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I am trying to get a full set of lunch bag pics online at flickr.com. If they are available
you will see a link here.
Link to Lunchbag images is live! :)
Why did I draw and post these lunchbags?
After a complex divorce, I asked an Attorney to tell me how to make sure I always
maintained joint custody of my kids. The Attorney told me that the best way to do this
was to be a "visible parent". Struggling to find a way to do this without being fake
about it, I started drawing a cartoon on my son's lunch bag every day he was with me.
It became a ritual and the other kids at school loved it. :)
I decided to share them at Artomatic because I wanted to bring attention to a very
strange legal situation in Maryland. I am a curious person, and during my divorce I
tried to learn as much as I could about the divorce process and the law. One thing I
learned is that Maryland is one of a handful of states that has no presumption of joint
custody. So during a divorce, in advance of a court order, either parent can simply
pull up stakes and leave the state with the kids. The idea is that this flexibility allows
an abused spouse to flee. However, it has also become a loophole exploited for
what one lawyer told me was termed a "highly leveraged" divorce.
Here's a hypothetical situation.
The way the Maryland law is written, it is perfectly legal, for example, for a spouse to
slowly drain money from joint accounts and then disappear with the children. To lock
this in place, all that person would have to do is make a false claim alleging some
sort of cause for the departure. Once that's done, it's a challenge to expect a Judge to
order children back into a home against someone's sworn statements of danger.
Once the kids and money are gone, the spouse and the Attorney are in a prime
position to dictate terms to the other party. The burden of proof and litigation costs to
fight are astronomical. A competent Attorney can cost around $350 an hour and up.
Here's the most important part -- it's one thing to have a system that allows parents
the flexibility to flee in cases of abuse. It's another thing entirely to have the system
set up in such a way that there is no oversight for misuse of this provision in the law
for personal gain.
As far as I can tell, if you were to do this and later on be either found guilty of
"desertion for no just cause" or otherwise acknowledge that there was no
reasonable cause for leaving with the kids and hiding them from the other parent,
there are no criminal consequences.
Less than that, there doesn't even seem to be a mechanism to register such a
complaint. It's as though the hypothetical situation described above simply couldn't
happen.
So, dear reader, if this happens to you or anyone you know, it appears that there is
no one to help you except an Attorney. Period.
As for me, my case is over. My ex-wife and I share 50/50 custody of our kids and we
do our best to do right by them. We are very lucky to have had two awesome kids and
I look forward to raising them as a co-parent with her. But, I made a promise to
myself a long time ago that I would do my best to bring some attention and remedy to
this potential for abuse in the system. If you're interested in this issue or working to
prevent abuse of process in family law in Maryland or in changing the law to support
a presumption of joint custody, e-mail me at eeshan@eeshanmelder.com or use the
Contact Me link on the left hand menu. Thanks! :)
you will see a link here.
Link to Lunchbag images is live! :)
Why did I draw and post these lunchbags?
After a complex divorce, I asked an Attorney to tell me how to make sure I always
maintained joint custody of my kids. The Attorney told me that the best way to do this
was to be a "visible parent". Struggling to find a way to do this without being fake
about it, I started drawing a cartoon on my son's lunch bag every day he was with me.
It became a ritual and the other kids at school loved it. :)
I decided to share them at Artomatic because I wanted to bring attention to a very
strange legal situation in Maryland. I am a curious person, and during my divorce I
tried to learn as much as I could about the divorce process and the law. One thing I
learned is that Maryland is one of a handful of states that has no presumption of joint
custody. So during a divorce, in advance of a court order, either parent can simply
pull up stakes and leave the state with the kids. The idea is that this flexibility allows
an abused spouse to flee. However, it has also become a loophole exploited for
what one lawyer told me was termed a "highly leveraged" divorce.
Here's a hypothetical situation.
The way the Maryland law is written, it is perfectly legal, for example, for a spouse to
slowly drain money from joint accounts and then disappear with the children. To lock
this in place, all that person would have to do is make a false claim alleging some
sort of cause for the departure. Once that's done, it's a challenge to expect a Judge to
order children back into a home against someone's sworn statements of danger.
Once the kids and money are gone, the spouse and the Attorney are in a prime
position to dictate terms to the other party. The burden of proof and litigation costs to
fight are astronomical. A competent Attorney can cost around $350 an hour and up.
Here's the most important part -- it's one thing to have a system that allows parents
the flexibility to flee in cases of abuse. It's another thing entirely to have the system
set up in such a way that there is no oversight for misuse of this provision in the law
for personal gain.
As far as I can tell, if you were to do this and later on be either found guilty of
"desertion for no just cause" or otherwise acknowledge that there was no
reasonable cause for leaving with the kids and hiding them from the other parent,
there are no criminal consequences.
Less than that, there doesn't even seem to be a mechanism to register such a
complaint. It's as though the hypothetical situation described above simply couldn't
happen.
So, dear reader, if this happens to you or anyone you know, it appears that there is
no one to help you except an Attorney. Period.
As for me, my case is over. My ex-wife and I share 50/50 custody of our kids and we
do our best to do right by them. We are very lucky to have had two awesome kids and
I look forward to raising them as a co-parent with her. But, I made a promise to
myself a long time ago that I would do my best to bring some attention and remedy to
this potential for abuse in the system. If you're interested in this issue or working to
prevent abuse of process in family law in Maryland or in changing the law to support
a presumption of joint custody, e-mail me at eeshan@eeshanmelder.com or use the
Contact Me link on the left hand menu. Thanks! :)
Did you see my lunchbags at Artomatic? Thank you so much for your interest and a
special thanks for supporting Artomatic. I displayed these lunchbags with a lot of
self-doubt and was shocked and grateful for the positive reaction I received. Check
out the links below:
Personal post at ArtDC.org
VoiceOfAmerica Spanish Edition Review
2010 Blog post
I am an amateur songwriter and have a few songs posted on youtube.com.
Links to some of the most popular ones are provided below:
"SO IN LOVE" by Eeshan Melder
"HOLY WATER" by Eeshan Melder
"FOLLOWING THE LIGHT" by Eeshan Melder
Links to some of the most popular ones are provided below:
"SO IN LOVE" by Eeshan Melder
"HOLY WATER" by Eeshan Melder
"FOLLOWING THE LIGHT" by Eeshan Melder
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