Re: Visitation rights

From: donald_at_...
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 13:25:40 GMT


In message <200412282307.18782.geard_at_...> Jennifer Geard writes:
>
>Hi All,
>
>I'm rounding out the story of a new follower, and now have questions about
>Heortling visitation rights for non-custodial parents.
>
>Ashgora and her husband have divorced. Ashgora has returned to her birth clan,
>leaving behind three small children.
>
>All things going normally, will Ashgora get to see her children again, and in
>what circumstances? Taking the kids to a holy day ritual? Fostering them when
>they're older?
>
>Looking ahead, would Ashgora normally have a say in choices about the
>children's education, veto about who they can be fostered with, involvement
>with their initiation (especially of daughters), and input into their
>marriages?
>
>Is it possible that Ashgora will be expected to shut the door on that chapter
>of her life and not see her children again? There's a complicating factor in
>that her kin have resettled in Dragon Pass, while her ex-husband's kin are
>probably still in Heortland.

Just work out the distances involved and how long they take to travel on foot. And who's going to travel with her?

I think this is one of the reasons the resettlement was such a big deal, it sundered family relationships.

In the more normal situation clanspeople marry into neighbouring clans so quite a bit of contact is likely unless the divorced wife has fallen out with the women of the clan she married into. Even then there are ways and means.

>(How on earth did Heortlings become patrilineal?

Orlanth made a great fuss about them being *his* children although I'm not convinced they all are.

>And how did Ernaldans let it happen?)

Ernalda is an example of a successful wife, part of that is she doesn't get divorced. She gives her followers quite a bit of magic for manipulating husbands so a Heortling woman who does get divorced is seen as a failure by the other women of both her birth clan and the one she married into. Remember the laws on custody and divorce aren't absolute - there will be cases where women remain in the clan they married into or take the children with them when they return to their birth clans. Whatever the people involved agree to and I think it's the relationship between the woman and the other clan women that's more significant in the matter than the one with her ex-husband.

One of the things I've noticed about women is that generally they are a lot less forgiving of other women breaking unwritten social rules than they are of men. Or than men are of either men or women who break the rules.

-- 
Donald Oddy
http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/

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