Posted on 06/03/2013 5:36:50 AM PDT by Kaslin
A new group is emerging that may finally change the way Family Courts treat mothers and fathers. Currently, the default in most states is to award the lion's share of the time with the children to mothers, and require the father to pay child support. This is unfair to fathers, and has resulted in massive abuses within the system, leading to fathers committing suicide and being imprisoned. A new organization I am a part of, Leading Women for Shared Parenting, seeks to remedy this inequality by having women and mothers speak up in favor of shared parenting. When legislators realize that women themselves are in favor of reversing this bias, they should finally change the laws to make the default a presumption of 50/50 equally shared custody.
Fathers' rights organizations have tried for years to change the status quo, but have not quite pulled it off, no doubt due to the growing stigma against men in society. They have been marginalized by being called sore losers and deadbeats who only want to lower their child support.
Continually, between 78 and 87 percent of both men and women support shared parenting – and there is no statistical difference between the sexes. Dr. William Fabricius, an Associate Professor of Psychology of at Arizona State University, discovered these results when polling residents in Pima County, Arizona. He also found that polls taken in Canada and a vote in Massachusetts revealed very similar results. But sadly, Fabricius writes, “there is a very sizable gap between current popular views strongly favoring equal custody, as reflected in polls and votes on custody allocation, and actual legal outcomes.”
The reason we don't have shared parenting is because it's a big business. Family law attorneys make too much money off the years of legal fighting, and the state bar associations help their own keep their greedy claws controlling the system by lobbying state legislatures to oppose shared parenting bills.
There is significant research showing that shared parenting is best for kids. There are over three dozen medical studies which indicate that shared parenting arrangements – joint decision-making and near-equal parenting time – provide the best outcomes for children. The studies also reveal that parenting time of every other weekend, commonly ordered by judges, is harmful to children.
The stereotype that women are more nurturing than men has been challenged by a study published a couple of years ago in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study found that fatherhood awakens men's nurturing side. Testosterone levels in men fall 30 percent after they become fathers, and even more when the children are infants and when the fathers are significantly involved with child-rearing.
According to a report released this month from Pew Research Analysis, women aren't staying at home anymore, dependent upon men earning an income to support them. Mothers are the sole or primary source of income for a record 40 percent of households with children. This is almost a 400 percent increase from 1960, when just 11 percent of mothers were the breadwinners.
What sister, mother, grandmother, or daughter hasn't had a brother, father or son suffer within the unjust family law system? Many women end up helping their male relative pay his child support and legal fees. I have no children of my own, but have spent money and countless hours helping male relatives with legal proceedings related to child custody and child support.
No doubt as a result of this broad unfairness, the women who are a part of this new organization surprisingly range from conservative Phyllis Schlafly to a former president of the feminist National Organization of Women. With agreement all across the political spectrum, there is a tremendous chance that state legislators will be able to fight off the slick lobbyists from Bar associations and pass shared custody legislation.
Legislators must also fight against pressure to substitute watered-down bills that do not provide for approximately 50/50 shared custody. “Joint custody” is often little more than a semantic difference from “sole custody.” Joint custody generally gives one parent much more time and control, as well as child support from the other parent. Unless one parent has committed abuse, serious crimes, or similar circumstances, the default should be a presumption of equally shared parenting.
Children – including daughters – who were withheld from their fathers while growing up, who saw their fathers living out of their cars and crippled financially, have now become adults and are saying enough. It is way overdue to stop appeasing Big Law at the expense of families. Now, a group of Leading Women is speaking out.
Child support the way it is designed encourages women to be single mothers, its merely privatized welfare. Republicans liking it should have been asking themselves why liberal feminists were agreeing with them on the issue.
Its simply a payoff to single Moms FOR BEING SINGLE MOMS that includes draconian enforcement policies under the dishonest guise that the money goes to the children, which is the opposite of the way child support is designed.
The worst scam I have seen a few times is married Moms kidnapping the kids taking them to another state or country then suing for child support after getting full custody thousands of miles away from the Dad who gets his paycheck stolen by the SECRET family courts.
We love our children too and want to pend time with them. I have known several fathers who had their children live with them AND pay child support because the mother wanted to run around. Just spent some time fishing with one of them and his two children this sat weekend as a matter of fact. I also know another guy that has been paying child support on a child that is not his for almost 15 years. He’s white, his wife was white; the kid is Zor looks Hispanic. He took her to court and displayed the obvious years ago when the hold was only 3 but the judge said he would not overturn the child support order because he had been paying it for 3 years! They had separated when she was pregnant. The judge wouldnt even allow him to get a DNA test to prove that it wasnt his child. THAT is a travesty.
We love our children too and want to spend time with them. I have known several fathers who had their children live with them AND pay child support because the mother wanted to run around. Just spent some time fishing with one of them and his two children this Saturday as a matter of fact. I also know another guy that has been paying child support on a child that is not his for almost 15 years. He’s white, his wife was white; the kid is or looks Hispanic. He took her to court and displayed the obvious years ago when the hold was only 3 but the judge said he would not overturn the child support order because he had been paying it for 3 years! They had separated when she was pregnant. The judge wouldnt even allow him to get a DNA test to prove that it wasnt his child. THAT is a travesty. All one has to do to see the effects of one parent homes and lack of discipline and order is to look to the prison systems.
