Inside the Unique Battle Between Two Moms for Custody of Their Kids

Custody battles are always upsetting. But the case of Joy Phillips’ and Amber Berndt’s fight over their two daughters is an especially excruciating conundrum. That’s because the same-sex couple was never legally married, leaving the non-biological mother, Phillips, in limbo — struggling to secure her parental rights so that she can then defend them. 

“This is a very important case,” American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) LGBT Project attorney Jay Kaplan tells Yahoo Parenting. The legal drama, currently unfolding in a Michigan court, is between the former couple, together for more than 13 years. They were married in a non-legal ceremony, wore wedding rings, and together raised their two daughters, now 10 and 7, who were given the legal last name of “Berndt-Phillips” before their moms split in Dec. 2014. 

“And we are going to see more of these cases in the future, because courts are going to have to deal with the effect of the Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision,” Kaplan adds. “Couples who didn’t get married because they couldn’t shouldn’t be denied the rights that same sex-married couples now have.” 

STORY: Epic $800,000 Custody Battle Highlights Sperm-Donor Rights

Phillips, 41, and Berndt, 37, weren’t able to legally marry before Berndt gave birth to their daughters via donated sperm, and whom they co-parented 50-50 even up to eight months after the moms broke up. According to court records examined by Michigan Live, each mother claims she was the primary caregiver, that the girls called both women “mom,” and that Berndt listed Phillips as the guardian of the children in her will. 

STORY: Couple Wants to Marry Even Though They’re Legally Father and Son

But when Berndt recently decided that she wanted to relocate a couple of hours away with their kids to be with her new partner, Phillips protested and petitioned the court to formalize their shared custody. Kent County Family Court Judge Kathleen Feeney is considering the arguments, and noted at a recent hearing, “I feel like Star Trek in that we’re going to unknown places that have yet to be explored,” according to Michigan Live.

Both parties, of course, insist that the matter is actually quite simple. Berndt’s attorney Scott Sherlund insists that Phillips has zero legal right to even claim custody. “It’s a difficult case anytime you’re involving children, whether it’s same-sex parents or man and a woman, custody cases are always difficult,” he tells Yahoo Parenting. “My hope is that everyone going through this is treated with respect and dignity. There’s a controlling authority law in place on this and until something changes in the legislature, we have to live with the laws we have. Right now we believe we are correctly applying the law as it’s written.” 

On the other side, Phillip’s lawyer Christine Yared reportedly maintains that because the Michigan state law that prohibited the couple from marrying has been ruled unconstitutional — with the Supreme Court’s June decision — Phillips should be able to make a claim toward motherhood of the girls she’s raised since birth. “This case is about securing the right of the children to have a continuing relationship with both of their parents,” Yared tells Yahoo Parenting. “The children should not lose their relationship with one of their parents simply because the state they live in would not allow their parents to get married or recognize out-of-state marriages.”

Just last year, a New York judge fielded a similar case — and ruled that another mother did not have legal standing to joint custody of her son with her partner, who gave birth to the boy. At the time, Suzanne B. Goldberg, director of the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia University, told the New York Times that the verdict was “troubling” because “it leaves a same-sex parent as a legal stranger to her child.”

And the ACLU’s Kaplan, for one, agrees. “It would be unconstitutional to not recognize Phillips and deny her right to her children,” he tells Yahoo Parenting. “I can’t tell you how many calls I got from moms whose kids got taken away before the marriage equality decision, and there was nothing they could do about it. The courts said, ‘You can’t get married so you don’t have a right to the kids.’ But now the courts can no longer deny same-sex unions, so they can’t use old or bad law to justify denying families.” 

LGBT couples, he continues, “simply want to be treated like heterosexual couples. And in heterosexual couples you can’t just take a kid away from the other parent.

Writer  Jennifer O'Neill

Wana HGS wamtukuza Mungu katika Effoti inayoendelea katika Kanisa la Vijibweni Kigamboni

Sehemu ya Waimbaji wa Kundi la HGS wakimtukuza Mungu katika viwanja vya Kanisa la Waadventista Wasabato Vijibweni Jana jioni.

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Church should shun derogatory words on gays, Vatican synod told

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Catholics should stop using condescending language such as "pity" toward homosexuals and find ways to welcome them as sons and daughters of the Church, bishops have told a major gathering on the family.

The comments supporting more inclusive language for homosexuals in the Church were made in the first two rounds of interventions at the closed-door gathering, known as a synod, Vatican officials told a news conference on Tuesday.

The calls by over half a dozen bishops for more inclusive language on homosexuals stood out because conservative clerics made sure an interim report at a preliminary meeting last year deleted a passage they thought was too welcoming to gays.

"(The bishops said) there must be an end to exclusionary language and a strong emphasis on embracing reality as it is. We should not be afraid of new and complex situations," Father Tom Rosica said in summarizing some of the interventions.

He said that the bishops had called for "a new form of language, in particular in speaking of homosexuals ... we do not pity gay persons but we recognize them for who they are. They are our sons and daughters, our brothers and sisters, our neighbors and our colleagues."

In a document written by former Pope Benedict before his election and still cited by conservatives, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger described homosexuals as "intrinsically disordered".

MODERN FAMILIES

Rosica, who attends the meetings, said the bishops who advocated a more welcoming Church for homosexuals argued that gays should not be treated as "outsiders" and the Church should extend "a hand of welcome to them (as) our flesh and blood".

