Are The Rhode Island Family Courts Biased Against Fathers?
Are the family courts slanted against fathers? The answer may not seem as simple as one may first think. Obviously, a divorce and the disassembly of the family unit has to, by necessity, result in the separation of living arrangements for children and their parents, as well as an increased financial strain on the parties and an acceptance of a lowering of the standard of living which the family unit had come to enjoy while it was still intact. It may strike many men as ironic that a culture such as ours, where women enjoy the many hard-won rights of equality and recognition as equals of their male counterparts, suddenly reverts back to the archaic position where woman are considered the only naturally qualified caregivers of children and therefore, entitled, merely by their gender, to have placement and primary care-giving rights to their children, trumping the rights of fathers. Many of these fathers, previous to the break-up of their families, took active roles in parenting and care-