I think the solution is quite simple. In cases of “no fault” divorce, the one that wants to end the marriage may simply leave. Leave the house, leave the kids, etc. The ONLY mitigating factor should be when the one that wants to end it produces more than 50% of the total family income. Then a simple pro-rated schedule can be worked out.
And, naturally, if we are talking about the middle aged guy who dumps his stay at home wife for a young hottie, this mitigated amount could be substantial.
How many women leave their husbands for another man, get custody and child support.
The other man makes good money, she has now got his salary for her upkeep and a great bonus check for child support, while the husband is broke and cannot afford a place to live.
If you want a real horror story I can tell you about the ex wife of my son. Ever hear of PAS? Check into it, Parental Alienation Syndrome.
Lemme tell them something, all of them who think “the courts favor the women” NO. The courts favor the children. I am forever explaining to people it is the children’s time with the parent, and kids are entitled to have an ongoing relationship with both parents, who apparently are too stupid to keep things together for the kids and too concerned with their own sex lives. It is not dad’s time with them, or mom’s time with them, the focus is on the kid. And I tell people this: if the kid doesn’t want to go, listen to the kid, get them in counseling to find out what is going on, give the kid a phone so if they want to come home while on a visit they can call mom, and then, be willing to immediately go get them.
Oh and all this “he is being brainwashed” crapola—what a joke. What, the kids have low IQ? Bull. If they don’t want to be with dad, or with mom, it is because they have a crappy time there, they are in their rooms in time out, dad is sitting in the lazyboy guzzling been and watching TV and the kid is away from his friends (which is what the kids really care about if their parents are too stupid to stay married).
You cannot easily construct a family from pieces of other families and step-families are very difficult. The new step mother resents the child support going to the first wife EVEN THOUGH SHE KNEW THE GUY HAD A WIFE AND KIDS AND TOOK UP WITH THE GUY ANYWAY. The kids need to come first. Period. And the step-dads really don’t like the wife’s kids either, with exceptions that prove the rule.
The issue seems to be child support, the dads are royally livid over being ordered to pay child support and losing the deduction. The deductions are negotiable but the IRS holds that the parent RECEIVING child support gets to take the deduction because they usually spend more themselves than the amount of child support received. And yes, child support can go towards roof, car, insurance, cable, internet because kids need all that stuff. This shows the dads are not, in fact, in love with their kids, they are in love with their money and with control.
The other thing is this: Even today with all the “advances” most men can make more money than most women. Even just digging a ditch or driving a truck. And men are supposed to be the providers. It should make a man proud to provide for his family. But no, these dudes want the woman to pay them child support out of her 1200/month office assistant job. Disgusting.
Let me tell you something else: Men are not wired that well for caring for children, some women aren’t either, but most moms are good for the kids, with some exceptions. Most moms don’t have a problem putting the needs of the kids ahead of their own needs. Dads, not so much.
Bull bull bull bull
No one is going to stay home on $400/month child support.
How about a second job?
I’ve heard plenty of horror stories from WOMEN victimized by ex-wives of their husbands. There are practically equal numbers of women who suffer from this courtroom bias as benefit from it.
50/50 Custody, or shared parenting is a good theory. But bad practice. It is not the answer.
The only way to effectivley solve child support and custody problems is to not divorce in the first place.
And there are plenty of easy answers to reducing divorce.
Shared parenting is a terrible idea (I speak as a child of divorce) and I’m surprised to see it endorsed on FR. It comes out the leftist concept that there is no difference between the sexes, that a mother and father are equal — the same ideology that fuels the movement for homosexual marriage. Children need a consistent, stable environment, with one set of rules. Bouncing back and forth between two realities is detrimental to the child. As conservatives, we need to work toward strengthening marriages and helping people learn not to have children before they are emotionally and financially prepared to care for them.
Bull bull bull bull
No one is going to stay home on $400/month child support.
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Who said anything about staying home with only $400 month child support?
As you know, the system has been designed to replace the father with a welfare check. Add in free lunches, WIC assistance, EBT cards, Section 8 housing, and a whole bunch of other freebies, and these welfare queens are doing better outside the marriage than ever before.
This is an evil process. It is destroying the American Family and is destroying America.
No, it’s a bad theory as well as a bad practice, see my previous post.
DIVORCE is destroying the family. The emphasis on a sex life is destroying the family, I do everything in my power to stall the divorce, we don’t file them, we only defend and I do not believe in it, I think it is horrible for the kids. I am a Catholic and I believe marriage is til death and if someone has to be running around, the other party should not and should stay true to the marriage.
What about the first wives victimized by the greedy paramour now “wife” who doesn’t want her new “husband” (meal ticket) to pay child support so wants him to steal the kids and have them live with her and their dad so she can make all their lives miserable?
What about them? Divorce is a mess. Courts often make it worse.
no sheet sherlock, that is why I don’t believe in it and try to stop it, so far have only convinced one couple not to do it, but I always try.
My steps to reducing divorces and restoring the greatness of America:
1. End No Fault Divorces.
2. End Marriage Penalty Taxes
3. End welfare benefits for single family households.
4. Increase taxes for single family households.
There is more that could be done. But if these simple steps were implemented; marriages, childen and families would prosper and the economy would naturally follow.
Try to stay civil.
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