NO KIDDING!
The coronavirus is turning custody battles into wars. Here, NYC parents reveal how their exes are using the crisis to play keep-away with their children
ON March 20, Laura, a 50-yearold mom of four from Manhattan, fled the city to join her ex-husband and kids at their Long Island summer home. The rest of the family had settled into the main house a week before, so Laura was sent to the guesthouse to self-quarantine — a sensible measure at the time.
But it’s been 48 days now, and Laura’s ex still won’t let her have physical contact with their children.
“He is using this as a means to punish me,” Laura, whose name has been changed for fear of retribution, tells The Post. She believes that her ex of 25 years, with whom she’s typically estranged, has brainwashed their kids against her.
Recently, she ventured into the main house to drop off mail, and “My 18-year-old started screaming ‘Get out! Get out!’ and started running at me spraying Lysol and [holding] wipes,” says Laura, whose youngest is 10 and whose oldest is 22. “I go to the market to get food, and each time I drive out of the driveway to go hiking in the trails or go walking on the beach, [my exhusband] says, ‘Nope, got to start
over’ ” with the two-week quarantine.
Even the family’s dogs have been dragged into the battle, Laura says: Any time one of them ventures over to the guest house, her ex washes them throughly before they’re allowed back inside the main pad.
Across the city, the coronavirus crisis has introduced and heightened chaos over child-custody issues. Some parents, like Laura’s ex-husband, are using the contagion as an excuse to box out their coparents. Others are using the shift to flout specific requirements in their custody agreements. And with no legal recourse for weeks, frustrated parents haven’t been able to fight back.
‘It’s the Wild West’
On March 26, New York’s courts went virtual amid the pandemic and announced they were only hearing emergency cases. For most divorcing parents, this meant losing the judges they relied on to mediate their battles — along with any semblance of civility.
“There’s always a lot of anxiety and uncertainty when you’re getting divorced, but the fallback was you could go to court,’’ says high-powered family law attorney David Mejias. “Now, you have anxiety and uncertainty, and you can’t even go to court on most of the issues that divorcing couples have.”
Laura’s lawyer, Nancy Chemtob, agrees.
“When an adversary calls and says, ‘We are not going to deliver the kids,’ there is no recourse,” she says.
“Custody is like the wild west’’ right now,” says Susan Moss, Chemtob’s law partner. “With the courts being [partially closed], there is no sheriff in town
. . . Each parent thinks they’ve been deputized to make their own rules.”
Courts didn’t go entirely dark: A small fraction of hearings deemed emergent were allowed to proceed, although through a virtual system. Those urgent cases included issues such as child neglect and domestic abuse.
But a parent violating a temporary custody agreement by doing something like failing to drop off the kids on time? That wouldn’t be considered an essential proceeding, so the other side couldn’t file a motion asking the judges for help resolving an issue, “It’s all a game with no repercussions right now . . . I don’t know when I’m going to see my daughter again.” — NYC dad Adam, 45, on his custody battle with his ex according to NY state courts spokesman Lucian Chalfen.
‘She's taking advantage of the situation’
Before the coronavirus crisis, local dad Adam, 45, saw his 12-year-old daughter three to four times a week. Now it’s been two months since their last visit, according to his lawyer, Michael Stutman.
“The problem that we have here is the virus is making this too easy for [the ex]” to violate the agreement, says Adam, whose name has been changed to protect his privacy. “[Sbe’s] taking advantage’’ of the situation.
He says his ex fled with their daughter to New Jersey to ride out the coronavirus storm with her family — at first, with his blessing.
“I let her mother take [the child] out of the city not knowing how bad it would be,’’ he says. Then, “before you know it, they shut the schools. Now, I’m kicking myself saying, ‘You just made this worse by doing that.’ But it was the best thing for my daughter.”
Things might have turned out fine if his ex hadn’t then decided that Adam could only take brief walks with his daughter during visits — after the hour-plus trip each way it would take to see her.
During a recent online therapy session, even the family’s counselor recommended that dad and daughter spend time together in-person, Adam says. So he offered to pick up his daughter April 10 and take her back to New
York for the weekend.
His ex nixed that notion — then “sends an e-mail saying there will be no more therapy sessions via video,” Adam says. Never mind that doing so would violate a previous court order saying that no more than three counseling meetings can be missed.
With help from his lawyers, Adam forced his ex to resume virtual family therapy. But it came at a cost, financially and emotionally.
“It’s all a game with no repercussions right now legally,” Adam says. “I don’t know when I’m going to see my daughter again, and I don’t know if [the ex] is going to let me make up my [lost] parenting days.”
‘I want them to see Dad — when it’s safe’
Then, there’s the other side of the issue.
Balkys Sicard’s ex is an NYPD officer who was working in lower Manhattan in March. When he asked her to see their two young boys over spring break, “I didn’t know what to do,’’ says Sicard, who lives in Boston and is in her 40s. “I have a detailed parenting agreement, and it never called for a pandemic.
“I don’t want to stop the father of my children from seeing our children. [But] I explained to him that . . . he is a first responder and that he hasn’t been quarantined. And I didn’t believe it was safe and in the best interest of our children.”
Her ex eventually landed an emergency hearing before a Bronx Supreme Court judge, but the ruling went in Sicard’s favor: He was only granted video visits with their kids for now.
“I don’t know when I will be able to see [my kids] again. There were no specific conditions given for when my parenting time would be reinstated,” says the despondent dad, who asked not to be named, in an e-mail to The Post.
Even Sicard’s lawyer, Julie Hyman, says she has sympathy for him.
“This is one of those situations that the people who are here to protect us, firstresponders, they are the ones that are also being punished,” Hyman says.
‘I don’t know what to tell my daughter’
There is some light at the end of the tunnel. On Monday, New York State Chief Judge Janet DiFiore announced that the courts will begin accepting new motions and applications
in ongoing cases and that conferences will resume in matrimonial and family cases, all virtually.
Still, while the partial re-opening should begin to give parents the recourse they need to start resolving custody issues, the crisis over the contagion will continue to affect scores of other mothers and fathers.
Gilbert Serrano is a hospital worker at NewYork-Presbyterian toiling in the heart of a COVID-19 floor as a unit assistant. He didn’t think it was safe for him to be around his daughter Josephine, 6 — so he told his estranged wife that she could have sole custody for the time being.
Only now he’s concerned the decision will come back to haunt him.
“I says, ‘I got to make a decision for the best interest of my family.’ I had to make a decision and tell [my daughter] that Daddy has to do what is best for her, me and my patients,’’ Serrano, 55, tells The Post.
He says he told her, ‘Daddy’s going to be away, and I’m not going to be able to see you.’
“This is the longest I’ve been away from my daughter and I don’t know what to tell her. I can’t tell her this is going to be over next week,’’ he says.
A lawyer for Serrano’s ex noted to The Post that it was the dad’s decision to not see his daughter during the crisis — and that he “is free to call whenever he likes.”
But Serrano says that his estranged wife has previously tried to file for full custody — and he’s concerned his decision, however responsible, could eventually be used against him.
“Will I lose my custody because I’m not there for my child?” Serrano says. “[The ex] could try to say that I’m not doing my part as a father because I gave her my child to hold on to until this thing finishes.
“I could be a selfish parent and take care of my kid,’’ he says. “But I don’t want to take that chance.
“You try to focus on saving lives, and you have to worry about this, too.”