This issue always gets debated, and then just dropped.

With attention fully on the Vikings stadium issue, a bill that would change child custody proceedings for divorcing parents in Minnesota is quietly inching its way closer to the governor’s desk.

The latest version of HF322 would simply increase the presumed time each divorcing parent would get with his or her kids from 25 percent to 35 percent. (The remaining 30 percent of time would be figured out through mediation or divorce proceedings.) The Senate held a second reading of the bill Monday.

Rep. Peggy Scott, R-Andover, had initially authored the bill with more complex reforms that would affect the calculations of child support payments. She also wanted to create a presumption of true shared custody — at 45.1 percent for each parent. The bill also included a new concept for Minnesota law – virtual parenting time — and would have required courts to consider the use of wireless and video technology to help children remain connected to both of their parents. A version of her bill with these provisions passed the House last month by an 80-53 vote.

Those concepts don’t exist in the bill before the Senate. While Scott said that was somewhat disappointing, she would be happy with the passage of a bill that would take an incremental step toward shared custody. The percentages in law are just starting points for negotiations. But Scott said she felt 25 percent is too low, and encourages parents to fight too much in divorce proceedings to claim the remaining time with their children. A presumption of shared custody, she argued, would compel more constructive negotiations.

Not everyone agrees. In committee hearings, opponents argued that a presumption of shared custody is unrealistic and potentially harmful if it requires children to ping-pong back and forth between parents too much. They argued that a move toward shared custody might be easier on parents, but might not necessarily be in the best interests of their kids.

I notice that a lot of attorneys don’t see and increase.

CHICAGO, May 8, 2012 — /PRNewswire/ – This Mother’s Day, it appears that an increasing number of moms will be setting aside time to sign child support and alimony checks.   Overall, 56% of the nation’s top divorce attorneys say that they have seen an increase in the number of mothers paying child support during the past three years, while 47% also note a rise in women being responsible for alimony throughout the same time period, according to a recent survey of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers (AAML).

“The court system always ends up reflecting changes in our society and this is certainly the case with issues regarding who pays child support and alimony,” said Ken Altshuler, president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.  “As more women achieve success on their career paths, they are also finding themselves increasingly responsible for financial obligations during and after the divorce process.”

In all, 56% of AAML members cited an increase in mothers who pay child support, while 44% said no change, and there was not an observed decrease.   Additionally, 47% have noticed an increase in the number of women paying alimony, while 53% said no change.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/05/08/4474906/more-women-paying-child-support.html#storylink=cpy

This case clearly illustrates the difficulties faced by fathers of children whose mothers don’t want the child to know the father, and would rather get money from an adoption agency.  This story is truly ludicrous. The mother should be in jail.  The adoption agency should be out of business, and the judges in this case should all be hung from the nearest tree.

A Florida man’s court fight to gain custody of his daughter, given up for adoption after her January 2010 birth, may hinge on whether he is allowed to argue a state employee’s delay in registering his paternity notice violated his due process rights.

The Utah Supreme Court is now considering whether Ramsey Shaud, of Crestview, Fla., adequately argued in a lower court that his constitutional rights were violated by the delay at the Office of Vital Records and Statistics, caused in part by the state’s four-day workweek and a legal holiday.

Shaud is the latest in a string of unmarried fathers from across the country to make his way to Utah in hopes of undoing an adoption — in this case, of a child referred to as “Baby Girl T.” It will likely be months before the justices issue their opinion.

via Did Utah four-day work week cost dad rights to his child? | The Salt Lake Tribune.

No surprises here.  The courts simply will not look at the constitutional issues, nor do they particularly care about the issue of fairness.

The highest court in Massachusetts has rejected a challenge to child support guidelines that a fathers’ rights group say are unfair.

The Supreme Judicial Court today upheld a lower court judge’s decision to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Fathers & Families Inc. and about a dozen fathers against the state’s chief justice for administration and management, who promulgated the new guidelines in 2009.

via Mass. high court upholds child support guidelines – BostonHerald.com.

Glad to see Dear Amy sticking up for fathers.  Unfortunately, what this father is experiencing happens everyday, in the entire western world.  The political forces that are invested in the “mothers first” movement are simply too powerful for any progress to be made.  All a father can do is to know his rights, hire a good lawyer, and spend lots of money making sure his child doesn’t grow up forgetting who he is, due to the perfidious behavior of a truly selfish, self-absorbed mommy.

By Amy Dickinson ,QMI Agency

DEAR AMY: My longtime fiancee and I split up three months ago. It was her choice to split. We have a 20-month-old baby, and we are having a major disagreement about “visitation.”

The fact that a parent has “visitation” at all should be a thing of the past.

