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Comment by freedomben | Hacker News Reader

Yes I won't mention any details out of respect for privacy, but two former friends/co-workers, one person I was in the military with 15 years ago, as well as one family member.

It's obviously not only lock downs that have caused this, but they certainly added to it. My close friend had his marriage explode and turn horribly nasty. She took the kids and he ended up alone in a studio apartment for months, and then killed himself. His marriage was obviously not great before but they were making it work. Being stuck in the house together all the time was too much.

I'm guessing data on suicides due to lockdowns is as problematic as deaths due to covid because these are typically complex equations, but it would be interesting to see a study. In my small non-representative case study, suicides are up >200% from average. It's normally 1 every other year or so, except 2018 when there were 2 :'(

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at the risk of sounding inconsiderate(your friends should have been able of receiving proper care) the lockdowns have imposed a mental toll on everyone, in my opinion amplified by societies taboo in mental care.

I just hope everyone else is capable of finding comfort or finding a group which gives comfort to each other.

You succeeded in sounding inconsiderate. What an awful judgement call to make on someone else's circumstances

She can't legaly take kids away from him, he has right to demand 50% custody. In cases where she allege violence, it can be pretty difficult to make courts believe that and approve zero contact.

>She can't legaly take kids away from him, he has right to demand 50% custody

Depends on the state, and not every state is as progressive as one might expect.

Progressive ideology is literally the opposite of what you suggest here.

In which states exactly can't both parents demand custody rights?

Here in Washington state, I assure you while you might be able to demand, there are still rules on the books that make a 50/50 split not automatic. Especially if you happen to live in the eastern, more conservative part of the state, the judges here are more sympathetic to "traditional" family values and so are still very much aware of those guidelines. I am not a lawyer, consult a lawyer, but having been through this myself within the past few years, I know very much that even something that should be as obvious as a 50/50 split is not obvious in the eyes of the law.

Or said another way - even if he has the legal right, that doesn't mean he necessarily has the budget to fight it. Unfortunately, I found that Might Makes Right is a real thing in family law.

This same general conversation came up here on HN about a year ago - I recall vividly several posters from other states in the east / south US who made the same observations I did, IE: that their states had similar laws on the books still giving favor to a "traditional" child care giver, IE: a female.

We passed laws pertaining to homosexual marriage a while ago here in WA and had "domestic partnership" laws before that. I have asked many lawyers since then how the courts would view a divorce situation between two men or two women as in light of these laws that continue to give favor to a "mom". I've yet to get a straight answer, yet somehow the courts are presumably processing divorces for marriages of all types.

Courts almost never side with the male parent.

That is literally not true. In cases where male parent files for custody, he is very likely to get it. As in, in those cases there is slight statistic bias toward male (it is slight but still exist).

"One of every six custodial parents (17.5 percent) were fathers." [1]

That means five of every six are mothers (83.3 percent)

Seems bias to me.

[1] https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...

I wish what you are saying is true but from my experience and experiences of others this is not the case.

The state almost always awards primary custody to the wife/mother. There's a deep bias for mothers to raise children in the legal system.

Even great father's are looked at as deadbeats in these systems. It's one area I hope the law progesses in in the future.

Not to be insensitive, but I wonder if you are drawn to suicidal people or something? I have a fairly large social network and literally no one has committed suicide in it as far as I know(or even died for that matter). I know of two people who have attempted it, and I'm sure more have attempted or even just had suicidal thoughts, but no one has actually done it.

What a shitty thing to say.

Why? There's nothing wrong with being drawn to people with certain dispositions. And I'm not proud (or whatever) of not having anyone in my social circle who has committed suicide. Just like I wouldn't be proud if none of my friends had Parkinsons.

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