The synod of more than 300 bishops, delegates and observers, including 13 married couples, will be meeting for three weeks in the presence of Pope Francis to discuss how the 1.2 billion member Church can confront challenges facing the modern family.

Since his election in 2013, Francis has given great hope to progressives who want him to forge ahead with his vision of a more inclusive Church that concentrates on mercy rather than the strict enforcement of rigid rules they see as antiquated.

The bishops will discuss ways to defend the traditional family and make life-long marriage more appealing to young people while reaching out to disaffected Catholics such as homosexuals, co-habiting couples and the divorced.

The gathering has been preceded by intense jockeying between conservatives and liberals on a host of sensitive issues.

One key topic at the synod will be how to reach out to Catholics who have divorced and remarried in civil ceremonies.

They are considered by the Church to be still married to their first spouse and living in a state of sin. Some bishops want a change to the rules that bars them from receiving sacraments such as communion.

An introductory speech at the synod's opening on Monday led some to believe that the discussion on a possible change in rule concerning divorced Catholics was closed, but bishops at Tuesday's press conference disputed this.

"The discussion is still open," said Italian Archbishop Claudio Celli.

(Reporting by Philip Pullella; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

Students help first lady harvest White House garden

First lady Michelle Obama, joined by school children from Washington area, participate in a harvest of the White House Kitchen Garden, Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2015, at the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A gloved Michelle Obama wielded a pitchfork Tuesday to show some student helpers how to harvest the sweet potatoes in her White House garden.

"We've got to dig these babies up," she said of the orange tubers as beads of perspiration on her forehead glistened in the afternoon sun. Students from four District of Columbia schools participated in the yearly fall harvest.

Some of the produce was tossed into a chicken vegetable salad that the group ate during an outdoor lunch on the South Lawn.

Carrots and peanuts were among the other crunchy edibles that were harvested.

Bees, including some from a nearby beehive, weren't officially part of the program, but they swarmed participants nonetheless. The first lady fanned them out of her face and she doubled over at one point at the picnic table after a bee apparently became caught in her long hair.

Mrs. Obama started the vegetable garden in 2009, her first year at the White House, to begin a national dialogue about healthy eating. The garden led to "Let's Move," her national initiative to combat childhood obesity.

Google also recorded Tuesday's harvest for a program it has that provides schools with guided virtual tours.

First lady Michelle Obama, joined by school children from Washington area, pick sweet potatoes as they participate in a harvest of the White House Kitchen Garden, Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2015, at the White House in Washington. Students from four District of Columbia schools helped the first lady with Tuesday’s fall harvest. Afterward, some of the produce went into a chicken vegetable salad they ate for lunch. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

First lady Michelle Obama, joined by school children from Washington area, eat together after the harvesting of the White House Kitchen Garden, Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2015, at the White House in Washington. Students from four District of Columbia schools helped the first lady with Tuesday’s fall harvest. Afterward, some of the produce went into a chicken vegetable salad they ate for lunch. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

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See How The Newest Volvo SUV Drives Itself To Avoid Fender Benders

The autonomous cars are coming. Google’s perfecting its robo-egg, Cadillac’s working on something called Super Cruise and Elon Musk promises that your Tesla will soon fetch itself from the parking garage and come pick you up. Volvo, for its part, has a system that’ll handle stop-and-go traffic, the dreary highway crawl that so many of us face every day. It’s called Pilot Assist, and it’s not some vaporware assigned to an indeterminate future debut. It’s here now, in dealerships, in the 2016 XC90. And it’s awesome.

Here’s how Pilot Assist works: In highway traffic that’s grinding along at less that 30 mph, the XC90 uses radar to lock on the car in front of you. Meanwhile, a high-mounted camera reads the lane markings to ensure you stay in your lane. The car takes over steering, throttle and brakes, occasionally chiming an alarm if it detects that you’ve totally checked out and taken both hands off the wheel for more than 15 seconds. The system’s not finicky, not indecisive—it just works. Outside the car, nobody else would suspect that your Volvo is driving itself. That is, until traffic starts running 35 mph and you top out at 30. Then you lose your lead car and it’s back to the grind.

It’s certainly sexier to have a car drive itself at full-fledged highway speeds, or go park sans driver, but the unassuming Volvo system, buried in a dash menu next to the cruise control, is a huge deal. I headed into rush hour in Raleigh, NC (don’t laugh, denizens of New York, Los Angeles and DC) and even the Triangle’s modest gridlock produced two rear-end collisions that morning. This is the kind of traffic that’s so boring, so stultifying, that it lures you into complacency. Hey, I’m only doing 20 mph, let me see what else is on the radio—BANG! Time to open the glove box and find your insurance papers. 

I’m not saying that a low-speed accident could never happen in the XC90, but radar has a lot better attention span than you do. If I had to commute in highway traffic (or if I lived in a perpetually traffic-snarled metropolis), Pilot Assist alone would vault the XC90 to the top of my shopping list.  

Volvo being Volvo, it frames Pilot Assist as a safety feature, part of a system called IntelliSafe. And that it is, but it’s also just cool, a dash of utopian sci-fi lurking within your Swedish family hauler. I still love driving, but now and then I don’t mind a little help.

www.yahoo.com/autos/see-how-the-newest-volvo-suv-drives-itself-to-128780821757.html

  

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