Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Jury Rules Against Dad Trying To Save His Son.

Here is a procedural history of the case if anyone is actually interested in what actually happened:

1). They were never married. Yeah, you heard that right. Their marriage was annulled by petition of the mother. I can’t even begin to tell you how rare annulments are in Texas. I can’t even think of one I’ve ever actually seen. What that means is that by a finding of the court, the father is a liar. It means that he lied about certain material facts that induced the he woman to marry him;

2). They had two children during the “marriage”. They were awarded joint managing conservatorship. That is true joint legal custody. That generally means exactly equal rights and responsibilities in all respects. The only difference is that the child will generally, but not always, live with one parent or the other. And the other parent will receive standard visitation. The parent who has the child live with him will have the exclusive right to “choose the geographic location of the child.” It’s been said that the mother was granted the right control to exclusively control the child’s medical treatment in the first Decree of Annulment. I doubt that based on how I just explained JMC works, but even it was the language I’ve seen people quote in refenrence to this story was “after notice”. Why is that important? Because if moma says “Hey, I’m gonna have Johnny’s dick cut off” dad can rush out and get a court order stopping it

3) At some point moma decided her boy was a girl and disagreements arose. Eventually mom filed a motion seeking to make dad treat the kid as a girl or restrict his visitation if he didn’t. She didn’t try to change from joint managing conservatorship to sole and specifically she didn’t seek to gain the unilateral right give the he child hormone therapy or surgery. In fact, she did the exact opposite and asked the court to enter an order that such measures could only be undertaken by express written agreement of the parents;

4) Dad naturally objected to being asked to call his boy a girl and filed an Answer and a Counterpetition. In his counterpetition he alleged that mother’s actions constituted child abuse and asked to be named sole managing conservator. He also asked for a jury trial. Most child custody cases are tried to a judge and the mother had not requested a jury trial.

5). So when they eventually had the jury trial, the jury heard the case and gave mom sole managing conservatorship. Remember, she hadn’t even asked for that in her pleadings. It’s like a prosecutor asking for five years and a jury giving the defendant 50. The jury was not asked to rule on any of the other issues regarding custody and those were left to the judge.

6). The next day, when the judge came back, she ruled that the jury had exceeded its authority and granted something not asked for by the parties and that the jury’s finding was contrary to Texas law as it fit the facts. She kept JMC, granted mom’s motion to make all hormonal and surgeries require written consent of both parties, noted that despite the hysteria, there was never any danger of that happening, she denied mom’s motion to have dad refer to the kid as a “she”, ordered the parents and the child into counseling, admonished them to shut up and grow up, and gave them a gag order on the case. She noted that regardless of what else happens to this kid, the publicity has been and will continue to be for many years, very harmful to him.

That’s it. From what I can tell that is a pretty concise procedural history of the case.