By Tim Bryant of The Post Dispatch Staff
After a father undergoes a sex-change operation, begins living as a woman and calls himself Sharon, should he still have an active role in his children's lives? The Missouri Court of Appeals has to answer that tricky question.
The mother, who lives in St. Charles County, has said "no" in court records. She contends that it is in the best interest of her two sons, age 9 and 6, to deny their father visitation and temporary custody. Her oldest son has expressed "suicidal ideations" and was put on antidepressants, court records state. The youngest son has been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. But the father's lawyer said Tuesday that the father should have regular, unsupervised visitation. The children's father now lives in suburban Washington, D.C.
"It's fairly obvious that we feel any restrictions are unwarranted at this time," said the father's lawyer, Elizabeth Harris Christmas. Last year, a St. Charles County judge granted the wife, who uses the pseudonym Karen to protect the children's identities, primary physical custody.
The father, now called Sharon, got weekend temporary custody and unsupervised visitation for two weeks in the summer and on alternate major holidays. However, Sharon could not cohabit with a transsexual or sleep with another woman during those visits.
"We think she is 'married' [to another transsexual] but we don't know what that means," said Susan Hais, Karen's lawyer. Both parents appealed. The issue could be heard in the Missouri Court of Appeals in St. Louis as early as December.
This may be the first time the issue of child visitation with a divorced transsexual parent has come before the appeals court, Hais said Tuesday.
However, that issue may not be the one heard in this case, she added. State law prohibits the divorce judge, Judge William T. Lohmar Jr., from giving the father unsupervised visitation without a prior hearing to determine whether it would be proper, Hais said. The appeals court could decide the case on that issue alone.
As part of his decree, Lohmar had ruled that the father's visitation with the children could begin one year after the divorce was granted, or last June. The father wants to delete from the divorce decree the requirement that that the father cannot "cohabit" with other transsexuals while the boys visit.
Karen and Sharon met in 1982. He was an Air Force Academy graduate stationed at Whitman Air Force Base in Knob Noster, Mo., near Sedalia. Karen was a junior at a state university in Missouri. The couple met at a Bible study group. They married in March 1983. Karen said in an interview last year that their relationship was always strained.
In the summer of 1991, Karen's husband -- "Tom," as he is called in the case -- refused to go with the family to visit Karen's relatives. When she and the boys came home three weeks later, Tom told Karen that he had spent the whole time living as a woman. The couple separated in August 1992. Tom underwent a hair transplant, electrolysis, hormone treatments and psychotherapy. Karen filed for divorce in June 1993.
While the divorce was pending, Tom underwent sex-change surgery in Montreal. Hais said Tuesday that the case was "fascinating in a lot of ways." "Emotionally, I suppose, it's complicated for everybody," she added.