Another Man Down in the War Against Fathers

FatherMag.com ^ | August 22, 2002 | Roger F. Gay

[RogerFGay]

Another Man Down in the War Against Fathers

August 22, 2002
By Roger F. Gay

---

America's Most Wanted put it like this:

Catalino Morales is wanted for the attempted homicide of five deputy sheriff’s in Allentown, Pennsylvania and for failure to pay back child support.

On Saturday, morning, December 9, 2000, eight deputies in Lehigh county Pennsylvania broke into Catalino Morales' home to serve an arrest warrant charging him with failure to make child support payments. According to the deputies, Morales barricaded himself in a second-floor bedroom and fired two shots through a closed door. He then shot out a back window, jumped onto a flat roof, and onto the ground where it is alleged that he shot at a deputy. The deputy returned fire but no one was injured. Morales escaped the immediate area.

Police say Morales then entered a house in the neighborhood and held a family of four hostage for several hours. The standoff ended when one of the residents managed to wrestle the gun out of Morales’ hands and Morales fled the scene. A massive hunt ensued, including search dogs, helicopters, and Allentown police; to no avail.

On the night of June 20, 2001 a SWAT team in Hartford, Connecticut surrounded Morales in a housing complex and shots were fired. No policepersons were injured in the encounters. Morales was hit by three of 25 police bullets, permanently damaging his hand and his leg and endangering the lives of the nearby residents.

He is a father. He is a man. He is allegedly behind in making "child support" payments.

It is unlikely that the child support system will be put on trial in defense of Catalino Morales, but it should be. Under heavy influence from a profit-driven collection industry the process of determining the amount of child support ordered and enforcement practices have changed dramatically within the past fifteen years. Political corruption is rampant and obvious not only to those who have studied the system closely but to many fathers who have been forced into subjugation by it.

Millions of men are treated arbitrarily and unfairly to a degree that compromises or destroys their chance to maintain themselves, let alone get on with a normal life. Many cannot do what the system requires them to do. Add to that years of harassment and threats from a long list of strangers, including half-witted pimple-faced high school drop-outs trying to collect to make a commission and female bureaucrats, possibly former welfare mothers, who revel in the opportunity to emasculate men. There is no escape, no reason. Every politician says so. Men and women with more power than moral character constantly remind them that this is what fatherhood is all about.

Then other strangers arrive with guns and invade their homes with the intent of taking them prisoner. They are experiencing the horror of a dictatorial police state.

Catalino Morales is one of many canaries in the child support coal mines. Year after year we watch the canaries die yet the workers are not allowed to leave. Those among us who have the opportunity to communicate are morally obligated to pass the word. This system must be abandoned as quickly as possible whether the masters wish it or not.

In the early 1990s, millions of fathers first experienced the suspension of constitutional law in domestic relations courts and the transition to enforcement of arbitrary en masse central political decisions. The new system seems designed to ruin men's lives. Decisions are arbitrarily based on statistical projections that have no basis in reality. State governments are encouraged to take as much from fathers as possible in order to increase the amount of federal funds they receive. "Public-private partnerships" formed with private collection agencies that benefit from higher child support awards and greater debt. Industry representatives control much of the policy making process, including the design of most formulae used in setting child support amounts.

With so many people involved, there has been a predictable variation in reaction to the change. The early 1990s saw the rise of the fathers rights movement, class-action lawsuits, a surge in the number of appeals filed against child support orders, and new national conferences on fathers issues. State and federal politicians were lobbied constantly to fix or abandon the new laws. Members of the Washington State Legislature received thousands of pairs of baby shoes from fathers trying to make a point.

There were also reports of increases in suicide and violence. The early 1990s saw news reports of the first of the early morning raids on communities to round-up hundreds of dads to cart them off to jail. It saw shootings in courtrooms, lawyers and judges taken bloody to ambulances, and fathers barricaded in their homes surrounded by police.

In Dallas, a lawyer representing himself in a divorce case pulled a semi-automatic weapon from his briefcase and opened fire. While one father was barricaded in his home threatening suicide if police came too close, he was telephoned by a reporter who wanted to turn the conversation over to a police negotiator. Feminist groups protested, saying the government must not negotiate with terrorists. News coverage on such incidents ended. Billions of dollars were spent increasing security in courthouses.

