Happy Birthday Chloé!

With your cousin Louise

Chloé, I am thinking of you on your sixteenth birthday.  Je t’embrasse.

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Illinois’ Right of First Refusal: A Right Fathers Can’t Refuse

Picture: Illinois Fathers

All of us have been there: you learn from your kids that ex was in a business trip somewhere. You would gladly have taken care of them but the baby sitter or someone else did, because ex is by law in charge and in the business of making sure that you will not your kids more than your divorce agreement says you will, that is every other weekend and perhaps an afternoon the week without the weekend with them.

On May 22 of this year, both Illinois houses attempted to stop this sad state of affairs by passing HB 2992. Hopefully Illinois’s example will be followed by other States, if Pat Quinn, the Governor of Illinois, signs the bill to be included as section 602.3 of the Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act.

What is the right of first refusal? If ex needs to go, you are by law the first to be on with the kids. She has 24 hours to let you know that you can watch the kids when she is absent, and you have 24 hours to let her know whether you can do it or not. Common sense in “the best interest of the child,” for once.  The fathers’ right movement has to reinvent the wheel to amend decades of biased legislation.

However we all know that there is the law and there is the enforcement of the law, and these are two different things as far as family laws are concerned. But let us not spoil our pleasure at this stage…

Hat Tip: American Coalition for Fathers and Children, May 29 2013 Newsletter

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