WSJ Explores Child Obesity in Parental Custody Context

Wall Street Journal reporters Ashby Jones and Shirley Wang consider in
“Obesity Fuels Custody Fights” how family courts have increasingly been
asked to determine whether nutrition or obesity should be controlling factors
in child-custody lawsuits. According to the article, the issue arises in several
guises: sometimes the child is obese; other times a junk food diet is at issue;
and in other cases, the parent who seeks custody alleges that the other parent
is too overweight to properly care for the child. Noting that in most states the
legal standard is the “best interest of the child,” the authors report that some
states have recently adopted as criteria the child’s physical and emotional
well-being. Family court practitioners reportedly suggest that the obesity
issue is typically part of a larger picture and would have to be extreme to
overcome rights to maintain close parent-child relationships and to raise a
child as the parent sees fit. See The Wall Street Journal, October 29, 2011.