LaMusga, Braver, Burgess, and Move-aways

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"Justice Delayed is Justice Denied"
LaMusga v. LaMusga
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Written by The National Coalition For Family Court Justice of California, Inc.,
a court reform advocacy group.
http://www.nationalcoalition.net/main.html
Also He
http://users.adelphia.net/~enitria/t...s/july_2003.ht
ml#000290
And He
http://www.thelizlibrary.org/lamusga/ncfcj.html
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The 1996 landmark California Supreme Court case In Re Marriage of Burgess was
supposed to prevent this kind of thing from happening.

Suzy Navarro, her husband Todd, her sons Garrett, 11, and Devlen LaMusga, 9,
and their daughter, 3, moved this week from their little rented house in
Pleasanton, California, to a spacious new home purchased in Mesa, Arizona.

They just could not wait any longer.

The latest iteration of a rancorous seven-year battle with the boys' father,
Navarro's first husband, Gary LaMusga, has been languishing in the California
Supreme Court since September 2002. No court has prohibited the family from
moving with the two boys to Arizona, but no court has been willing to modify
the father's visitation schedule to accommodate the move. And the issue to be
decided? It is whether the family may move -- not to Arizona -- but to Ohio.

Two years ago, Navarro's husband had a job offer there. That job is long gone.
It was Suzy Navarro's second request to move to Ohio. Once before, she had
asked the court to permit her to move with her sons back to the state in which
she grew up and has family in order to go to law school, a life-long dream.
That dream was thwarted when her first request to move was denied. The case now
pending in the California court system is her second request, made five years
later. But while the California Supreme Court ponders its decision, there is no
more job for Todd Navarro or future awaiting for the family in Ohio. After
moving alone, without his family and infant daughter, and waiting nearly a year
for them, Navarro's husband moved back to California in late 2002, to take a
job at half the pay.

Recently, Todd Navarro got another much-needed job offer in Arizona. Once again
Suzy Navarro tried to get the assistance of California courts to modify her
boys' visitation schedule with Gary LaMusga. But this time Navarro was told by
Superior Court Judge Kennedy on June 16, 2003, that because the Supreme Court
is hearing the matter of her prior request, now moot, that he was without
jurisdiction to rule on this one.

Also pending in the court system is the request the children's mother made in
February 2001 to increase the below-guidelines child support originally
established in 1996 when Suzy and Gary LaMusga were divorced. A trial date on
this issue only recently has been set for January 2004.

During the seven-year-long forced march through an expensive legal nightmare,
Suzy Navarro, her husband, her sons and their baby half-sister have endured
repeated litigation expenses and intrusions into their family and homelife.
Court-ordered custody evaluations, mediation under the auspices of the court's
family conciliation services, occupational evaluations and psychological
counseling continually have disrupted the family's schedule, as well as the
children's schooling. But they have not been able to improve the problem that
caused the courts to deny Suzy Navarro's first request to move five years ago:
her sons' father's tenuous, detached relationship with his children.

Meals, bedtimes, education and study habits, after-school play, and issues of
personal hygiene and moral conduct all have been sacrificed to accommodate
court orders made to appease LaMusga, whose claims have succeeded in holding
the lives and futures of five other people twisting at the mercy of the system.
While the "wheels of justice" grind, Suzy Navarro's dream of becoming a lawyer
has been frustrated, her husband's career has been jeopardized, her family's
finances have been devastated, her children's lives have been destablized…
and the lives of all of them have been poked, prodded, harangued, analyzed, and
meddled with.

And so last week Suzy Navarro and her family just picked up and moved.

Background

Suzy and Gary LaMusga, a well-to-do businessman, divorced in 1996. At that
time, the California family court awarded sole physical custody of Garrett,
then 4, and Devlen LaMusga, then 2, to their mother, who had been their primary
caregiver since their births.

Suzy Poston, the youngest of eight children, had grown up in Ohio, and had
moved to California to join her husband when they married in 1988. The marriage
lasted seven years. A finance major in college, she had dropped out of graduate
school in 1982 for lack of funds. She got a job as a flight attendant, then
rapidly was promoted into management. As she gained success, Suzy saved her
money and held onto her goal of becoming a lawyer, perhaps specializing in
business or aviation. But marriage to LaMusga meant a move to a new state, the
cessation of her blossoming career with the airlines, and a lifestyle as
homemaker and stepmother to LaMusga's troubled teenage daughter from his first
marriage. In a few years there was a baby, and then another one.

After her divorce, Suzy Poston LaMusga was ready to try again. She asked the
court to permit her to move with her children to Cleveland, Ohio, where she had
been accepted at Case Western Reserve Law School. Her brother-in-law taught
there, and close relatives lived nearby, including first cousins her children's
age.

But the California court said "no." The boys were too young. Gary LaMusga
needed more time to develop a relationship with them.