Despite the best efforts of ordinary citizens, the system got worse. Fathers rights advocates were largely cut off from making their appeals through traditional media that continued an enormous propaganda effort against the so-called "deadbeat dads." By the mid-1990s politicians were confident that the public couldn't get enough. Child support was on the political agenda in every election year. Politicians in both parties continually promised to make life tougher for fathers and passed law after law to do so.

By the late 1990s life had become so desperate for a few divorced men (in more than one country) suffering psychologically from the loss of their children and constant harassment that they took guns into day-care centers and held children hostage. Do you now understand how it feels, they asked before being gunned down by police snipers.

Due to the enormous weight of one-sided reporting on the child support issue, many people are still quite unfamiliar with the problem. It is easy to find people who believe that errors can be corrected and orders adjusted to circumstances by a quick visit with a family court judge or through some simple administrative process. They have been brainwashed into believing that men generally avoid what are presumed to be fair and reasonable obligations to their children. It is difficult for them to understand that millions of ordinary citizens are fighting for their survival in the midst of a constitutional crisis.

The Constitution of the United States and the constitutions of the states define a system of checks and balances. Unreasonable orders are to be corrected on appeal. Unconstitutional laws are to be overturned by the judiciary. These are necessary safeguards against harmful, intrusive, and corrupt government behavior. But during the past twelve years the system has not functioned as designed. Everyone in government connected with child support, including judges, receive financial rewards for maintaining the centrally planned system and courts and prosecutors have cooperated to an amazing degree. This has created a situation in which no legal remedy for arbitrary and oppressive orders and overly zealous enforcement measures exists.

Some orders are so high as to be life threatening. They do not leave the person who is ordered to pay with sufficient income to support himself. Lives have been lost. But to create the order is not enough. Once bound, the system constantly threatens and harasses fathers who are unable to meet their arbitrarily assigned "obligations." Just give the situation more than two seconds thought. If you do not think that the system caused Catalino Morales to fire a gun and run for his life you do not pass elementary applied probability. You do not understand humans.

Unless the corruption in the system is dealt with and those abusing power and influence arrested and jailed, there will be more gunfights and more men brought down in the war against fathers. Some will no longer have the compassion for life that Catalino Morales displayed. Their instinct to fight when threatened will win out over flight. They will aim at police before firing and not relinquish their weapons to hostages. We will all be guilty if we do not hold those responsible for the child support system as we know it today guilty of conspiracy.

Copyright © 2002 Roger F. Gay

---

Roger F. Gay is a professional analyst and director of Project for the Improvement of Child Support Litigation Technology. He has also been an intensive political observer for many years culminating in a well-developed sense of honest cynicism. Other articles by Roger F. Gay can be found at Fathering Magazine and Men's News Daily.

[GoLightly]

Roger, with respect to the proposed changes of Virginia's statutes, I see the provisions for *voluntary* unemployment & under employment are excluded.

Follow me here. A custodial parent chooses to quit working to have another child. Not only is is a paying non-custodial parent going to get a negative impact due to additional financial obligations in the other household (an extra mouth to feed), but they get a second hit due to the voluntary unemployment or under-employment by the other parent.

Am I missing something?

[Brytani]

On the other hand, any judge who turns a parent into a visitor or any parent who denies the other parent full and total access to their children including all relevant information on their health, school and general well being should never be allowed to have contact with the child again.

[Brytani]

Most states base child support on an income shares model, basically the more you make the more you pay. Yet there is only one parent who is allowed not to work, and that is the custodial parent. Regardless what federal law states (which btw, is that BOTH parents are financially responsible for the child) state allow custodial parents to either stop working or not work at all.

This really becomes a problem during a second marriage. As an example, take a couple who divorces and the custodial parent works after the divorce. The non-custodial parents CS is based on both of their incomes. Now if the custodial parent decides to have another child and quit their job, not only is can the amount of CS be raised on the non-custodial parent that same parent can actually have their CS raised on the notion that the custodial parent now has more of a financial burden due to the new child.

I hope you followed that line of reasoning the states use, since I've yet to see how the states can impose CS based on a child the non-custodial parent has nothing to do with.

