The scourge of divorce

This is pretty depressing.

When an Ex Moves, Do the Kids Go, Too?
by Tovia Smith

Morning Edition, May 29, 2006 When they first divorced, Jim Mason and Betsy Shanley Coleman found it relatively easy to work out a way to share custody of their two young boys.

Both parents lived within 20 minutes of the boys' school in Chelmsford, Mass., outside of Boston, and the boys spent a good amount of time with each parent. After a while, it all became routine: The boys would trade off, sleeping one week at their father's place and the next week at their mother's.

But it wasn't long before things fell apart. Coleman remarried, had a new baby and announced that her new husband was moving and she needed to follow him. She asked a family court for permission to take the boys 100 miles north, but the judge denied her request. Coleman appealed, saying it was unconstitutional to keep her locked in the town where she had lived before the divorce.

"When did it become OK in the U.S. to say, 'You can't ever move?' " Coleman says.

But Coleman's former husband has questions of his own. He wants to know when it became OK to uproot two boys and move them so far from their father that he could no longer be involved in their daily lives.

"It would have turned me into a Disney Dad," he says, "just participating on weekends or vacations. That wasn't what I thought was going to be best for my boys."

I don't think I need to comment. This madness speaks for itself.