So Suzy stayed. And cooperated. And did everything the courts and therapists
told her to do. Over the next few years, LaMusga's relationship with the boys
did not improve, despite therapy, despite efforts by all parties. The parents
had difficulty getting along, and disagreed about LaMusga's sometimes harsh
parenting practices. In 1998, Suzy met Todd Navarro and remarried. The next
year they had a baby daughter. A year after that, in December 2000, Suzy
Navarro again asked the California courts if she could move. The growing family
needed money. Todd Navarro had been offered a position in Ohio that nearly
doubled his salary. Suzy Navarro had started thinking about the possibilities
back home, the lower cost of living, the help of extended family that she did
not have in California, of ending the ongoing conflicts with Gary LaMusga, and
of maybe finally going back to law school. In order to not lose the position,
Todd Navarro moved to Ohio ahead of his family and they waited for California
courts.

But in August 2001 Superior Court Judge Terence Bruiniers again said "no."
LaMusga still had a "tenuous and somewhat detached relationship" with his sons,
which had not improved in the nearly five years since the LaMusgas' divorce.

The court reasoned that a move of more than 2,000 miles would interfere with
relationship therapy between LaMusga and his sons. He told the boys' mother
that if she moved to Ohio, the children would be removed from her custody and
sent to live with their father, notwithstanding the difficult relationship that
he (and his now-third wife) had with them, and notwithstanding that this would
separate them from their primary caregiver and sister.

The Navarros appealed. Six months later, however, after enduring the strain of
living apart from his family for nearly a year, Todd Navarro resigned his new
job, and returned to California, taking a job at half the pay. Three months
later, in May 2002, the Court of Appeal for the First Appellate District in San
Francisco reversed the trial court's decision. But it was too little, too late.
Gary LaMusga appealed the decision to the California Supreme Court, where
fifteen months later, the case still is pending.

LaMusga v. LaMusga is being hailed as a revisitation of the landmark 1996
California Supreme Court case of In re Marriage of Burgess . In that year, the
same one in which the LaMusgas divorced, the Court held that a custodial parent
has a presumptive right to relocate with his or her children.

---

In connection with this case, the findings of a new study by fathers' rights
icon Sanford Braver released by the APA on June 25, 2003
(see http://www.thelizlibrary.org/liz/bra...llerstein.html),
are being touted as showing that children suffer detriment from post-divorce
relocations, but controversy exists regarding what that study actually shows.
Statements made by Ira Ellman issued in connection with the press release by
Arizona State University, as well as his class syllabus on law and public
policy, indicate that the Braver study (which he co-authored), as well as an
article published in June 2003 by Joan Kelly and Michael Lamb actually were
conceived and carried out for the intended purposes of moving public policy and
changing California law. The writeup of the actual findings of the study
"Relocation of Children After Divorce and Children's Best Interests" and the
APA press release misrepresented those findings and ignored the rather
controversial and surprising correlations the study actually did make.
See http://www.thelizlibrary.org/liz/braver.html


OTHER RELATED LINKS:

Dr. Judith Wallerstein's comments on Braver's findings.
http://www.thelizlibrary.org/~liz/li...llerstein.html
Also He
http://users.adelphia.net/~enitria/t...s/june_2003.ht
ml#000278

Sanford Braver and Moveaways:
Relocations of Children Post-Divorce
http://www.expositorymagazine.net/sanford_braver.php
Also He
http://users.adelphia.net/~enitria/t...s/june_2003.ht
ml#000277
And He
http://members.aol.com/asherah/braver.html

Post-Divorce Move-aways.
http://www.thelizlibrary.org/~liz/liz/braver.html
Braver's actual findings. By liz (The Liz Library).

LaMusga v. LaMusga, by liz.
http://www.thelizlibrary.org/lamusga/
Index of information

"Doctor" Laura's 1996 Burgess Decision Rant
http://users.adelphia.net/~enitria/t...s/june_2003.ht
ml#000283
Includes her mother-bashing and the horrible advice
she gave men about marriage.

Robert Bauserman on Joint v. Sole Custody, by Trish Wilson.
http://members.aol.com/asherah/joint...bauserman.html
Why is a co-author of the infamous Rind Stody -- which sought
to label "willing" sexual relations between adolescents and adults
"adult/child sex" -- so interested in joint custody?

Liz Critiques Robert Bauserman's Joint Custody Meta-Analysis.
http://www.thelizlibrary.org/~liz/li...y_studies.html
Rind Study co-author does another.

More on Joint Custody by Paul Amato.
http://members.aol.com/asherah/joint_custody_amato.html
He DOES NOT support joint custody over sole custody.

Parental Dissatisfaction with Joint Custody.
http://members.aol.com/asherah/joint_custody.html
From "The Impact of the Custody Plan on the Family: A Five-Year
Follow-Up".

