Battered Pregnant Woman Denied Divorce

[hyphenate]

Battered Pregnant Woman Denied Divorce
By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS
Associated Press Writer

SPOKANE, Wash. - When Shawnna Hughes discovered she was pregnant, her husband was in jail for beating her. She sought a divorce before his release, and he did not object - but a judge did. Superior Court Judge Paul Bastine revoked Hughes' divorce until after she gives birth because her husband was not told she was going to have a child and paternity had not been established.

"It is the policy of the state that you cannot dissolve a marriage when one of the parties is pregnant," he said during oral arguments on the case last month.

Hughes, a 27-year-old medical assistant, is 7 months pregnant and says her estranged husband, Carlos Hughes, is not the father. She has appealed the decision. "I'm devastated," she said, calling her husband "very, very violent."

Carlos Hughes is now jailed in Montana and Bastine noted that Shawnna Hughes has a restraining order that prevents her husband from contacting her, even if they remain married. But women's advocates worry the ruling sets an unsettling precedent.

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The rest of the article:

http://kevxml2a.verizon.net/_1_2PUDTO10GMWS8F_11737847_vzn.isp/apnws/story.htm?kcfg=apart&sin=D87GOBCO0&qcat=usnews&ran=30534&passqi=&feed=ap&top=1

[AlbizuX]

1. "when one of the parties is pregnant"

as if the women get an equal chance to hold their husbands accountable to this rule!

This is pure, anti-women, traditional values stuff.

I don't like this judge.

[Nikepallas]

2. I've seen this story a couple times here--no offense--it makes me sick

and want to bitch slap this judge or at the very least give him a piece of my mind-- I know I shouldn't do that I need the brain as is--or at the very least force that judge into that situation so he knows what that poor woman is going thru.


Hey that would be interesting:think: !!! Take some of these insensative SOB--politicians, Judges, President--you know who I'm thinking of and kind of Quantum Leap them into the lives they make suffer.

Oh well...

[Liberal Veteran]

3. Hey abusers! Keep your wife knocked up and she can't divorce you!

How fucking 19th century is this law?

[PowerToThePeople]

4. SHe picks the winners....

"Carlos Hughes is now jailed in Montana"

"She says she became romantically involved with a childhood friend, Chauncey Jacques, and that he is the father. Jacques is now in the Spokane County Jail awaiting trial on a federal drug charge."

This from my home town.. :-(

[ChairOne]

5. This is actually related to the other thread on paternal parentage tests..

... and in a way that speaks against the ones there who wanted to be on the mom's side...

As I understand it, one thing that the judge used in reaching his decision was the notion that there was a *presumption* that the kid was the jailed wifebeater's. Because of that presumption, the "father" has an interest in the child, and yadayadayada...

IIRC, the judge said that once the baby was born, the parentage could be verified, and then she could seek a divorce (or something similar to that).

Relevance to the other thread. This is a situation where the ability to have testing done soley on the word of ONE parent, either with or with the knowledge of the other, could conceivably be helpful to the mother.

Yet in the other thread, it was precisely the mother-supporters that were so trenchantly against un-mother-approved testing.

Moral (for me at least): Think long and hard about unintended consequences....

[liberalhistorian]

6. And why is it always the WOMAN who

has to "think long and hard about unintended consequences", why are men rarely held to the same level of accountability for their choices and decisions as women always are?

[put out]

7. Hey, here's an idea!

If a married man has sex with another woman, the woman becomes pregnant, and then he seeks divorce...

We could deny the divorce because the wife might be able to lay claim to his baby after the baby is born! Super, right?

Or, maybe not...seems kinda fair to me.

[ChairOne]

8. Hm. I think you and I are talking about different things... /eom

[GreenPartyVoter]

9. So true