Custody Disputes and the Proposed Model Act

Authors

• Carroll Leavell, Member of New York and Georgia Bars

Publication Date

1968

Abstract

In the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain describes the situation of Huck who had recently come into money, when his "drunken vagrant" father came home to claim his "rights"; Roscoe Pound used this satire to remark upon "the extent to which the older law neglected the individual interests of children... ." That this neglect continues is evident to even the most casual reader of custody cases.

Recent publicity given an Iowa case, Painter v. Bannister, has focused the attention of the public on the troubled area of custody law. A storm of protest was aroused when an Iowa judge gave custody of a child to its grandfather with whom the child had been living, rather than to the father. Judicial comments in this case about the father's occupation, freelance photography, and the relative merits of a rural church- oriented up-bringing versus a "more interesting Bohemian life" obscured the otherwise sound basis of decision-the psychological report which indicated that the child had established a sound "father" relationship with the grandfather, that his previous relation with his father was unclear, and that disruption of the stable relationship with his grandfather might result in emotional damage to the child.

Recommended Citation

Leavell, Carroll (1968) "Custody Disputes and the Proposed Model Act," Georgia Law Review: Vol. 2: No. 2, Article 3.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/glr/vol2/iss2/3