Floyd Mayweather: Don’t Talk About Your Family Law Matters in Public

Last weekend, professional boxer Floyd Mayweather beat Manny Pacquiao in
a highly anticipated fight watched around the world. Now, Mayweather is
up for the next big fight of his lifetime: the mother of Mayweather’s
three children just filed a lawsuit for $20 million dollars against him.

According to TMZ, Josie Harris claims in her lawsuit that Mayweather lied in an interview
with Katie Couric aired two weeks before the big fight. In the interview,
Mayweather said Josie was in a “drug-fuelled rage” one night
in 2010 and that this caused a violent incident between them. One of Mayweather
and Harris’ children witnessed and reported the incident to the police,
and Mayweather ultimately served jail time for domestic violence.

Mayweather’s public interview serves as a reminder about the importance
of keeping your legal matters and your opinions about your former spouse
private. In Mayweather’s case, disparaging your former spouse by e-mail,
text, or social media can compromise your claims for
child custody and access.

Throughout Canada, the best interest of the children is the governing principle
when determining the issues of custody, access and/or a parenting schedule.
A Court may terminate access visits altogether if any of the following
factors are established:

1. Long term harassment and harmful behaviours towards the custodial parent
   causing that parent and the child stress and/or fear;
2. History of violence; unpredictable, uncontrollable behaviour; alcohol,
   drug abuse which has been witnessed by the child and/or presents a risk
   to the child’s safety and well-being;
3. Extreme parental alienation;
4. Ongoing severe denigration of the other parent;
5. Lack of relationship or attachment between the non-custodial parent and child;
6. Neglect or abuse to a child on the access visits; and
7. Older children’s wishes and preferences to terminate access.

If Mayweather and his children resided in Ontario, a Court might consider
Mayweather’s original violent abuse of Harris and the ongoing public
commentary on the matter to be sufficiently serious to terminate access.
Family law disputes can be very stressful, but airing this frustration
in a public setting like Facebook, Twitter or on television suggests that
a parent is either unwilling or unable to put the best interests of the
children before the parent’s own interests. Courts can and will review
screenshots of inappropriate text messages and Facebook updates as evidence
against a parent who is applying for custody or access.