ByCarole Brennan
His Honour Judge Duggan has permitted a woman to change the surname of her three year old twins following the father’s behaviour in maintaining a blog on the Internet in which the Judge says he presented himself as a victim and published a medical report about one of the children and made derogatory comments about the mother.
The Judge gave the mother permission to change the children’s surname to protect the children from the consequences of the fatherseeking to find them and the consequences of him publishing detrimental information about them. The Judge commented – “the father’s publication material has been quite insidious”.
The normal desire or preservation of a paternal link through the preservation of surname gave way in this case to the protection of the children from the father’s publication of material about them.
He felt he could not allow a situation where the children at an older age looking at the computer, or their friends, chancing upon web based insults of the mother, medical descriptions of the children or anything else that the father wanted to publish about them.
Its important that when parents separate that they are very careful in using social media to talk about each other and the children as this is surely a very unintended consequence of the father’s behaviour.