All I know is Dawson's Creek ftw.

#FreeKatie

There's no way to enforce such restrictions.

@2 But Tom can't send her off on a billion-year contract to Sea Org or something without violating the religion clause. I think that's the important bit.

@2: I was going to ask how such a thing can be binding. Not to talk about something? Privately? Do courts uphold stuff like that?

@2, if the settlement agreement says specifically neither parent can discuss religion until X age, that couldn't be enforced because of the 2nd Amendment, but often people agree to such just to get the damned thing done. But I'd bet that if Katie wanted to restrict Tom's right to formally indoctrinate Suri (through some outside organization/class/etc), the agreement would contain some clause saying that he'd have to get Katie's agreement before doing so. If she didn't agree and he did it anyway, she could apply to the court for sanctions.

I'm no constitutional scholar, but the First Amendment states that Congress can't make laws prohibiting free exercise of religion. To the best of my knowledge, people are free to sign legally binding contracts restricting their own exercise of religion all they want. Think of it like a religion non-disclosure agreement.

(For example) I'm free(dom of speech) to criticize Microsoft all I want unless I revel information that a Microsoft NDA I signed prohibits me from talking about.

What @7 said. Of course they can make an agreement not to talk religion until she's older. It's a contract, not a law. And if Suri comes home and says "Mommy, Daddy told me how I got stuffed in a volcano and blown up millions of years ago," there's going to at the very least be a court hearing about it.

They had to shut Katie up. By giving her most of what she wants (apparently they can both say anything they want to her about religion), they keep Katie quiet.

She's smarter than she looks.

@6, that may be so, but it's much funnier the first way that you wrote it.

I recently worked on a settlement agreement that required each party to offer the other a verbal apology that was written out in the agreement. I thought it absurd and childish, but I really wanted to be there for the exchange of the clenched-teeth apologies. Predictably, they still hate each other passionately.

That poor kid is fucked.