Judges typically award custody in the best interest of the child. Not the dad.

*This whole “you did not respond with perfect equanimity when your partner said you were an unfit parent and that she was going to try to deny you custody of your child is PROOF that you are an unfit parent” is just I think pretty unfair given the circumstances and what is a pretty shocking revelation

*Do I demand perfect equanimity? Was that what I was doing? Was that a fair statement to make?

I think yes, it is a reasonably fair characterization of your response, which was to call into question his fitness as a parent because he responded as he did. I think that if your partner tells you that they intend to stop you from having custody of your child, responding that you will use the legal means available to keep that from happening is an understandable response in the moment. Would it have been ideal if he instead patiently plumbed her reasoning for not wanting him to have custody of his daughter after her death? Yes. But this is what I mean by demanding an unfairly high level of equanimity.

I also, think that yes, saying that his statement that he would fight her attempts to give custody to her parents a “threat” is a “moral inversion” of what happened. She was the one who stated that she would pursue legal efforts through her will to keep him from having custody of his daughter. Calling his response that he would seek to keep custody a “threat”, is I think inverting what happened.

*Do I critique your advice and mock it?*

I feel yes, if you think that someone is being unfair to an LW, or giving them bad advice you would express your disagreement with them and explain why you think it is unfair, which I did in the immediately following paragraph.

*When my actually married to me husband says something totally bonkers, I don’t immediately bring up lawyers, court or the police for example*

They weren’t discussing what to have for dinner. She had stated (in a way he found credible) that she intended to try to give custody of their kid to her parents after her death through a legal instrument (her will). Saying that he’d seek legal help to stop that from happening is not some inappropriate escalation.

If my wife told me that she was going to have a will prepared to have our daughter given to her parents after her death and she seemed serious about it, I don’t know how I would respond, but I think that it’s likely I would be upset and that some part of discussion would involve me articulating that I would fight through the legal system to keep custody.

I have never mocked your statements on this site.

I have no idea why that is the only alternatives to the LW grossly lying by omission and being an awful prospective single dad. Not only is this not the only alternative (really it’s a classic strawman). It most certainly is not what I have suggested. There are other possible reasons which require neither insanity on the part of the fiancee or her parents or the LW not being good father material.

I think this was a match that fiancee’s parents never approved of, likely because of differences in religion/culture/ethnicity. The fiancee ignored parents’ objections, because she loves LW (I think she probably still does, but possibly not). I think she correctly assumed that with her present in relationship and as a married co-parent, that the daughter would be raised in both cultures. With her death imminent, her parents have convinced her that this won’t be the case and daughter will not learn fiancee’s culture/religion.

There is another aspect of fiancee’s imminent death. She was happy to marry outside her culture/religion meaning she likely wasn’t tightly enmeshed in them. If it’s religion, then her approaching mortality probably made her very susceptible to her parents’ urgings to return to her religious roots.

Here’s the most pernicious thing about organized religion: it is incredibly parochial, and many religions strongly teach that only those from their religion or subbranch of their religion will go to the great after-life. So if a mother wants to see her child or grandchild in ‘heaven’ she has to fight to have them belong to their religion/sect/cult.

[I experienced this with my paternal grandmother, who was a zealous adherent of the most severe side of a very small Protestant sect. She was relentless in pushing us to adopt her religious views and attend her church. It was done out of ‘love’ with the minister’s goading.]

The fiancee originally was eager to marry LW. Likely her parents/religious leader confirmed to her that this would make zero difference in their theology, unless LW converted to their religion and agreed daughter would be raised in that religion.

U.K. is more splintered socially on race/ethnicity/religion than the U.S. and way more tied to specific geography of origin. Older conservative parents might draw a distinction between suitors from England/Scotland/Wales/N. Ireland even if Christian, white, and a form of Protestant (Scots very different than C of E). That’s not to mention Blacks, Asians, Muslims, Hindus, Jews in England. England has even more prejudice (older generation at least) around these divisions than we do, although probably not as much as France.

I don’t believe one can, nor should be able to, ‘will’ a human being to one’s parents, when there is another active co-parent in the picture. LW needs to see a lawyer to stop that nonsense. He was right to be incensed by the proposition of ‘willing’ his daughter away from him.

I know there are reasons, but no evidence that any of them exist in this case. And in cases where the court does decide not to leave the child with a surviving spouse, it is not because the dead spouse ‘willed’ the child to another person. That is horrendous.

You made serious assumptions. I gave an alternative explanation. The LW doesn’t say shy fiancee changed position. He seems to truly not know. Perhaps he sees cultural differences as resolved long ago. I’m not willing to jump to your assumption that he’s a bad guy. If he was, why would LW have enthusiastically agreed to marry him after birth of child and after her initial medical prognosis? We have no way of knowing for sure. We shouldn’t pretend that we do. I said that the scenario I set forth was a possibility. I think as strong as strong a possibility as yours, but no way of knowing.