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If a man has been a good father to his children and has divorced because he and his wife can no longer remain married just because of growing apart over the years then there should be no reason for him not to have equal custody rights to his children. If on the other hand the man has not been a good father to his children, has not set good examples and has not taught them the basics of what fathers should teach their children then there is no way he should have equal custody rights to the children. I am currently going through a divorce after 16 years and have two children, a girl 14 and a boy 16, my ex has not participated in this family for many years. He has gone to work and when he came home from work went right up stairs to lay in bed and watch TV, the only time he left the room was to come down to get his supper or to yell at the kids if they were fighting. On Friday nights he would come home from work, change his clothes and then leave to go out with this friends and would stay out until 5:30 the next morning. He would then go to bed get up in time to go back out with his friends and come home Sunday morning around 5:30 a.m.

I know many people have asked why I would let him stay doing this but I always thought that children should have both a mother and a father and I put up with this for this reason. Hindsight is 20/20 and knowing what I know now I would have asked him to leave a long time ago. After doing this for many years he finally came home much later one Sunday morning and told my children and myself that he had a girlfriend and he was leaving. Both my children have been extremely traumatized by his behavior and could not understand why he would chose to do this.

My ex has been gone now for over a year and my 14 year old daughter will have nothing to do with him. She has sent him emails telling him that if he was that unhappy and wanted to leave then she would have felt fine with that and understood but considering he cheated on her mother she can't forgive him for that and doesn't know if she will ever be able to. I do try and tell her that regardless of all of that he is still her father but she says that her dad has told her that he didn't cheat on her and that had nothing to do with her or her brother but children are not stupid. My daughter has told him that he didn't just cheat on her mother but he also cheated both her and her brother by not being here the way a father should have been for his children. My son, on the other hand does see his father but only occasionally, his visitation is supposed to be every other Sunday for 3 hours and every other Thursday for 3 hours (this is what he agreed to in our settlement after giving me sole custody of the children without batting an eye). There is a lot of times that my son is supposed to see his father but my son will ask me to send him a note and tell him that he has too much homework. He doesn't have homework that night but he tells me that it is really boring spending time with his dad and he would prefer not to even bother but unlike his father (who didn't care how his actions affected his children)he didn't want to hurt his dads feelings.

So do I think that there should be equal custody rights, in my situation the answer is definitely no, he was not a good father when he was here and I don't believe that now that he is living with a new girlfriend that has changed his parenting skills and that all of a sudden he is going to be a super dad and now know the best things to teach his children.

Learn more about this author, Kathy Scott.
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