New Battle for Those on Coronavirus Front Lines: Child Custody

Doctors, firefighters and others who risk exposure to Covid-19 are being taken to court by ex-spouses who want to keep them away from their children.

Last month, Dr. Bertha Mayorquin, a New Jersey physician, told her soon-to-be ex-husband that there was a change in plans. After two weeks of providing treatment by video as a precaution against the coronavirus, she would resume seeing patients in person.

But when she left work on a Friday to pick up her two daughters for the weekend, her husband, Wendell Surdukowski, presented her with a court order granting him sole temporary custody of the young girls. His lawyer had convinced a judge that Dr. Mayorquin could expose the children, 11 and 8, to Covid-19.

The doctor, an internist, had intended to spend the weekend celebrating her younger daughter’s birthday. Instead, she spent it frantically assembling 50 pages of paperwork to try to reverse the order.

“Many people working in the hospitals — doctors, nurses, so many of us — are parents,” said Dr. Mayorquin, whose hospital had asked her to start treating non-coronavirus patients at an urgent care center to ease the burden of the pandemic. “Are our children going to be taken away from us because we are on the front lines helping people?”

Continue Reading: nytimes.com