The wisdom of Solomon

I can't be too specific about the tale I am about to tell, because there is pending litigation and the parties are actually following social media to harvest evidence. They won't likely find this post because of no names but still . . .

A young relative of mine broke up with his girlfriend and became engaged to another woman. Four months later girlfriend A showed up six months pregnant. There is a hypothesis popular within the family that she got pregnant accidentally on purpose in order to hold on to young relative, but that seems inconsistent with the delay. Anyway, whatever the truth of that it turns out young relative wants the baby, but not girlfriend A. Interestingly, the fiancee also wants the baby.

While they wait for the judge to rule on final arrangements, they're swapping the baby back and forth every week, with extra special complications for the holidays. And young relative and his fiancee are talking really nasty trash about how their case is the only right one. The acrimony is thick and sour.

Now, looking at this from pretty much the outside, I'm thinking that the people involved are not noticing that they are punching groins and gouging eyes over a baby. When the day comes that she starts to understand what's going on, if her parents are still hating on each other and trying to pull her apart like a wishbone that's probably not going to be best for her. But Solomon's trick of proposing to split the baby won't work here, because all involved believe unflinchingly that they are fighting for her sake, not for their own, and they don't seem to realize that they are on the path of yes, splitting the baby.

In the old days, custody would pretty much go to the mother with few questions asked. That may have been wrong 45% of the time or whatever. But at least we had an answer, over and done. In fact the biggest challenge was getting Dad to pay child support and show up for graduation. I'm glad that my young relative is committed to fatherhood and wants to accept much more than his basic responsibility in this situation. I have to call that progress. But I sure hope everybody accepts the outcome graciously in the end.