[RogerFGay]

I'm strongly in favor of getting the feds out of just about everything, including legislating CS standards. One of my main beefs with most FR groups is their seemed desire to federalize things even more. They want to promote joint placement, so they attack it on the federal level, meaning they give the federal legislators reason to stick their noses where they don't belong.

I think you should watch very carefully to see how much promotion of federalism there is in the program called the Fatherhood Initiative. The Fatherhood Initiative is not part of the FR movement and is not an FR group, although I have read several newspaper articles that have misrepresented them as such.

I've met with people in the federal government and I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that they want to stick their noses in even further. People I met with encouraged a battle between women/feminists and men/FR groups and encouraged pursuit of federal entitlements for men in response to federal entitlements for women.

Real-life FR groups from what I've seen are not in favor of increased federal noses, so the two parties created the Fatherhood Initiative is a counterfeit organization to fake representation of fathers' interests. They are way heavily into expansion of federalism and sticking the government's nose right up everybody's ....

The thing real people say about the Fatherhood Initiative is that they have this really weird way of expressing support for fatherhood by being extremely anti-father.

[RogerFGay]

Perhaps you may think the goverment should never be involved, yet to believe such is also to believe that I, as a taxpayer, should be content in paying for the mistakes of others.

Well, that's a weird thing to say. If the government isn't involved, they wouldn't be spending your tax money on it. Here's the thing maybe you don't understand. Since the federal government got involved in child support, they are now spending more than $4 billion a year more of your hard earned tax money. The people who are paying child support through the new system are the same people who were paying before the new system was created. It's just costing the taxpayers more than $4 billion a year.

[RogerFGay]

Return to the constitution.

And what would be the Constitutional approach to custody determinations?

Parental Rights and Due Process

[RogerFGay]

Roger, with respect to the proposed changes of Virginia's statutes, I see the provisions for *voluntary* unemployment & under employment are excluded. Follow me here. A custodial parent chooses to quit working to have another child. Not only is is a paying non-custodial parent going to get a negative impact due to additional financial obligations in the other household (an extra mouth to feed), but they get a second hit due to the voluntary unemployment or under-employment by the other parent.

Am I missing something?

I think you might be missing the part about how sickening it would be to live in a country where the government tells you where you have to work, what kind of job you have to do, how many hours you must work, etc. I think if they don't back off from that leftist extremist BS, there's going to be a revolution.

[Brytani]

"I think you might be missing the part about how sickening it would be to live in a country where the government tells you where you have to work, what kind of job you have to do, how many hours you must work, etc. I think if they don't back off from that leftist extremist BS, there's going to be a revolution."

A portion of our population already lives in that country. That would be non-custodial parents who have been ordered not to leave their current jobs, or after they have been ordered to go back to work, and especially those who are placed in prison/jail for quitting or losing their jobs.

[GoLightly]

Read Roger's post previous to mine & follow his link or you're not talking about the same thing I am. It looked to me as though the proposed VA statute addressed your complaint, where the cost of living in the non-custodial parent's home was taken off of the top.

As far as parents "allowed" not to work... I know of several interstate cases that would make your position bunk. Meaning, as they are interstate cases, federal law applies In those cases, as long as the ordered obligation is paid, the non-custodial parent's working or not working isn't addressed by the court.

I know of cases in income share states where the custodial parent's income is imputed.

Finally, it looked to me as though *both* households are lible for a hit if the other household chose to have additional children (reduction if in NCP household or increase if CP household). If you re-read my post, you'll see I took that into consideration, which is why I said, it would be a second hit for un or under employment. Where is Agnes with her pie theory when I need her? lol

[RogerFGay]

A portion of our population already lives in that country. That would be non-custodial parents who have been ordered not to leave their current jobs, or after they have been ordered to go back to work, and especially those who are placed in prison/jail for quitting or losing their jobs.

Tracing back through the discussion .... when I suggested changes to Virginia law, I left the part out about imputed income ... leaving the door open for people to have free choice about their job and career decisions.

[GoLightly]

No, I'm pretty sickened by it, but then again, I'm sickened by parents that quit their jobs right before court so they can dump all of the responsibility for supporting their children on the child's other parent.

