The Politics of Fatherhood

As one father reports being told by the chief investigator for the administrator of the courts in New Jersey, . .

Right. If a family court rules it has jurisdiction of a matter you don't think they do, your remedy is not to appeal to another family court, you go to district court. That dosn't mean you have lost any right to consitutional protections in family court. They have limited jurisdiction. You have to understand their limitations and powers.

I think your general concept is correct, but rather than avoid marriage until there is a mass change in female and governmental attitudes, maybe men contemplating marriage should consider trying to get their beloved to sign a prenuptuial agreement saying that in the event of a break-up no alimony or child support will be paid, any real estate will be split 50/50 and custody will be decided by.. an arbitration panel or something (or by the kids themselves, if over age 7, for example.) If every man insisted on this, then maybe females would be hard pressed to resist.

Pre-nups are not as rock solid as they used to be. A judge can disregaurd one of those if the right lawyers asks him to.

Child support cannot be waived as part of a pre-nup. The line of thinking goes that child support "belongs" to the child, and the mother cannot be held to an agreement to never pursue it. This is specious at best, because the mother is in no way, shape or form required to spend any of it on the child. Any effort to compel mothers to account for how that money is spent has been shot down before it could get off the ground. If there are arreages collected after the child is emancipated, the money goes to the mother. In fact, child support enforcement agencies have steadfastly refused to even print "For the support of:(child's name)" on any portion of the check. This is one of the most glaring outright lies the industry continues to put out in an attempt to cloud the facts that a large portion of child support guidelines is little more than disguised alimony.

Custody is viewed in the smae way. Once again, the "best interest" clause of the laws amke any agreement like that meaningless.

As a matter of procedure, you are correct. As a matter of practice, it's another story entirely. I've tried to find information on higher courts ruling that domestic relations courts have exceeded their authority on custody and support issues, but have not been able to find any cases where this has happened. If you know of any please correct me on that, as I don't claim to be the worlds best researcher. There was one case in Ohio that was faught for 7 years regarding adjustments to the support amounts:

"The one sentence, unanimous decision of the Ohio Supreme Court. In a shared
situation in Ohio, there is only one parent with a child support obligation that is presumptively
subjected to a child support order. The Court did not choose to say how a trial court is to
determine which parent that is."

00-1406 and 00-1730. Hubin v. Hubin.

>>It's only been within the past quarter century that marriage as a legal institution has been abolished<<

This point cannot be repeated often enough. Most people still do not understand the significance of "no fault" over the objections of one party.

There is no other contract that is anything like this one, where the parties to the contract are not bound by it if they don't want to be.

. . there is only one parent with a child support obligation that is presumptively subjected to a child support order.

This is true, and it is presumably related to an obligation established under the federal/state child support program for a dependent child. If there is no findings on the record of dependency, there can be no "absent parent" under that program, and the court would have no jurisdiction of such a cause. The reason you can find no published appellate opinions is because jurisdiction was properly desided at the district court level, or nobody has brought such a motion and appealed an adverse desision. I wouldn't say it's a matter of practice, without seeing such a case that was pressed on that particular issue, as we are now attempting to do here in Minnesota. I have seen a case remanded back to the district court for findings of dependency. I'll find you the case if you're interested.

Find: Hennepin County v Hernandez, 554 N.W.2d 618, 620 Minn. App. (1996).

This case deals with the receipt of public assistance and subsequent establishment of a child support order without a finding of dependency, but the same argument can be made for a non-public assistance case. Since then we have made a direct appeal through the administrative process under our MS 256.045 statute which allows an applicant to challenge an agency determination for benefits, and also an interested third party (obligor) when due process is violated. All states have similar statutes for this procedure.

The point is, findings made and presumably investigated by the agency must be available, on the record, to justify their authority to interfere with your privacy under this program. This is true whether the order was established by an administrative hearing or divorce court judge. Here is another interesting case dealing with the sufficiency of such evidence. The situation makes it easy to understand the importance of evidence supporting jurisdiction. SCOTT v. MCNEAL, 154 U.S. 34 (1894)

Proper constitutional decisions by the courts would do the trick. When I look at the thing armed with lessons from history, it's not impossible, it just takes a lot longer than it should -- slowed, but not stopped, by corruption. The momentum is building for the pendulum to swing the way it should, in the same places that created support for the reforms that corrupted the system in the first place. What I'm wondering, aside from the exact time frame of corrective action, is just how much damage the people who created the current system will experience. It's obvious that their intent was to operate illegally -- i.e. organized crime -- and to do so with immunity for as long as possible by means of corrupting government. Political organizations like NOW are immune from prosecution, since they have the legal right to express whatever opions they wish. But the people who lied, cheated, and stole for profit, along with politicians and judges who corrupted the system in exchange for bribes -- that's another story.

This point cannot be repeated often enough. Most people still do not understand the significance of "no fault" over the objections of one party.

There is no other contract that is anything like this one, where the parties to the contract are not bound by it if they don't want to be

Actually, one party, a father, is held to the terms of the contract while a mother taking custody and being awarded support is absolved of her obligation of fidelity. The way no-fault divorce laws have been implemented, and due process denied to fathers in custody decisions makes the contract meaningless. That's "why no one is married."

http://www.no-one-is-married.com/

But, I'm wondering what would happen if it was established by statute that the party who files for divorce cannot receive custody of the child. Flat-out, written in stone you get a divorce if you are willing to give up your children.

Someone breaking up a family (filing for divorce) without cause (no-fault) is evidence of abandonment. If a mother abandons a family, although she can under no-fault laws, she still has to show grave an weighty reasons why custody should not remain with the father. This is where the "best interest" standard is now commonly misapplied. When this practice was challenged, it was only justified under the pretence of an endangerment for a child left in his father's care. That's where such ideas as the "tender years" doctrine sprouted, although today, there is little justification for assuming a father isn't as capable as a child's mother to give it adequate care.

What's more, the tender years doctrine only justified mother custody for a limited period of time, and could be challenged by the father when circumstances changed. Father custody was universally understood to be a natural right, to be overcome by the accusor under a strict scrutiny standard. It could be argued today that custody is not a justiciable issue in most no-fault divorce actions.

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