I am a father who took parental leave for three months to help raise our baby, and I have been a very involved father since her birth.

My ex and I work shift work on opposite shifts. My ex would rather send our baby to day care than have me take care of her. The day care shift my ex wants for our daughter would be from late afternoon to 10:30 p.m.

What do you think of the prospect of a 20-month-old being in day care, versus being with a parent?

My ex thinks our baby won’t fit in at school if she doesn’t attend day care. I understand the importance of her social development but not between the hours of dinner, bath and bedtime.

I grew up in a split family where I only saw my father every other weekend, and I don’t want that for my child. I truly believe that setup is outdated and fathers should have more rights! What say you? — Frustrated Father

DEAR FATHER: I agree with you on every front.

It is in the best interest of the child to spend as much time as possible with both parents, when both parents are committed, loving and involved — as you obviously are.

Parental care is preferable to day care, especially given the scenario you present in which a toddler would be away from home during dinner, evening, bath and bedtime.

Your child’s pro-social development can be encouraged through playgroups with other parents and toddlers and, later, a nursery school.

Your ex is using this as an excuse to deny your parental rights — and it’s absurd. You need to mediate a common-sense solution — one that is firmly focused on the child’s needs.

You could achieve this working with a mediator if your ex were being reasonable, but you should see a lawyer all the same.

I agree with you that the assumption that the child belongs with the mother with paternal “visitation” is an outmoded model, and I think the courts are moving slowly to recognize this.

via Dad stands up for his parental rights | Life | Toronto Sun.

Most fathers new to the divorce scene have no clue as to just how precarious their relationship with their own children really is.  It can be stripped from them by the stroke of a judges pen, just because mommy checked some little box on a form that said there was abuse in the home.  They don’t get that the assumption is that it is the father who is guilty of abuse, when as often as not, it is in fact the mother herself who is really the abusive and manipulative one.

Advocates explain that the leverage gained by a divorcing spouse who falsely accuses her spouse of abusing children or herself leads to a denial of due legal process to the victim of those lies.

September 04, 2011 /24-7PressRelease/ — The divorce process presents tremendous challenges for spouses who face questions about parental fitness or financial improprieties. One issue frequently raised by a spouse is serious accusations of domestic violence followed by petitions for restraining orders. Even if the abuse claim is shown to have been backed by false accusations, tremendous damage to an innocent person’s reputation may have already occurred.

Because spousal or child abuse claims are most frequently leveled against husbands by wives, fathers’ rights groups have sought help from Florida legislators to create legal consequences for those make false accusations in divorce cases. Advocates explain that the leverage gained by a spouse who falsely accuses her spouse of abusing children or herself leads to a denial of due legal process to the victim of those lies.

One national model for reform is the Partner Violence Reduction Act, which seeks to better distinguish the consequences of an allegation from a judicial finding, while making existing domestic violence laws more gender-inclusive. The most important goal seen by many is reducing the incentive for abuse of the legal process, because too many participants in family law disputes recognize that such allegations can be particularly powerful in the divorce context.

via Florida Fathers’ Rights Update: Legal Reforms for False Abuse Claims? – U.S. Politics Today – News Media Monitoring.

Seems as if our Supreme Court thinks it is OK to jail a man for failing to pay child support while he is in jail, even though he has absolutely no ability to pay.

In the case before the Supreme Court, Michael Turner had been ordered to pay $51.73 a week in child support. But he had regularly fallen behind, and spent short spells in prison.

On his fifth infraction, the South Carolina family court sentenced him to six months in jail. But on his release he was $5,728 in arrears, and was then sentenced to 12 months in jail.

Turner appealed arguing his constitutional rights had been violated as he had not been given access to free counsel — as is normal in criminal cases — to argue that he had been unable to pay the funds due during his jail term.

In Monday’s majority decision, the court ruled that a constitutional amendment “does not automatically require the State to provide counsel at civil contempt proceedings to an indigent noncustodial parent who is subject to a child support order, even if that individual faces incarceration.”

It found that such a requirement could put the other parent at a disadvantage if they could not afford a lawyer creating “an asymmetry of representation that would alter significantly the nature of the proceeding.”

via AFP: No automatic right to lawyer in US civil cases: court.

Just received this from Stephen Baskerville:

My latest article is just published in the Summer 2011 issue of The Salisbury Review:  ”America and Britain’s Child Protection Systems”:

http://www.salisburyreview.co.uk/Home_Page.html

It is actually on the child support system, and serves as an appropriate rejoinder to David Cameron’s reckless Fathers’ Day attack on fathers.  So far access is by subscription only, but eventually I believe they will post it online.

