I am in the middle of changing the custody of my teen son. He's struggled with moving to UT, the divorce, his TBM controlling mom and has wanted to live with me for a while. We went to court and after a long struggle, I finally obtained guardianship and he'll be moving in with me soon. I live in another state from him.

However, one of the issues is that he skipped enough school that he had to report to truancy court. Over the past year, the truancy court has stopped him from coming out to visit for winter holiday (I had bought a plane tix and they would never let him leave the state of UT). The delayed him last summer by several weeks from me exercising parenting time here. All of this because they felt they needed to punish him for his school record. My ex and I have joint custody, even though she is the primary residential custodial parent, and we have equal decision making authority.

Now that I have guardianship, the UT truancy is still impeding him from coming to live with me to enroll in school until the judge rules on allowing him to leave. That hearing was just delayed because his mother requested a change in schedule to let her have vacation time with the kids. Without consulting me, they allowed the change. That delay will likely affect his ability to enroll in summer school here and get caught up on credits.

This is my frustration: The UT Court blocks me from exercising parenting time all together as a way to punish him, but they have no problem giving the mother leniency for her vacation.

How is this fair?

aren't local and she is.

I'm curious. If you went there and just hauled him out of state, would they come after him?

You could always say you are home schooling - then the issue becomes moot.

Unfortunately, your situation is nothing new to fathers who have minor age children living in Utah. My personal experience with this is that yes, without doubt Utah courts are biased against fathers. Both my wife and I lived in Utah at the time of our divorce and we both signed documents requesting "joint physical" custody of our children. We both lived in the same town etc. What we requested was not an exception to the law it was one of the choices under Utah Law and we both agreed to it. The judge in our case literally through out our Joint Physical custody request and said he was giving Physical custody to their mom with us sharing "joint legal" custody. When we said we were not asking for that and that we were in agreement for the other he simply told us he did not care what we wanted and that he did not think joint physical custody should ever be allowed and that children are best off with their mothers. My wife and I were both blown away by this. Afterwards, our lawyer just told us that this is the way it was and we could fight all we wanted but the judge would not change his mind. Basically in Utah if you are a father and love your kids you will be penalized in a divorce. All fathers are treated as dead beat dads even if your ex says your not. Welcome to the Utah Court system. I feel your pain and wish the best of luck with your situation.

relationship with him solid and have him on the first plane when he turns 18. If you can't show substantial change in circumstances you'll have are hard time getting custody changed regardless of any perceived bias on the part of Utah judges

See how that goes for you...especially when the judge in charge of your case is a Stake President with one of the most Mormon last names imaginable. I was so nice throughout the entire divorce process - I never once contacted an attorney, I gave her everything and more, and I even agreed to pay her way more in child support than the state requires, but...that is not enough for this guy. He doesn't give a tinker's damn that I am killing myself with work or that I sleep less than 20 hours per week. It's pretty obvious that he would love to destroy my life. Anyway, I don't want to get into it too deeply right now, but suffice it to say that if my ex-wife's attorney and the judge ever showed up on my doorstep... Well, you all get the picture.

All the courts in the USA are biased against men. If you are a man, you are automatically assumed to be an abuser, a criminal, etc.

I am grateful not to have married and I am never going to have kids. I already have more money than any of my married friends, and I get more sex too lol.

Google MGTOW for more information. Good luck with your son. He'll be grown some day and maybe you can undo the damage, but it's not one judge's fault. It's the whole system.

Put the responsibility where it belongs.

Violating the law, especially when already involved in legal wrangling, tends to produce very poor results. The way to not be involved in truancy court is to attend school. This is not rocket science.

Thanks all for commiserating with me. I'm not happy that there are several examples of father-bias out there, but at least I'm not alone.

Wendell, I can't begin to fathom what it is like for you in your situation in a back-waters state. I'm ashamed to say that as a tbm, I would have shared the prejudice against gay parents. I clearly don't now.

Bro of Jerry, no it isn't rocket science. It's far more complicated--it's human psychology. I wish it were rocket science to fix the problems--a few equations are far easier than the complexities of divorce, depression, multi-state relationships and all the other baggage of being a parent.

The problem I see is the truancy court is too busy to really understand and apply a one-size-fits-all bandage to all booboos. I can appreciate that they can't make the time on limited budgets and schedules to delve into each case. What I can't understand is why they apply different rules for her than they have for me. Actually, I do understand given the truant officer, chief truant probation officer, judge and her administrator are all women. They ban together and feel a man with differing opinion is just a trouble maker.