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

Another tragedy brought to you from the divorce courts of America.  If divorce and custody issues were handled from the perspective of parental rights to children, instead of best interest, these kinds of events would be fewer, since there would be less opportunity for enmity to escalate.

(Reuters) – A man California prosecutors say shot his ex-wife and seven other people to death in a Seal Beach hair salon in revenge over a child custody dispute was charged on Friday with first degree murder in their deaths.

Scott Evans Dekraai, 42, who is accused of carrying out the largest mass murder in the history of Orange County, was also charged with a single count of attempted murder, Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas told a news conference in Santa Ana.

The lone survivor of Wednesday’s shooting rampage at Salon Meritage, 73-year-old Harriet Stretz, remains in critical condition at a hospital in nearby Long Beach.

An emotional Rackauckas announced he would seek the death penalty against Dekraai, who he said was targeting former wife Michelle Fournier, a stylist at Salon Meritage, in the shooting rampage.

“There are some crimes that are so depraved, so callous, so malignant, that there is only one punishment that will fit the crime,” Rackauckas said. “When a person in a case such as this goes on a rampage and kills innocent people in an indiscriminate bloody massacre, I will seek the death penalty.”

Dekraai made an initial court appearance on Friday afternoon, wearing a yellow Orange County Jail jumpsuit and handcuffs and shackled at the waist as he sat in a caged area.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Erick Larsh agreed to a request by Dekraai’s lawyer, Robert Curtis, to postpone the arraignment until November 28 so Curtis can assemble a defense team.

Curtis also asked the judge to order to ensure that Dekraai was given his medications, including two anti-psychotic drugs. Larsh said he could only order jail doctors to “do what is appropriate” for Dekraai’s medical conditions.

‘I HATE YOU!’

As Dekraai was being taken out of court, a woman in the audience shouted “I hate you! I hate you!” toward his back. Another man clutched a picture to his chest.

Prosecutors say Dekraai, who divorced Fournier, 48, in 2007 and was still battling her in court over custody of their young son, wanted revenge when he stormed into Salon Meritage and began shooting.

The former couple had been in court over the child custody issues on Tuesday and Rackauckas said the hearing apparently “didn’t go very well” for Dekraai. He said Dekraai and Fournier had argued over the phone on the morning of the rampage.

“We believe that the defendant committed this unimaginable act of violence because he wanted to kill his ex-wife over a custody dispute over their 8-year-old son,” Rackauckas said. “He was willing to end any life in his path, and he did.”

via Accused Seal Beach gunman sought revenge: prosecutor | Reuters.

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.

This type of commentary has been circulating since the 1990s, and even before.  Some embittered mom rants on the father for abandoning his family.  Most of the time, however, when you find the father and ask him, you get an entirely different story.  Why is it that these women are believed, and the fathers aren’t.  Without exception, many fathers I have known and dealt with, have been worn down by a system that looks to them for nothing more than money.  They are stripped of all rights to their children, they are denigrated in court and in the media, and they find no support anywhere.

I love how these types of women (so called mothers) who don’t see that she has managed to teach her children to either hate or disparage their own father.  Good mom.  She should be proud of herself.  Why can’t we criticize her for failing to do her part to keep the father in the lives of the children.  Obviously, she failed in this tiny duty, miserably.

We don’t celebrate Father’s Day at our house. My three sons dread the advertising-soaked holiday the way many singles loathe Valentine’s Day. It’s not that they have lost their father to death, disease, military service, an act of God or misfortune of any stripe. It is that their father has chosen to lose them.

As it is for many fatherless families across the globe, this Sunday is a reminder that fatherhood should be more than a biological feat; it is a primal moral responsibility and one that many men regrettably fail to fulfill. Still, there is a remedy.

via Father’s Day should be a reminder of paternal responsibility – Chicago Tribune.

Here is some commentary on the Thomas Ball case.

If you don’t know the story by now, Thomas Ball is the New Hampshire man who set himself on fire on the courthouse steps and left a 15-page note outlining the abusive family court system and his reasons for killing himself. Many of you have emailed or commented about this case (thanks very much) here and I think his story is an important one in understanding the psychological and physical damage that the law is inflicting on men in this country. Here is an excerpt from Mr. Ball’s statement that I think makes some very salient points:

I am due in court the end of the month. The ex-wife lawyer wants me jailed for back child support. The amount ranges from $2,200. to $3,000. depending on who you ask. Not big money after being separated over ten years and unemployed for the last two. But I do owe it. If I show up for court without the money and the lawyer say jail, then the judge will have the bailiff take me into custody. There really are no surprises on how the system works once you know how it actually works. And it does not work anything like they taught you in high school history or civics class.

I could have made a phone call or two and borrowed the money. But I am done being bullied for being a man. I cannot believe these people in Washington are so stupid to think they can govern Americans with an iron fist. Twenty-five years ago, the federal government declared war on men. It is time now to see how committed they are to their cause. It is time, boys, to give them a taste of war.

