My son’s father filed for custody four days after I told him about my diagnosis. Stage two. I told him because he’s her father and I thought he should know. The petition says I’m “unable to provide consistent care.” He attached my medical information, which he got from the pediatric portal—the one we both have access to for our son—where I’d uploaded a scheduling note in March.
That portal is for our child. Accessing a parent’s uploaded document through it is its own problem, and my attorney flagged it in the first paragraph of her response. The hospital’s privacy office opened a file. And in the course of that, they found nine other logins from his account, including several where he had accessed documents that had nothing to do with our son’s care. Then they found the login from the morning I told him about my diagnosis.
The hospital pulled the access history and showed that he had opened my document repeatedly before filing the custody petition. My attorney asked the court to seal the medical information and requested the complete portal audit. His attorney argued that because he was a parent, he had a right to access anything available through the shared account. The hospital disagreed in writing. The records showed exactly which documents belonged to our son and which were private uploads made by me.
At the hearing, the judge asked my son’s father one question: “If you believed she was incapable of caring for your child, why did you need to obtain private medical information that was never part of his medical record?” He said he was concerned about our son. The judge looked at the access log, then at the petition, and asked why the custody filing came four days after the first login. He couldn’t explain it. The custody request was denied, and the judge ordered the improperly accessed records removed from the filing.
