> In a significant majority of cases where fathers
> contest custody, children go with the father.
I have a fair amount of familiarity with family law (not a lawyer though) and I have to say this is hard to fathom. To my knowledge fathers have to basically prove gross negligence or substance abuse or other criminal activity by the mother in order to stand a chance of winning physical custody. It is generally presumed that kids are better off with the mother and any father seeking custody needs to prove otherwise. Having better finances usually doesn't factor into the decision AFAIK -- if the father has better finances to support the child, he can do so with child support.
I was quoting from a book that I read 8 years and 2 moves ago. But the best that Google turned up is the very dated http://www.amptoons.com/blog/files/Massachusetts_Gender_Bias... that found that when fathers choose to contest custody, 70% of the time they win sole or joint custody.
I have found elsewhere a claim that usually this is joint, so women are still coming out better. This seems believable, but that claim was not sourced.
Several places I found the claim that women receive sole custody about 70% of the time, joint custody 20% and men get sole custody a bit under 10%. But also the majority of custody cases are not settled by a judge, so that proportion does not speak to what happens when a judge makes the choice.
So I should put a question mark next to the specific claim that men who contest, have a good chance of getting custody. Because I don't have good sources to back it up.
You could both be right. Perhaps fathers, being usually the better-off partner financially, often get lawyers when it comes to something as important as custody for their children. And perhaps those lawyers usually tell the father they have a snowball's chance in hell of getting custody unless they can prove the mother's unfit, and the father usually decides not to contest custody to save everyone's time and money, unless the mother actually is unfit and thus the father has a very good chance of winning.
Result: Usually the children go with the mother. But when custody is contested, it's often because the father has a strong case, and so fathers usually win contested cases.
I have a fair amount of familiarity with family law (not a lawyer though) and I have to say this is hard to fathom. To my knowledge fathers have to basically prove gross negligence or substance abuse or other criminal activity by the mother in order to stand a chance of winning physical custody. It is generally presumed that kids are better off with the mother and any father seeking custody needs to prove otherwise. Having better finances usually doesn't factor into the decision AFAIK -- if the father has better finances to support the child, he can do so with child support.