I saw over at Antifeminist tech blog that some are trying to cover up this story, while others, such as man-hater Amanda Marcotte said that Bell’s goal was to use his fiery death to “make his ex-wife’s life a living hell.” This twisted “analysis” is hardly worthy of a response, but I will say that if Ball wanted to make his ex’s life a living hell, killing himself was not the answer. The ex may not have even given a damn.

To read the entire article:

via My take on the Thomas Ball case | Dr. Helen Smith.

In both the US and in Britain, mainstream politicians have been almost criminal in the way they have demonized fathers merely as a way of cultivating the support of rabid female feminist type politicians and advocates.  Essentially, people like Al Gore, David Cameron and the like are nothing by whores and pussies.  It is disgusting that we still see politicians dissing fathers.

 

Fathers’ rights campaigner Matt O’Connor thinks the government is waging a war on fathers; Tory MP Bill Cash defends his party’s stance. Emine Saner hosts

Conservative MP Bill Cash and fathers’ rights campaigner Matt O’Connor discuss the goverment’s record on families. Photograph: Graeme Robertson

Earlier this week David Cameron criticised “runaway dads”, saying they should be “stigmatised” in the same way as drink-drivers. Emine Saner brings together the founder of Fathers 4 Justice Matt O’Connor (pictured far right) and Tory MP Bill Cash – fathers of three each – to discuss the government’s record on families.

Matt O’Connor: Last year, the Conservative party made a series of explicit commitments with regard to family law reform. Those commitments have been reneged on. That’s bad enough, but then for Cameron, who is fighting a war in Afghanistan, is fighting a war in Libya, but at home seems to be waging a war on fathers … I’m outraged. He didn’t seek to separate out the fathers who struggle to see their children, who have court orders allowing them to see them but are denied access. He didn’t say he recognised that was a problem, he just besmirched fathers and played to the stereotype of the deadbeat dad.

Bill Cash: The responsibility for making sure children are given a fair chance in life is equally dependent on the behaviour of fathers and mothers. Focusing on the fathers is not getting the argument straight, because there are faults on both sides. There is also enormous fault with what used to be the CSA [now the Child Maintenance Enforcement Commission]. There is a controversial provision in the bill that wasn’t debated– the idea of a contribution towards the cost [of pursuing the other parent: under plans, single parents – mostly mothers – will be asked to pay £100 upfront towards that cost, and the CMEC will take "commission" from future payments]. I’m waiting to see what the House of Lords does with it. But fundamentally, I’ll never be able to stand up and support fathers who deliberately shy away from their responsibilities. I believe in families, and I know David Cameron does, too.

MO: He’s not showing it. Look at scrapping child benefit [for higher earners]. You’ve still got a prime minister masquerading under the cover of saying he is pro-marriage and pro-family, while demonising fathers. Doesn’t the Conservative party recognise the damage these comments make?

BC: To me, fathers walking away from their children is as bad as it gets.

MO: We never hear you or your party say anything about feckless mothers having children with multiple partners. One in three children in this country are growing up without a father. We’ve got the highest rate of young offending, we’ve got a teenage abortion epidemic. We’ve got boys growing up without a father, who are going to repeat the same behavioural pattern, saying ‘dads aren’t important’. Cameron’s message, demonising fathers, is so profoundly damaging. The Conservatives came in saying you’re pro-family, you’ll sort out the family courts, and you’ve done nothing, it’s a betrayal.

BC: This is an issue about children. The CMEC actually has a responsibility to get it right, and it’s not. That needs reform.

MO: The CMEC can’t work because what Cameron is doing, which is what Brown and Blair did, is to give fathers the status of sperm banks and cashpoints. You can abandon your children tomorrow, provided you pay. Child support should be emotional and financial, and until that enlightened approach becomes currency it is never going to change. There is a simple way of recognising the authority of parents and putting fathers back into the family, and that’s for this government to give children the right, in law, to see both parents. And grandparents. Explain how it can be in the child’s interests to deny access. We have a regime in this country – secret family courts – that is as brutal and barbaric, in my opinion, as any around the world.

BC: It’s a moral issue, it’s about the most fundamental human rights. I have a problem accepting the idea children should not be allowed to see both parents, except in circumstances where there are safety issues and there is violence within the family. I really do not think it’s a fathers-only issue.

MO: What we’ve been campaigning for is to take the conflict out of the court system. We want a court system that is based on transparency and scrutiny. We have an unelected, unaccountable judiciary operating in complete secrecy. If you put fathers back into the lives of their children, you also make them responsible for the financial and emotional upbringing of their children.

BC: But there are statistics that demonstrate that there are a significant number of fathers who are, as David Cameron put it, going awol.

MO: I do not accept that. A lot of fathers walk away because they know the misery and suffering and living bereavement of not being able to see their children. Why does your leader continue to demonise dads? I have had thousands of emails in the last few days since David Cameron’s comments, saying: ‘We would love to be responsible for our children, as long as we were given the chance.’

