Love on a Dairy Farm

           The couple met a young man at a church function and they became friends. Close friends. So close, in fact, that their friendship grew to the point that they spent evenings together at the couple's home, talking about their lives and past history. Particularly about their past sexual experiences. Eventually, the relationship grew into three-way sexual encounters.

            At some point, Wife decided that Friend was preferable to Husband and decided she wanted to terminate her marriage. The point of contention when the case showed up in my courtroom was custody of Husband and Wife's three-year-old daughter.

            Husband's argument for granting him sole custody of the child was based upon the fact that Wife had moved in with Friend. During the trio's discussions of their previous sexual histories, Friend had revealed that, as an adolescent growing up on a dairy farm in northern Ohio, he had a sexual relationship with a heifer. (For those of you without knowledge of bovine facts, a heifer is a young cow before she has had her first calf.)

            This youthful indiscretion on the part of Friend, Husband argued, demonstrated that he was not fit to be around a young child. This was the sum total of his claim that the child's best interest would be served by naming him as the sole residential parent and legal custodian, and that it was necessary to limit Wife's visitation to times when Friend was not around. Since Wife had professed her intention to marry Friend upon the granting of her divorce from Husband, the situation would be very complicated.

            The balance of the evidence clearly demonstrated, however, that Wife had much greater involvement in the care and nurturing of the child, and, in fact, that Husband was quite remote, had never been to the child's medical appointments, and that he couldn't even tell me the name of the woman who provided in-home child care for the daughter.

            After I ruled from the bench that I would designate Wife as the custodian for the child, the parties and their lawyers left the courtroom. My bailiff, the irrepressible Harriet, followed me to my office and declared: "Well, I guess you could call that case mooooo-t!"