Ditto on the revolution, by the kids of those parents. Many times it assures that the kids are raised by themselves or the streets, as the parent doing it all alone has to work long hours just to put food on the table & a roof over their heads. Isn't that the revolution we already have?

[Brytani]

As far as parents "allowed" not to work... I know of several interstate cases that would make your position bunk. Meaning, as they are interstate cases, federal law applies In those cases, as long as the ordered obligation is paid, the non-custodial parent's working or not working isn't addressed by the court.

Besides the fact very few people have the resources to pay court order child support without holding some sort of a job, your statement does nothing to prove what I said as "bunk". The simple fact is, there is not a single state in the country, nor a single federal law that states a CUSTODIAL parent much provide a specific amount of financial support to their child, or that they must hold down a job to financially support said child. On the other hand, every state has a specific amount of money the non-custodial parent must pay every month and most state use inputed income if the non-custodial is consider "under employed". Again, this is not done to the custodial parent.

[almostheaven aka MrsDrumbo]

Also, non-governmental charities and churches to help truly impoverished parents...

Which didn't answer the question posed in #1013, the one you were responding to.

[almostheaven aka MrsDrumbo]

POV... you have advocated for unjustly treated fathers exactly where?

By not advocating for fathers or mothers. I focus on what's wrong with the family court system.

[almostheaven aka MrsDrumbo]

Have a wonderful, safe, happy, healthy, fulfilling, comfortable, engaging life.

So if you truly can't answer something or see past your own biased view, this is your response. Ok, you too.

[almostheaven aka MrsDrumbo]

On the other hand, any judge who turns a parent into a visitor or any parent who denies the other parent full and total access to their children including all relevant information on their health, school and general well being should never be allowed to have contact with the child again.

I'd say that would depend on whether the parent that was denied did something to warrant being denied, wouldn't you?

[almostheaven aka MrsDrumbo]

Well, that's a weird thing to say. If the government isn't involved, they wouldn't be spending your tax money on it. Here's the thing maybe you don't understand. Since the federal government got involved in child support, they are now spending more than $4 billion a year more of your hard earned tax money. The people who are paying child support through the new system are the same people who were paying before the new system was created. It's just costing the taxpayers more than $4 billion a year.

It costs either way...with CS or without. I'd much rather propose solutions than inane one-sided ventures that gain nothing.

[almostheaven aka MrsDrumbo]

The simple fact is, there is not a single state in the country, nor a single federal law that states a CUSTODIAL parent much provide a specific amount of financial support to their child, or that they must hold down a job to financially support said child.

Partly wrong and partly correct but with reasoning. Partly wrong in that any parent with a child in their care who fails to provide "needs" is guilty of neglect and there are laws...criminal laws...against neglect. Correct in that they aren't specified an amount. That reasoning being that since they are the custodial parent, the child being in their direct care, absent neglect, it is assumed that they are spending something on the child. With a non-custodial parent you cannot make such an assumption and they can't simply say pay something...so they set an amount.

I don't agree with the amounts that tell one NCP to pay $1,000/mo. and another to pay $100. I don't agree with the way courts set it in all cases. Neither do I agree with one-sided views of the issues from those who would choose to simply state it's ok to abandon children and never face a consequence of it.

If it's really so important for some to think we should completely trash CS, then I say we should institute the neglect laws. Walk on a child, go directly to jail. No chance to pay support or prove you can be a responsible parent. Walk away...slammer. It still won't help those children, will it?

[almostheaven aka MrsDrumbo]

Addition: I have views about the welfare system to that are in direct link to those CPs who aren't providing that assumed care. So don't go thinking that I feel it's ok for CPs who don't provide the care.

[RogerFGay]

No, I'm pretty sickened by it, but then again, I'm sickened by parents that quit their jobs right before court so they can dump all of the responsibility for supporting their children on the child's other parent.

The problem is that the extremists Democrats and Republicans refused to write reasonable laws. They stuck the federal government in where it didn't belong and created huge corrupt system that abuses fathers and supports organized crime. Now society is faced with this huge problem with government and a criminal child support industry that has to be dealt with.

If it wasn't for the corruption, intelligent, honest, knowledgable people could spend more time working with the laws to make the work properly instead of fighting corruption.