Monica Yant Kinney | McGreevey shows he's already divorced from decency
On the back of his memoir, The Confession, former Gov. Jim McGreevey writes that resigning was his way of embarking on the "painful route" toward "penance and atonement, the way to grace."
On the back of his memoir,
The Confession
, former Gov. Jim McGreevey writes that resigning was his way of embarking on the "painful route" toward "penance and atonement, the way to grace."
The high road is a short road, at least the way McGreevey drives.
One month after filing for divorce from the woman he humiliated in life and on national TV, he apparently decided that Dina Matos McGreevey had not suffered enough for his sins.
After saying he had worked out a custody agreement with his soon-to-be ex-wife, McGreevey changed lawyers and strategies. He now seeks sole custody of, and child support for, their 5-year-old daughter, Jacqueline - who has lived with Matos McGreevey ever since Daddy admitted he betrayed Mommy and eight million other New Jersey residents in 2004.
It's not enough that McGreevey found the man of his dreams almost immediately after leaving his wife and the closet.
Or that the guy who lied and cheated wound up with the happy ending: a mansion, money, hugs from Oprah, and a cover story in the Advocate.
Now McGreevey wants to snatch his daughter from her mother's arms.
I can think of a hundred words to describe McGreevey's latest Machiavellian maneuver. Graceful is not among them.
War of words
If you want a taste of what
McGreevey v. Matos McGreevey
will look like, buy the book. The dissolution of this marriage is already a war of words.
Jim McGreevey released his tell-all in the fall. Dina Matos McGreevey's side of the story, Silent Partner, hits stores in the spring.
In a few years, Jacqueline can do book reports on both memoirs. What an illuminating educational experience that will be, presuming her therapist allows it.
The early word on Silent Partner is that Matos McGreevey maintains she was stunned to learn her husband began an affair with a man while she was in the hospital about to give birth prematurely.
So that dazed, dumbfounded look on her face during McGreevey's resignation speech was real?
"Could I have known?" she writes in an excerpt released by Hyperion Books. "How could I have known?"
What she knew or when doesn't matter much in divorce court.
McGreevey is the cad. Now he wants a judge to think he's Superdad.
"He would have to show the court that for some reason, it's not in the child's best interest to stay with her mother," explains Jennifer Brandt, a family-law partner at Cozen O'Connor.
"That's very hard to do."
Divorce as blood sport
When the divorce papers were first filed, Matos McGreevey issued a statement saying, "We continue to have profound differences about what our daughter should be exposed to."
That, local lawyers suggest, could be a sign she has problems with his being a "gay American."
If that's the case, watch out.
"If she's trying to cut him out of his daughter's life, it's not smart," says Lynne Gold-Bikin, former chair of the family-law section of the American Bar Association and managing partner at Wolf Block.
Then again, it's also not wise to use your kid as a weapon or pretend you want to be a full-time parent if you really don't.
Suppose Matos McGreevey had been balking at visitation.
"So he says, 'I'm going to go for sole custody and scare the hell out of her,' " posits former Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Sandra Schultz Newman, a onetime divorce lawyer known as "The Barracuda."
"Sometimes," she says, "games are played."
Curiously, a day after the story broke, McGreevey clarified his intent. He wouldn't say whether he really wanted sole custody of Jacqueline. His lawyer said the request was meant to be "intentionally vague."
Given that the fate of a 5-year-old is being used as a vague threat, Gold-Bikin has another title in mind if McGreevey decides to turn his latest deceit into a sequel to The Confession.
How Low Can You Go?