Britney Spears’s father, Jamie Spears, who put her under a long and punishing conservatorship, was ordered to sit for a deposition for secretly surveilling his daughter while she was under said conservatorship. Jamie and Britney are not on good terms, and it’s for obvious reasons. There are around 10 documentaries about how broken their relationship is.
Like the Spearses, many parents and their children may have legal disputes — but for reasons that are less dramatic and severe than a guardianship. However, there are also cases in which the parents and their children fight in court for the most inane reasons.
“Give us grandkids or else…”
If children were an investment, couples should see to it that they don’t put all their eggs in one basket. Unfortunately, that’s what one Indian couple did: invest in one son who didn’t yield the ROI they were hoping for.
A middle-aged couple in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand sued their son for failing to produce offspring, causing them “mental harassment.” The son and his wife had been married for six years but still didn’t have a child because they had to live in different cities for their jobs.
The son’s parents would probably be more forgiving if they hadn’t invested too much in him. According to their lawsuit, they spent 50 million Indian rupees ($1.3 million) for their son’s upbringing and schooling. They even sent him to the US to take a pilot training course. But after finishing the course, the son had to go back to India as he was jobless. His parents supported him as he looked for a job.
They also got him married off so that he could at least produce a grandkid for them to play with as they settle comfortably in retirement. They made further investments in their son by paying for his and his wife’s wedding at a five-star hotel, giving him a car, and financing their honeymoon too. Because as we all know, the more lavish the wedding, the more kids a married couple can produce.
But the son and his wife were not able to produce a grandchild, prompting the parents’ to sue him. They gave him and his wife one year to produce an offspring and if not, they asked to be reimbursed the 50 million rupees they spent on him.
The would-be grandparents believed their demand was reasonable because, they said, they spent everything on their only son. And we couldn’t help but think that they really should have diversified their portfolio. Now it looks like they may have to shoulder their son’s divorce payments in case his marriage doesn’t work out.
“I didn’t ask for this (life)”
Another Indian family also battled legally, but this time it was because the son was upset about being born.
In 2019, 27-year-old Raphael Samuel told the BBC that bringing children into this world is a crime as it subjects them to put up with lifelong suffering. He may be onto something, but suing his parents was a tad excessive.
Mr. Samuel, a businessman, was well-aware that it is impossible to ask for permission from an unborn child to be brought into this world. Yet he was adamant that children should be paid for the rest of their lives to sustain said lives.
It’s worth noting that Mr. Samuel subscribes to anti-natalism, the school of thought that posits that life is miserable and people should refrain from procreating. He even created a Facebook page for his philosophy.
It’s hard not to admire a man with such strong conviction. Not only did he take his parents to court for giving him life, but he did so knowing that his parents are lawyers who could make mincemeat out of his interesting but wacky argument in court.
We bet Mr. Samuel flipped out when he read about the overturning of Roe vs. Wade.
“Dad, I’m unfollowing and blocking you…in real life”
Meanwhile, many children who were already born may simply wish to have different parents. For instance, one of Elon Musk’s children, Vivian Jenna Wilson (formerly Xavier Alexander Musk), recently expressed her desire to cut ties with her biological father. Elon’s transgender daughter was unhappy about her father’s seemingly anti-trans sentiments, many of which he tweeted on that platform he was supposed to purchase, as well as his complaints about people preferring to use their own pronouns.
For a guy who named one of his kids X Æ A-Xii, he sure seems to be intolerant.
Vivian’s petition to change her name and gender was approved by a judge at a Los Angeles County Superior Court, which asked for a new state-issued birth certificate to reflect the changes. Now, all Vivian needs to do is make sure to block and/or mute the name of her biological dad from all her social media accounts because the man is inescapable.
Buckingham, LaGrandeur, Williams are family law attorneys in Washington State who deal with parents who want to gain favorable outcomes for their child custody dispute — we rarely get clients who desire to disown their dad. Call our offices if you need legal representation for your case.