FTM Gets Children After Wife Disobeys Judge's Order Transsexual Gets Children After Wife Disobeys Judge's Order CLEARWATER, FL - A transsexual father has been granted temporary custody of his children after a judge ruled their mother violated standing orders not to use her husband's sex change to turn the children against him. Michael Kantaras, who was born a woman, took custody of the children May 24 on orders from Senior Pasco-Pinellas Circuit Judge Gerard O'Brien. A written order awaiting O'Brien's signature states that Linda Kantaras may have liberal visitation but is no longer the children's primary custodian. Michael Kantaras will retain primary custody until O'Brien makes a final decision in the couple's divorce case, which was the subject of a three-week trial that ended in February. O'Brien has said he must decide an issue never before tackled by a Florida court: Can a man born as a woman become a husband and father under Florida law? The couple married in Seminole County in 1989, three years after Michael Kantaras underwent a sex change operation in Texas. He subsequently adopted his bride's newborn son and later was listed as the father on the birth certificate of a girl born through artificial insemination by his brother. Linda Kantaras' attorneys have said she thought Michael was legally a man when they wed. They also raised the issues of Florida laws banning same-sex marriages and adoptions by homosexuals. The custody dispute began in 1998, when Michael Kantaras left his wife for another woman.
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