Death of a Father

Death of a Father

June 23, 2005

by Roger F. Gay

Perry Manley is dead. He was a father and a good man. He spent a great deal of time and effort over the past 15 years fighting injustice in family law, particularly regarding issues of custody and child support. On Tuesday, he gave his life to the cause.

After years of protest marches, filing lawsuits, and objecting to the treatment he and other parents receive, to no avail, Perry Manley dressed himself in military clothing and went to the courthouse with one last appeal - and a dummy hand grenade. After being noticed by security guards, and confronted by police, he placed papers on the floor that he wanted to present to a judge. Then, one twitch and it was over.

The tragedy of Perry Manley's life and death is apparently not at an end. Readers of MensNewsDaily.com will likely not be surprised by the aftermath. A local paper, The Seattle Times, went directly into spin mode. (article) Not one, but three staff writers, plus two contributing staff writers and a researcher went to work portraying Perry Manley as an angry, confused, and obsessed personality who was simply too stubborn for his own good. Perry Manley's death, they contend, was suicide - that's just the kind of guy he was.

For 15 years Perry Manley raised critical issues that lie at the heart of human existence; family matters, children, his right to sustain himself, to act as the father he was, and for basic freedom from arbitrary government intrusion - and he was ignored. It is clear that there are those among us that would like everything he fought for during his life to die with him.

The staff at The Seattle Times started their report with "Perry Manley didn't want to pay child support" and described his legal pleas as "rambling." He didn't have a problem that needed to be fixed. He had an obsession.

But RealChangeNews.org, in an article the week before, seemed a great deal less confused. (article) He objected to divorce on religious grounds. He did not object to supporting his children, but objected to being forced to pay arbitrary amounts to his ex-wife. Forced to accept divorce, he felt strongly that he should have equal parenting time and that under such an arrangement, child support should not be ordered. He strongly objected to having child support withheld from his wages.

But even RealChangeNews.org got caught up in the spin. "Three attorneys with experience in family law say Manley's legal arguments don't excuse a man from supporting his children. They agree, however, that representation of fathers has been atrocious over the years - something that's slowly changing." I suppose though, if you're sufficiently intelligent and have a few more facts, you can put two and two together from that. Fathers get screwed in court. Perry Manley, who had suffered unemployment, was not able to pay the large arbitrary amounts the system requires of him. Screw him though - throw him in jail (again) for non-payment. Things are slowly changing. I guess that means someone might consider doing the right thing when hell freezes over.

It's certainly no coincidence that his fight began following the federal family law reforms (around 1990) that created a national fathers' rights movement. Similar reforms have gone into effect in other countries with an international fathers' rights movement as a direct result. What is called "child support" today is a large arbitrary amount set by a political process intended to favor private and public collection agencies. The higher the amounts are set, the more these institutions profit. "Child support" is just a label. The amounts ordered no longer have any direct relationship to children's needs or often - as in Perry Manley's case - the ability of parents to pay.

Attorney Ruth Moen insisted that men manipulate the system as often as women, a position that seems entirely untenable. Her description of how things work is built on images of court proceedings that took place at least a quarter century ago. Courts based decisions on facts and feelings in individual cases. Litigants (parents) tried to "manipulate" the court by presenting their circumstances and pleading their cases. Today, decisions are made en masse by legislators and review committees. How is it that a practicing family lawyer isn't aware of such dramatic changes in family law that have been in effect for 15 years?

RealChangeNews.org: "Lawyers say shared custody is a growing phenomenon, but one that only works when the divorced mom and dad can communicate without conflict." Raise your hand if you consult a lawyer when trying to decide how to best raise your children. Just as I thought - I don't see any hands. Responsible parents decide how best to raise their own children. If divorced, they may need to consult a lawyer to help make the arrangements they need. If a lawyer can't help make those arrangements, then a lawyer is of no use. Perry Manley found himself in that situation - oh, so familiar to millions of parents, especially fathers. He represented himself.

To construct an image of Perry Manley as a rambling buffoon, the staff at The Seattle Times turned to his ongoing disagreements with U.S. District Judge Thomas Zilly. "Being required to pay child support for his three children, Manley claimed, was a form of involuntary servitude, where a man is forced to work to support a child he is not responsible for raising." Judge Zilly, along with several other judges, dismissed his claims that the state was violating his rights by garnisheeing his wages. In April, Perry Manley sent a letter to Judge Zilly accusing him of Treason. Manley said the crime was punishable by death and the letter was turned over to the U.S. Marshals Office.

Finding protection of individual rights AWL in the modern practice of law, he did the best he could on his own. In the years I've dealt with fathers' rights issues I've heard the effect of current "child support" law described as "involuntary servitude" many times and Perry Manley is not the first to conclude the laws are unconstitutional and to describe judicial support for these laws as treason. His arguments may have been technically incorrect, but I have never found these arguments illogical.

Finding current child support law to be unconstitutional is not particularly difficult. The amounts ordered as "child support" are arbitrary. They are decided en masse and applied in procedures that literally defend the arbitrary amounts against the intrusion of due process of law. Courts have preserved these laws only by taking the dramatic step of reclassifying marriage and family as public institutions and declaring that individual rights do not apply. (Thus, a fathers' rights political movement was born rather than fixing the problems through a correction in law obtained through litigation of an individual case - i.e. through "due process of law.")

Related: P.O.P.S. v. GARDNER, 998 F.2d 764 (9th Cir. 1993), U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals - child support reclassified as "social policy" to be legally treated like taxes and welfare entitlements rather than as a private interest subject to respect for individual rights. This case directly affected family law in the State of Washington where Perry Manley lived.

The arbitrary en masse approach leaves many fathers with unpayable debts. They face financial ruin when they cannot get orders realistically adjusted to circumstances. They are ordered to work most of their adult lives to pay off an arbitrarily determined debt - an amount unrelated to their children's needs - and threatened with debtors prison if they don't. No reasonable person would accept this debt and its enforcement procedures voluntarily. The issue of servitude is clear by definition. What distinguishes current "child support" from a personal obligation (incurred willingly by having children) is that the amounts are not realistically related to support of children and cannot be realistically adjusted to family circumstances.

Treason was intentionally defined very narrowly by the authors of the Constitution, does not include errors in judgment nor normally would it include intentional acts of corruption by judges. You cannot be charged with treason merely for defying the king - so to speak. You pretty much have to be a citizen who's helping a foreign force invade the country. But for someone not armed with this particular legal knowledge - even if wrong - the charge is not entirely unreasonable. (And besides; Maybe Perry Manley was just as correct in his interpretation as judges who canít find any reason to declare current child support laws unconstitutional.)

Judges have the power and the obligation to protect and defend the Constitution. That includes the power and obligation to protect and defend individual rights and the system of individual rights that is defined by the Constitution. No reasonable and informed person can now perceive the support of many courts over many years given to an alternate system, in which individual rights have been abolished, as upholding the obligation. By striking so directly at the heart of our political definition and identity, they strike at the country itself. The death of the Constitution by refusal to apply it is literally the death of the United States.

Corruption of family law started with a profit motive, but itís obviously had a much deeper impact. Perry Manley, like many others, recognized that it does not make sense to continue to ignore the problem. The problem Perry Manley and others face is that if judges refuse to obey the constitution and massively support corruption instead, who is going to do what to fix the problem? Perry Manley, a father and a good man, never asked to be part of this world of corruption. He just needed his problems solved.

Roger F. Gay