photos of children

hickory99

Guys say for example a seperated couple, one of which is living with a new partner for a couple of years but man's ex still has ongoing and major issues with moving on.
If the man's new partner was to put photo's of her own child or her little brother or partner or herself with the man's own children also somewhere in the photo's, with the man's full consent (basing this on him having been married and having equal guardianship rights over the child), can the partner put these photo's up on her social networking site as long as the are only able to be viewed by her friends and family as oppose to on view for all to see????
If the new partner was to recieve what she perceives as a ridiculous solicitor's letter requesting they be taken down immediately because of the mother's dislike of this, what can the partner do in this instance?
Since the man equal gaurdianship rights, and gaurdianship in irish law is defined as:

"gaurdianship responsibilities include all the rights, duties, powers, responsibilites and authority which by law a parent of a child has in relation to the child and his or her property and further includes the right to determine the child's place of residence".

Surely this makes the solicitors letter a little bit unfounded????

My second scenario is if the man asked his partner to trim the children's hair, as she does the man's hair alot, and the mother disagrees and has a strongly worded solicitors letter sent to the partner stating something along the lines of "if you persist in this action court proceedings will be issued against you for assult on the children". Now correct me if I'm wrong here but under current Irish law is is also stated that :

"a gaurdian is entitled to the custody of a child. Custody comprises the right and duty of a parent to exercise on a daily basis the PHYSICAL CARE and control over a child"

Now although the man would be said to have equal custody, as I'm sure your aware in Ireland this dosen't nessicarily mean that the man would have the children 50% of the time but is still deemed to have equal custody. So my question here is what right does the mother have to interfere with the father's right to look after their physical care, ie hair cuts be it in a barbers or at home.

Has the partner got the right to sue for the stress of the letter and threat of being accuesed of assult. If the partner is qualified in childcare then the to her career is an extremely severe threat.
Should the partner apply for gaurdian and access rights herself to prevent to issue of ongoing solicitors letters of every single little movement? would she been seen as acting as "loco parentis" in that she acts as a parent whilst the children are around her?

I know the family law is an extremely grey area but if anyone has any input on these scenario's I'd be very interested in hearing that.

nuac

IMHO childrens' photographs should not be put up on any social networking site.

Victor

I don't see a problem with a parent putting up ordinary photos of their own child to share with friends and family.

Some people will be uneasy about people putting up photos of other people's children.

There may be a copyright issue if someone else owns the photo.

nuac wrote: »

IMHO childrens' photographs should not be put up on any social networking site.

IMHO such reactions are paranoid and possibly delusional.

PCPhoto

as a professional photographer my opinions are:

the owner of the photograph has copyright - as long as the image does not depict the child in bad light (nudity/compromising positions etc etc) then the mother has absolutely no right to request the image be removed.... she can ask facebook to remove it (claiming she owns copyright - and they probably would take it down then.)

best of my understanding ..... she doesnt have a foot to stand on and IMO she's getting poor legal advice if you have received a solicitors letter .... to the best of my knowledge she cant do anything about it..... if her solicitor knew anything about facebook he would know that there is a procedure to be adhered to in order to get an image removed from a persons profile.... she probably approached facebook and they did nothing.

its simply a case of she doesnt want images of her child online - she cant stop anyone from posting pics of the child online - how does she know its there unless she has access to view the pics - you said status is set to friends and family .... simply remove her as a friend on facebook and she cant see whats put up there.

by all means seek a solicitor's advice ....as she might be crazy enough to take it to court (I've seen so many ridiculous cases come before the courts due to ignorance/stupidity of one or both parties)....oh I should mention I'm a photographer...in the courts !!

Personally I'm of the opinion that Facebook is not the best place to put images as part of their terms and conditions allow facebook to use the images if they want...so they can rob your images if they want !! .... I use facebook but theres only a handful of pics there - none of my work.

darrenon

without offending you. i dont know all the circumstances...

but would it not be easier to go along with what their mother wants. for the kids, yours, your partners and everyone around you.

from what i read id agree with the mother

Stercus Accidit

If the father gives permission for a haircut to a barber rather than his partner, would the barber be guilty of assault? I doubt it.

I can't imagine the partner, with guardians permission, performing a haircut would be assault either.

Otherwise we would have a plethora of legal documents in barbers shops for when a child gets a haircut.

I'm not a lawyer, but I find it interesting that such a threat could be made at all. It is ridiculous, right?

Tom Young

I would have though a civil assault claim on such grounds would be a little far fetched! Indeed, even drafting such a letter from a solicitors point of view is highly questionable, to my mind.


On the photos, I agree generally about the privacy risks online. All profiles should be limited relating to photos on all systems. Putting child images online has been mentioned above and I'd agree with that also.

nuac

Hey Victor - I note you say my opinion re photos of children may be paranoid and/or delusional.

I am in practice 30++ years and have acted for parents of children who have been sexually assaulted. From my experience I would not take any risks with children's safety.

even with counselling etc a child who is so assaulted never really gets over it.

Victor

nuac wrote: »

even with counselling etc a child who is so assaulted never really gets over it.

And as a former 6-year old who was kidnapped and who still doesn't fully trust women, I have no particular problem with people taking or posting my photo, providing that it isn't unflattering, compromising or similar.

