settle the matter and when it failed, she filed a motion in court.  Thus, the child did sue her father."

This seems very androcentrist to me. I understand that to sue someone is to attempt to obtain something from that person; not from the Court as in this case. The child and her lawyer merely wanted the school to authorize a school trip vetted by the new custodial parent. It was the father who shoe-horned himself back into the picture by appealing Judge Tessier's decision empowering the school. So I don't think one can say he was sued.

Indeed I think that is the real scandal here for the conservatives railing on the CBC website - 1000 comments so far - that a father's power could be bypassed by a Court when he was trying to "break" his daughter. Not unlike the physical correction ("spanking") issue.

I agree with the rest of your excellent points.

Cui Bono.

It seems to me, at almost every turn, the system is set up to ensure that there is every opportunity to siphon off as much economic resources as possible from the divorcing/separating couple-- and, ultimately, the children.  Pension entitlements can be figured out so entitlements are met without the necessity of financing.  Spousal support can be determined once and for all, without the constant need for litigation as incomes vary over time. 

Substantial amounts of money could remain with the parties if, for example,  lawyers just showed up in court when they said they would, and stop using delays as negotiating, and personal enrichment tactics. 

"On another point, no, legislation is not crafted for the family.  You know why? Because by the time it makes its way to court, there is no "family". Legislation around custody issues is crafted to benefit the children."

Perhaps it is crafted to benifit the children, if we are talking about the children of the legal representatives of the parties.  That is where the money ultimately flows to.  And like it or not, the economic security of the children in the break up, no matter who is awarded custody, is seriously compromised through this system, in both the long and short terms.

"I'll reiterate my point that lawyers, as a group, aren't to be blamed for the system's failure - uncontrolled emotions are, whether it be one of the parties who wants to fight out of principle, or out of ignorance, or out of hatred or revenge."

That's easy to say when you've handled scores, perhaps hundreds of cases.  But for most people involved, aside from perhaps a visit to a real estate lawyer, this is their one contact point with the law and lawyers, with nasty important looking letters, and demands for this and that from strangers.  

I think back to my last meeting with my lawyer, how he congratulated me-- in fact told me how singularly rare I was-- in that I remained rational through the process. 

But it was only because I had a firm grip on what the system was trying to do to my kids, my ex, and myself.

Blaming the emotionality of the parties in this system for the expensive outcomes is akin to land mine manufactures blaming amputees for "uncontrolled feet."  The hazards are burried.  Intentionally.

I cannot believe people so educated could craft something so horrific by mistake, and benifit so much through "happy accident" simultaneously.

As for so called "Men's Rights" groups, it's my experience from the guys who have gone through divorce that once the issue is behind them, they would like to put as much distance from the process as possible.  I can believe, however, that there are those motivated primarily by mysogyny.  And perhaps I under estimate their number and resources.

But I'm hellishly curious to know, at the same time, who might be financing them.

Discrimination against women in employment (they earn only 70% of men's wages; they are inadequately or not at all accommodated for childbearing and childrearing; they are victims of harassment) and unavailability of accessible and affordable child care, decent jobs, skills training, etc. all compound the societal bias against women and children. Family law pretends to benefit "the child", but courts have no jurisdiction to make society fulfill its obligations.

"Look no further than the billions "saved" each year by men who default or otherwise hold back on child support responsibilities, alimony and family assets sharing. Misogyny need not even enter the picture."

I'm not so sure.  In Ontario, at least, people who earn a paycheque have little wiggle room.  Defaulters have their wages gauransheed, and many in fact volutarily do so for the convenience.   The annectdotes I hear from people that don't receive spousal support or child support seem to have ex's that are self employed, where it's more difficult to enforce court ordered supports.  Another happy accident that most lawyers are self employed, I suppose.

What I'm  getting at is that the "men's rights" activists that have happened upon us here, and we see elsewhere seem to strike me as a bunch of cranks and whack jobs that couldn't organize themselves out of a wet paper bag.

Where are they getting the help?

It is obvious that some lawyers are playing to this crowd, along with a whole lot of activists illegally dispensing take-no-prisoners bad legal advice. But I concur with Laura: the lawyers I have known have mostly been trying to steer angry and hurting parents away from costly and generally useless litigation and toward amicable settlements (indeed, these happen in the majority of separations).

The support FR extremists are getting comes from right-wing foundations such as the Children's Rights Council, government budgets such as the U.S. Fatherhood Initiative, antifeminist journalists (there are a lot of bitter divorced men and their partners in those newsrooms), but mostly, their impetus comes from individual divorced men - many of them convicted abusers (believe me, I have been researching them for 25 years, going to their meetings, etc. - Leroux and Dumas are no exceptions) - ready to battle their ex and the women's rights movement to the bitter end, even if it costs them their last penny or jail time. They are the ones paying the lawyers rather than child support and - wherever it still exists - alimony.

I see this as a conflict between the rule of law and men's rule, where women had to submit to whatever. And most pundits and liberal observers would rather side with the patriarchal status quo than with women and children.

A bit of a non-sequitur. given that the Gatineau girl in the original post had been shown the door by her father after a quarrel, according to her account (that was not infirmed by the Tessier judgment). What is your rationale here, toddsschneider?

As for Ashley Gonis, I am glad she is getting help, but it's not obvious that she will be returned in her father's care. A hearing will be held in B.C. to decide that. People who know anything about social work know that it too often happens that an abused child cannot be taken out of harm's way, for lack of sufficient evidence or simply of resources to examine her case. That is usually when a protective parent decides to run with her or him, at immense cost to both, mostly because of society's failure to challenge parentla (i.e. paternal) privilege and make child abuse a real priority.

Never too early to start smearing that dad, eh? 

Where did you learn to be so passive-aggressive?  And as a full-grown adult, how come you haven't unlearned it yet?  You're chronologically older than I am, but dude, grow up.

Don't you want to understand why mothers (or sometimes, fathers) run with a child? I am not saying anything about Mr. Gonis, just trying to establish general context, over and above MSM sensationalism.

(Your personal attack is being reported.)

One unfortunate side effect of anti-defamation legisation is that when a protective parent decides to run with what she believes to be an abused child (sometimes with plenty of evidence), her reasons cannot be printed. OTOH, the abusive parent who stays home gets all the media attention he wants to smear the "kidnapper".

One element of the Father-Right agenda is having the State charge as kidnappers women who take their child(ren) with them to a DV shelter.