Law360 Canada (February 6, 2026, 9:12 AM EST) — My friend Jason asked me — casually, the way people do when they are pretending they are not carrying a question around like a stone in their pocket — “Hodine, why don’t you write an article about women having more rights in family court?” He didn’t ask it like an accusation. He didn’t frame it as an argument. He asked it the way people ask things they’ve heard too many times to ignore. And that’s the thing: it wasn’t the first time I’d heard the sentiment.

Far from it. I’ve heard it in passing, over coffee, drinks, at dinners, in corridors outside courtrooms and even in conversations that weren’t supposed to be about family law at all. Someone always says it half-jokingly, half-resigned: as a man, you have to be twice as good to get a quarter as much in family court.

Everyone laughs a little. Someone nods. No one challenges it. And that silence, that collective, uncomfortable recognition, tells its own story. Because when an idea keeps surfacing in casual conversation, when it survives jokes and whispers and shrugged shoulders, it’s usually pointing to something deeper than myth. It’s pointing to a lived perception that refuses to go away, no matter how many times we insist the system is neutral.

Let’s start with the part everyone rushes to say, usually with a raised finger and a law degree behind it: family courts do not legally favour mothers. On paper, the system is impeccably fair. Almost elegant. Neutral. Gender-blind. It speaks from a fine-looking high horse — the language of “best interests of the child,” not “mother” or “father.” The statutes are polished. The judgments are carefully reasoned. The system insists it does not see gender at all. And maybe it’s true; maybe in theory, it truly doesn’t. But theory has a way of floating several inches above reality, never quite touching the ground where people actually live.

Because here’s the uncomfortable pause in the conversation — the one that makes everyone shift in their seats. If courts are truly gender-blind, why does the outcome so often feel … predictable? Why is there a persistent belief, shared even by people who swear they don’t believe it, that mothers are simply better parents? More nurturing. More stable. More naturally suited to the invisible labour of child-rearing. Reports are written. But beneath it all, there is often an invisible baseline assumption:that a mother is already qualified, while a father must demonstrate exceptional competence just to be considered equal.

Fathers are praised for “helping.” Mothers are expected to manage. When a mother seeks custody, it feels ordinary. When a father does, it can feel aspirational, even disruptive. Maybe all of that is true. Here’s the thing: we don’t always say it out loud, but it hums beneath the process like background music. It just shows up quietly, politely, in credibility assessments, in custody evaluations, in who gets the benefit of the doubt.

This is where unconscious bias does its best work. Not the obvious kind. Not the villain twirling a moustache and choosing mothers over fathers just because. This is subtler. This is bias wearing sensible shoes and carrying a clipboard. It’s the raised eyebrow when a father asks for “primary custody.” It’s the silent nod when a mother says she’s the “default parent.” It’s the way caregiving is treated as something women are, and something men must prove. No one writes this into the law. But it seeps into how the law is applied.

Family court, for all its rules and rigour, is still deeply human. And humans are not academic exercises. Judges, lawyers, assessors — they all come into the room carrying their own stories about family, gender, sacrifice and care. We like to pretend the process is sterile, that evidence and perhaps the law alone carries the day. But anyone who has watched family court up close knows that lived reality doesn’t always line up neatly with legal theory. The law may speak in neutral terms, but outcomes are shaped in rooms filled with assumptions we rarely interrogate.

So, is it a myth that courts prefer mothers over fathers? Or is it a myth that they don’t? Perhaps the real illusion is our insistence on choosing one answer. Maybe the truth lives in the space between those two statements, where discomfort thrives. Maybe the system doesn’t intend to favour mothers, but intention and impact are not the same thing — yes? Maybe the bias isn’t institutional in the way people imagine, but cultural, inherited, quietly reinforced over decades of believing that motherhood equals competence and fatherhood equals assistance.

Maybe fathers lose more often because mothers still do more caregiving before separation. Maybe outcomes simply reflect social reality rather than judicial bias. Or maybe social expectations and judicial reasoning are tangled together so tightly that separating them is nearly impossible. That’s the uncomfortable middle ground no one likes to stand in because it requires us to accept that multiple things can be true at once. I am taking no personal view of it but I’m asking questions.

And this is where the conversation gets dangerous. Because the moment you raise this, people assume you are picking a side (shirts versus skins — okay, you didn’t get the football analogy. Alas! I digress). That you are anti the architecture of care that a mother brings. Or anti-progress. Or nostalgic for a past that never really worked for anyone. But asking hard questions isn’t betrayal, it’s honesty. It’s acknowledging that what looks equal on paper may feel very different in practice. That fairness isn’t just about what the law says, but about how it lands on real people with real children and real consequences.

Maybe we all know the truth already, whether we admit it or not. Maybe we sense that something uneven exists, even as we rush to deny it. Or maybe we cling to the myth — whichever version suits us, because examining it would force us to confront our own assumptions about gender, care and power.

The real antagonist here isn’t mothers or fathers. It’s our refusal to sit with discomfort long enough to ask whether neutrality, as we practise it, is truly neutral at all. And dismissing that feeling as bitterness or mythmaking is too easy. Perception matters, especially in a system that demands public trust. If enough people believe the scales are tipped, even subtly, then the system owes them more than a footnote about neutrality. It owes them reflection.

So, I’m not here to decide which side in the evening scrimmage I’ll put my boots on for (yes, football analogy again). I’m here to hold the mirror up and ask the question Jason asked me. Not to answer it neatly. Not to resolve it cleanly. But to admit that beneath the tidy language of the law, perhaps something messier is happening. And maybe the bravest thing we can do is stop pretending we don’t see it — and start talking about why.

I will part with this. Maybe, just maybe, if Lady Justice is already blindfolded, it’s time we make sure the rest of the room is too. Not blind to children’s needs. Not blind to reality. But blind, at last, to gender, so that “best interests” finally means what we say it does, not what we quietly assume it has always meant.

Hodine Williams has over 20 years of experience in law, corporate governance and regulatory compliance across the legal, financial, hospitality and engineering sectors. A former prosecutor and expert in digital forensics, financial crimes and cyber law, he has advised corporations in Jamaica, Canada and the United Kingdom. Holding a master of laws in international business law from Osgoode Hall Law School, along with degrees in management and economics and law, Williams is also an educator, philanthropist and advocate for youth development and racialized communities. You can reach him at hodine.williams@gmail.com.

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