Stephen

America and Britain’s Child Protection Systems

by Stephen Baskerville

As some have long predicted, Britain has now embarked on the American path of turning its rapidly expanding criminal justice system into an extortion racket and its prison officials into goons. ‘Growing numbers of fathers are being sent to prison for missed child maintenance payments,’ reports The Independent. The numbers will only increase until officials stop reporting them.

As usual, it began in America. Child support is the financing mechanism for no-fault divorce. The state long ago granted a woman the right to tear up her marriage agreement for any reason or no reason and to deprive her children of their father and their father of his children. Now she can send him the bill, collect it and jail him without trial when he has nothing left…subscribe

The idiots never quit!  This is always a bad idea.  There is something wrong with the idea of paying child support for a legal adult.  Question:  When is it time to start shooting?

The current New Mexico law governing child support as set forth in the New Mexico Child Support Guidelines provides that child support terminates once a child turns eighteen (18) or once the child is nineteen (19) if the child is still in high school. However, given the increasing importance of higher education in this country, many researchers across the country believe that parents should be ordered to pay child support for their children while they are in college.

The 2011 New Mexico legislature listened to those opinions and passed House Memorial 71, sponsored by Speaker Ben Lujan, which requires the New Mexico State Bar to form a task force to investigate how consideration and planning for children’s post-secondary education should be incorporated into the existing law regarding child support.

The task force will be chaired by a family court judge and will consist of lawyers that practice in the area of divorce and family law as well as other professionals that work in related fields. The task force is required to report back to the legislature with an interim report by November, 2011, and a final report by November, 2012.

Any law changing the child support guidelines to require parents to pay for their children’s post-secondary educations will have a major, long-term effect on divorce and paternity actions across this State. How any such an obligation would be implemented leads to a variety of questions.

via New Mexico Legislative Proposals on Child Support for College? | Collins & Collins, P.C. – JDSupra.

Recently in the online magazine, Slate, appeared an article about Paternal Alienation Syndrome (PAS).  Many, many fathers can testify that this type of thing is common practice.  I’m usually not very sympathetic to any of these syndrome labels, since the labels themselves lead to so much abuse and insanity in the psychiatric field.  But what the writer of this article seems to miss is that when one parent consciously works to alienate a child from the father, she is committing a serious crime against the happiness and over all health of the child.   I believe it should be treated as a serious crime by the courts, not just something that divorcing parents do.  Most of the time, the father bends over backward to not say derogatory things, either to the child, or even to the judge in court, about the mother.  However, the same can not be said of mothers, as anyone who has spent any time in court knows.

The most worrisome aspect of the legal fight over parental alienation syndrome may be that it divides supporters and opponents along strict gender lines: As a rule, this is classed as a women’s sickness alleged by men. Fathers’ rights groups are not solely to blame for the fact that an entire “disease” is predicated on the notion that women are lying liars; the inventor of the syndrome can take responsibility for that. But no hypothesis so rooted in gender bias should be credited by medical science. And because evidence of PAS is so frequently offered to counter maternal allegations of abuse, the experts testifying about PAS can be aiding and abetting a system that takes children from abused mothers and hands them right back to abusive fathers. Once again, this doesn’t mean that some parents don’t alienate their children in a divorce. It means that PAS is now used to discredit women whenever they claim abuse.

Much of the blame for the biased history of PAS can be laid at the feet of its originator, Dr. Richard Gardner, who developed the theory—from his own practice and without clinical studies—of mothers who foster hatred for their children’s father as a ”powerful weapon” to grab custody for themselves. This wasn’t a theory born of objective empirical observation. It was a campaign against mothers rooted in the idea that they regularly lie and then “brainwash” their children into lying about paternal abuse. Because of Gardner’s gender-freighted conclusions, it was probably inevitable that men, in the form of fathers’ rights groups, would seize upon the battle to legitimize PAS. One of its most famous spokesmen became Alec Baldwin, who wrote practically a whole book on the subject in 2008, arguing paradoxically that corrupt judges and the courts have too much power over custody disputes and that by recognizing PAS, the courts could make the whole child-custody process more fair. (Here is Baldwin describing PAS as something women mainly do to men.)

Supporters of PAS argue largely from personal experience, and their stories are often compelling. But the theory of PAS is not recognized as valid by the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, or the American Medical Association. And the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges has published guidelines for custody courts clarifying that “the theory positing the existence of ‘PAS’ has been discredited by the scientific community. Any testimony that a party to a custody case suffers from the syndrome or ‘parental alienation’ should therefore be ruled inadmissible and/or stricken from the evaluation report.”

via “Parental alienation syndrome”: It’s not a real disease, but some people want it to be. – By Dahlia Lithwick – Slate Magazine.