Here’s an interesting story out of Cabell County, West Virginia. Apparently, the Cabell County court decided that a mother had to share custody of her three-year-old daughter with the girl’s babysitters:

The sitters intervened in Cabell County Family Court in March 2006, after the mother told the court she planned to move to Texas.

The sitters were distant cousins of the child’s father, who did not live with the mother and the child.

Family Court Judge Patricia Keller immediately awarded complete custody to the sitters.

According to the article, the sitters’ lawyer has not argued that the mother in this case is unfit, just that “his clients [meet] the standards as psychological co-parents”, whatever that means^[a].

I am not a lawyer, so I can’t argue whether the sitters are legally entitled to any custody rights based on “psychological” parentage. However, as a human being with some capacity for rational thought, I can’t believe that there is a standard in our society that allows anyone who shares a bond with a child to assume parental rights when the actual parents have neither a.) been found to be unfit or b.) willingly given up custody. It’s absurd. While Justice Maynard’s flippant “Chuck E. Cheese” remark may be a slight example of hyperbole, the fact remains that emotional bonds between the sitters and this child are not sufficient to give them custody of her.

1. As of this writing, the only six instances of the phrase “psychological co-parents” found by Google all pertain to this case. [↩]