Lets look at the reality here, two "adults" are using their children as pawns. The "abuse" (lite) is right there, not on Facebook.

amdublin

nuac wrote: »

Hey Victor - I note you say my opinion re photos of children may be paranoid and/or delusional.

I am in practice 30++ years and have acted for parents of children who have been sexually assaulted. From my experience I would not take any risks with children's safety.

even with counselling etc a child who is so assaulted never really gets over it.

IMO abusers are looking for (and unfortunately find) very different photos to the type of photos that are on social networking sites.

hickory99

PCPHOTO again thank you for your well informed information.

Just for everyone's information who for some reason seem to think that the children are being used as pawns, in this case you are talking about a man who was stalked and followed by his ex for months to the point he had to move 100 km up the road for some peace. Your talking about a man who has had to stand by and watch his ex tell his children in front of him that "that bastard doesn't want you, he dosent love you". Your talking about a man who was phyiscally abused for years and on occasion would still now get a box in the mouth or kick if his ex was in the wrong mood. Your talking about a man who lives for his children and who has been harassed since leaving his ex. And no the law can do nothing about the abuse, it's been looked at.
For the comment as to why they couple don't just take the photo's down, I tell you why because if its not this it will be something else and if the couple continue the way they have done just giving in for an easy life, they will NEVER have the chance to live their lives without constant interferance.
in this situation the ex has gone as far as too drive to the girlfriend grandparents house going back a year or so and hurled verbal abuse at a pair of pensioners. You are not talking about a well balance person here. You are talking about someone who is finding it incapable of moving on with her life and will stop at nothing to destroy the mans life in every way she can get away with.
In this situation we are talking about 5 or 6 photo's taken of the girlfriends little brother and the other children are there too. They are not comprimising photo's just some harmless pictures.
You are not talking about two parents using their children as pawns, you talking about one parent desperately trying to move on and have a normal life (in which photo's should just be a normal part of) and another parent who will have another problem every single day for the rest of her life and as long as she gets away with it and has bully-boy solicitors using scare mongering tactic;s to help her she will continue doing it.
Thank you for the input on the scenario

BostonB

How did the ex find out about the photos?

hickory99

Well the girlfriend has had the ex blocked for a long time. But no facebook you can set your profile to be view by "friends of Friends".
I'll use hypotical names cause it can be difficult to exlplain,
Say for example the girlfriend has a friend names Jane. And say Jane is friends on facebook with one of the ex's friends called her Ann. This would mean that because Ann is friends with Jane that ann can view the girlfriends profile.
The girlfriend has since changed her settings to be viewed by friends ONLY to stop the ex from getting her mates to look it up for her.
I dont understand why in a situation like this that the ex's friends don't discourage her from still stalking the man and his girlfriend and instead incourage her to move on with her life and let it go.
It's been nearly three years in this case and if anything is getting worse with the silly little things that she brings up more than once daily, it get more renlentless and ridiculous as time goes by.

Victor

Apologies, the original post is slightly confusing and I took it up slightly wrong.

hickory99 wrote: »

If the new partner was to recieve what she perceives as a ridiculous solicitor's letter requesting they be taken down immediately because of the mother's dislike of this, what can the partner do in this instance?

...

My second scenario is if the man asked his partner to trim the children's hair, as she does the man's hair alot, and the mother disagrees and has a strongly worded solicitors letter sent to the partner stating something along the lines of "if you persist in this action court proceedings will be issued against you for assult on the children". Now correct me if I'm wrong here but under current Irish law is is also stated that :

"if you persist in this action" - the action has been long completed. You cannot stop something that has already been done.

Has the partner got the right to sue for the stress of the letter and threat of being accuesed of assult. If the partner is qualified in childcare then the to her career is an extremely severe threat.

There are two ways to approach this (a) ignore (b) go to solicitor. Neither is painless.

Should the partner apply for gaurdian and access rights herself to prevent to issue of ongoing solicitors letters of every single little movement?

I'm not sure if that route is practical. As I understand it, only two people can have guardianship and I imagine the mother is unlikely to give up hers, but discuss if there are other routes with your solicitor.

hickory99

Thank you Victor, no worries on original post, maybe I needed more details in it.
As regards the gaurdianship, I was under the impression that under Irish Law if someone was seen as "loco parentis" ie acting as a parent that they could apply for gaurdianship rights. Maybe I'm wrong there, I know the girlfriend can definately apply for access but it's trying to get her relationship with the children protected that's the hard part

BostonB

hickory99 wrote: »

Well the girlfriend has had the ex blocked for a long time. But no facebook you can set your profile to be view by "friends of Friends". ....

Seems like me some "friends" need to be cut off, as they are not friends if they are passing trivial information back to cause trouble.

Seems strange to me that anyone outside of the couple knows details like who get the hair cut. Or that anyone who did know it would pass it on. Who ever did need to get cut off aswell.

They are not friends.

Assuming its not one of the couple.

Victor

BostonB wrote: »

Seems strange to me that anyone outside of the couple knows details like who get the hair cut. Or that anyone who did know it would pass it on. Who ever did need to get cut off aswell.

Mother: "Your hair is lovely, who cut it?"
Child: "Daddy's partner did."

hickory99

Yes Victor thats exactly it but not that clean cut, the ex interigates the children when they get home