The Truth About Joint Custody, by Trish Wilson.
http://members.aol.com/asherah/jointcustody.html
Don't call it "Shared Parenting."

Joint Custody Is Not In The Best Interests Of Children, by Trish Wilson
http://members.aol.com/asherah/jc.html

Comments by Trish Wilson -- Testimony on SB 571
http://members.aol.com/asherah/sb571.html
Rebuttable Presumption for Joint Legal Custody
Family Law and Fathers' Rights Antics in Maryland.

Myths and Facts about "Fatherlessness," by Trish Wilson.
http://members.aol.com/asherah/fatherlessness2.html
"Fatherless" homes [read: single/divorced mother homes]
DO NOT cause poor-child outcomes.

Deconstructing the Essential Father, by Trish Wilson.
http://www.xyonline.net/deconfatherhood.shtml
A critique of the American Psychologist article. Addressing
misrepresentations and propaganda about "responsible
fatherhood" disseminated by David Blankenhorn, David
Popenoe, and Wade Horn.

Friendly Parent Provisions, What's Wrong With Them, by Trish Wilson
http://members.aol.com/asherah/frien...provision.html

Margaret K. Dore, P.S. on "friendly parent" provisions.
http://www.margaretdore.com/"

Debunking the Claims About Joint vs. Sole Custody, liz.
http://www.thelizlibrary.org/~liz/li...y-studies.html

Myths and Facts about Fatherhood:
What the Research REALLY Says, liz.
http://www.thelizlibrary.org/~liz/liz/017.htm

What the Experts Say: A Review of the Scholarly Research on
Post-Divorce Parenting and Child Well-being.
http://www.courts.wa.gov/newsinfo/ne...?fa=newsinfo_r
eports.display&folder=parent&file=chap4#A15" TARGET="_blank

The District of Columbia's Joint Custody Presumption: Misplaced Blame and
Simplistic Solutions, by Margaret Martin Barry
http://www.law.edu/faculty/barry/Art...PT5/BARRY5.htm
Scholarly article by law professor discusses what's wrong
with a statute providing for a presumption of joint custody.

When Paradigms Collide: Protecting Battered Parents and Their Children in the
Family Court System, by Clare Dalton, 37 Fam. & Conciliation Courts Rev. 273
(1999)
http://www.thelizlibrary.org/~liz/liz/dalton.html

Attachment 101 for Attorneys: Implications for Infant Placement Decisions, by
Eleanor Willemsen and Kristen Marcel
http://www.scu.edu/SCU/Centers/Ethic...review/attachm
ent101.html

Custody and Access: An NAWL Brief to the Special Joint Committee on Child
Custody and Access, March 1998 (Canada)
http://www.harbour.sfu.ca/freda/reports/custody.htm

The Case Against Joint Custody (Ontario Women's Justice Network)
http://www.owjn.org/custody/nawl.htm

Joint Custody: Implications for Women, by Renee Leff
http://www.nocourtdivorce.com/articl...s_custody.html

Understanding the Batterer in Visitation and Custody Disputes, by R. Lundy
Bancroft.
http://www.thelizlibrary.org/liz/und...in-visitation-
and-custody-disputes.pdf
Why abuse may be reported for the first time at the time of a
separation or divorce;
critique of Janet Johnston's categories of batterer; more.

Spousal Violence in Custody and Access Disputes, Recommendations for Reform,
Nicholas M.C. Bala et al.
http://www.swc-cfc.gc.ca/pubs/spousa...ence_e.html%20
Scholarly article by Status of Women Canada Policy Research
Fund (1998)

The Abuse of Custody, an interview with attorney Ruth Lea Taylor
http://www.bcifv.org/resources/newsl...uthtaylor.html

Custody Order or Disordered Custody? by Joan Braun
http://www.bcifv.org/resources/newsl...r/custody.html
Law student article with research cites published in
BC Institute Against Family Violence Newsletter

The Psychological Effects of Relocation for Children of Divorce, by Marion
Gindes, Ph.D.
http://www.aaml.org/Journal/15-1/mat105.pdf"
AAML Journal, Vol. 15 (1998), pp. 119

What the Father's Rights movement really looks like, liz
http://www.thelizlibrary.org/~liz/fathers/

What the "Responsible Fatherhood" movement really is about, liz
http://www.thelizlibrary.org/~liz/liz/014.htm

Parental Alienation Syndrome and Parental Alienation:
GETTING IT WRONG IN CHILD CUSTODY CASES
By Carol Bruch
http://www.thelizlibrary.org/~liz/liz/bruch.pdf


*****
"Trish Wilson's The Women's Network"
http://members.aol.com/asherah

Trish's Blog
http://users.adelphia.net/~enitria/trish_wilson/blog/

Expository Magazine
http://www.expositorymagazine.net
*****