Transsexual Dad's Custody Fight Intensifies
5/3/2002
Linda Kantaras split her son's lip and raced away from her estranged husband's home with her daughter hanging half out of an open car door, Michael Kantaras alleges in an emergency motion seeking immediate custody of the children. Michael Kantaras also wants his wife removed from the family's Pasco County home so he can move in with the children while she undergoes a psychological evaluation, according to the motion.
Senior circuit judge Gerard O'Brien is scheduled to consider the request Thursday.
"The wife's behavior has become increasingly bizarre and in some instances violent toward the children," attorney Collin Vause wrote on
behalf of his client, Michael Kantaras. Vause said he is requesting that O'Brien consider the custody issue on an emergency basis now because the judge is not expected to rule on which parent is more fit to raise the children for at least six weeks.
Before the judge can decide who should have primary custody of the children, he must decide whether the Kantarases' 1989 marriage was legal in Florida. Also, O'Brien must decide whether Michael Kantaras's subsequent adoption of the elder child and his listing as father on the birth certificate of the younger child are legal. Those questions have
never been tackled by a Florida court.
Michael Kantaras was born a woman but ynderwent sex-reassignment surgery
in 1986.