Emine Saner: Bill, do you think Matt is overstating the case of fathers? Only 40% of single parents receive maintenance from the other parent. That suggests there are quite a few feckless fathers …

MO: It suggests there are a lot of children growing up without a father.

ES: It suggests there are a lot of men who aren’t paying maintenance.

MO: You have to look at the circumstances. Are those men who have walked away, the stereotype deadbeats? Are they men who have tried to see their children and been denied access? There are a lot of women out there who say a man is superfluous to their requirements, they do not want a father.

BC: Anyone who says that is not looking at the interests of the child.

MO: The state is already the surrogate father. It comes in and provides the benefits. What I want are children to have the love, emotional and financial support from both parents, and until we change the mentality of war on fathers that won’t change. Family breakdown is an issue, and we need to find a solution based on reconciliation. David Cameron wasn’t attacking single mothers, he was attacking fathers.

BC: I wouldn’t call it attacking. You and I agree that there is a recognition that in certain circumstances fathers should rightly be criticised.

MO: So should mothers. Can we stop talking about fathers?

BC: I do agree that this is largely a problem of family law. I think it’s a tragedy that we’re still having this discussion and it’s not a problem that has been resolved.

MO: What we need is justice, to be treated equally in the eyes of the law. I’ll tell you how serious I am. I want you to pass a message on to David Cameron. On 10 July, I will be outside his house starting a hunger strike about this issue. That’s how strongly I feel.

BC: I’ll certainly be under an obligation to make sure that message gets to him.

The conversation: Was David Cameron wrong to attack ‘runaway dads’? | Comment is free | The Guardian.

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

Several interesting points that back up what we have been saying for years.  So often parents make the claim that the kids are better without all the turmoil that leads up to a divorce but instead, they handle that fine.  It is the divorce itself that is harmful.

Young kids whose parents divorce struggle with math, social skills and emotions such as anxiety and depression for at least two years after the split, a new study finds.

The research is the first long-term study to break down the effects of divorce by the predivorce, during-divorce and postdivorce phases. Surprisingly, said study researcher Hyun Sik Kim, a doctoral candidate at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, parents’ predivorce marital problems didn’t influence their kids’ social and school success. But once divorce proceedings began, children fell behind and failed to catch up for at least two years.

“The best thing I can suggest is that when we observe children of divorce, we need to intervene as early as possible,” Kim told LiveScience. “Because if children of divorce undergo a certain stage, then it is hard to make them catch up to their counterparts.”

For the children

Previous research has shown that divorce is tough on kids, with one study showing the experience doubled a kid’s risk of stroke over a lifetime, perhaps due to the effect of stress. But parental screaming and fighting are bad for kids, too, so the question remains: Is divorce ever good for kids?

Kim used data from a nationally representative long-term survey following kids who entered kindergarten in 1998 until eighth grade. He followed kids whose parents got divorced between their child’s kindergarten and third-grade years, finding 142 kids of divorce compared with 3,443 kids in intact homes. (Kids whose parents had been widowed or already divorced and remarried were excluded from the study.)

After controlling for factors such as socioeconomic status, teen parenthood and parents’ marital satisfaction, Kim compared the kids of “stable” and “split” households on measures including math and reading tests, teacher ratings of social skills, and teacher ratings of behavioral problems.

He found that kids of divorce began to struggle as soon as their parents began divorce proceedings. Over the next two years, the kids of divorce stayed behind other kids on math skills and social skills and they began “internalizing behavior problems,” that is, behavior problems that manifest themselves by way of sadness, loneliness, anxiety and depression, Kim found. [Read: 6 Scientific Tips for a Successful Marriage]

Postdivorce difficulties

Given that parents on the road to divorce likely have troubled marriages, Kim had predicted that the conflict would be reflected in their kids’ development.

“It was a little bit surprising, but when I looked the research about divorce and child development, there are some explanations,” Kim said. “For example, not all divorces are plagued with marital conflict.”

Another explanation, he said, is that parents whose children seem especially sensitive (struggling even without divorce) might decide to hold off on divorce for fear of upsetting their child. Thus, a large proportion of kids struggling with unhappy parents end up in the two-parent home group rather than the divorced-parent group.

The sample size wasn’t large enough to look at the effects of divorce by gender, age or ethnicity, Kim said. One 1989 study found that children whose parents divorced in the first five years of the child’s life were worse off than children whose parents divorced later, so the results may not apply to every age group. Kim plans to replicate the study with different groups of kids.

In the meantime, he said, there are good reasons that the divorce and postdivorce phases may be tougher on kids than predivorce discord. Custody battles, a parent moving away, and the shuttling back and forth between two new households can all cause hardship, Kim said.

Kim reported his results in June in the journal American Sociological Review.

via Divorce Plagues Kids’ Social, Academic Lives for Years – Yahoo! News.

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.