The wife of New York doctor Richard Batista needed a kidney transplant.
Dr. Richard Batista proved to be a match to his wife, Dawnell, so he
duly offered up one of his own kidneys. Almost eight years later, Dr.
Batista wants his kidney back.
According to Richard Batista, Dawnell Batista began having an affair a
couple of years after recovering from the kidney transplant procedure.
In 2005, Dawnell Batista filed for divorce from Richard Batista.
Nearly four years later, the parties to the divorce still appear to be
at an impasse. Dr. Richard Batista is also claiming that he is being
prevented from seeing his children. And so, possibly as a way to get his
estranged wife's attention, Richard Batista is demanding the kidney
back. Since losing the kidney would likely kill Dawnell Batista, Richard
Batista is willing to compromise and settle for one and a half million
dollars in compensation for the kidney.
Divorces can get pretty
nasty. When love goes wrong, that emotion quickly turns to hate and
parties to a divorce will do things to one another that hitherto they
had never contemplated doing to another human being. Possessions such as
homes, cars, and bank accounts are all used as weapons by one divorced
party to damage another. And that is nothing compared to how children
are used. That is especially true for the man, as divorce judges tend to
have bias in favor of the mother for custody. The woman, as apparently
Dawnell Batista is doing, will use access to the children as a way to
torment her estranged husband.
Using a body part, like a kidney,
is certainly a new one. There is probably no other case quite like the
Batista case in which one party demanded the return of a donated body
part.
Divorce lawyers interviewed about the case suggest that
Richard Batista has no chance of recovering his kidney as part of the
divorce settlement. One suspects that Richard Batista is not seriously
suggesting that his estranged wife Dawnell Batista fork over the kidney
and is just using this demand as an attention getting device to try to
break the impasse the couple finds itself in.
Of course Richard
Batista, in demanding the kidney back as part of the divorce settlement,
runs the risk of alienating the judge. Divorce judges, no doubt,
believe that they have seen it all when it comes to the behavior of
people in a divorce. But demanding a kidney without which Dawnell
Batista will likely not live seems a little bit crazy, even by the
standards of nasty divorces. And that may cost Richard Batista,
frustrated and betrayed as he is, in the end.
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