A Request to Men’s Organizations and Allies for Support of Protective Child Custody (in English, Spanish, and French)

Amplify’d from www.xyonline.net

Male supremacist groups (“Father’s Rights”) have caused unspeakable harm to our country and to our children by encouraging abusive fathers, often with little past involvement with their children, to seek custody as a tactic to pressure a mother to return or to punish her for leaving.

“Shared parenting”, “friendly parent”, involvement of both parents and other concepts that seem fair and benevolent have instead been used to manipulate courts and legislatures to help abusive fathers. For instance, women are routinely denied custody of their children after being classified as “unfriendly” for asserting that the husband has abused them or their children.

Parental Alienation Syndrome (sometimes disguised by use of other names for the discredited practice) is an unscientific theory that is used to prevent investigation of children’s reports of their father’s abuse. Unscrupulous professionals use it as a way to make money while ignoring the destructive impact on children’s lives. Male supremacists debase the discussion of child custody issues by personal attacks and attempts to substitute repeated lies for information based on scientific research. NOMAS condemns the male supremacist tactics and instead supports the work of protective mothers to make safety of children the highest priority of custody courts.

Male supremacists do not speak for the vast majority of men and fathers. We invite organizations of men opposed to men’s violence against women and exploitation of children to join us in speaking out in support of protective mothers and for reforms in the custody court system so that children will no longer be sent to live with abusers or separated from safe, protective mothers. Read more at www.xyonline.net

 

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The New Battleground of Child Custody Reform: Shared Parenting

This article comes 99% of the way toward directly admitting that men want
“shared parenting” to eliminate child support!

Amplify’d from rightwingnews.com

Child custody and support laws have become more onerous over the last 50 years due to fewer parents staying together and women becoming equally as capable as men at earning a living outside the home. Instead of reflecting these changes, the laws have lagged behind, continuing to favor mothers over fathers. The laws generally award primary custody to the parent who spent more time at home with the children and less time working, even if the difference was miniscule. The other parent is then ordered to pay a crushing amount of child support, sometimes on top of alimony. In a small percentage of situations, usually where the father was the primary caregiver, this situation is reversed and the laws punish the mother.

Fathers have reacted over the years in different ways. Some fathers’ rights activists in Britain dress up as super heroes and scale public buildings to draw attention to the inequity. The founder of Fathers 4 Justice, Matt O’Connor, started a hunger strike for equal parenting earlier this month outside the home of British Prime Minister David Cameron. Some fatherstragically commit suicide. Last month, a distraught father immolated himself on the steps of a courthouse in New Hampshire, after mailing a 15-page “last statement” to the local newspaper detailing his final frustrations with the child custody legal system. The most high-profile victim of the child custody system, actor Alec Baldwin, helped bring exposure to the unfairness by writing a book about his experience.

Although a few small changes have been made to the laws within the last few years, due to exposure and the efforts of advocacy organizations, there has not been significant progress. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 84 percent of custodial parents are mothers, a figure that has not changed since 1983. This is unfortunate, because Canadian economist Paul Miller analyzed data on families and foundthat “parental gender is not a…predictor at all of any of the child outcomes examined, that is behavioral, educational or health outcomes.” The children often end up with “Parental Alienation Syndrome,” developing a dislike for the noncustodial parent bought on by the custodial parent. Long term studies of children in the U.S. and New Zealand have found there is a direct correlation between a father’s absence and teen pregnancy.

The latest effort to change the system calls for “shared parenting.” Although advocacy groups differ on how shared parenting would be implemented, it generally consists of making the default custody arrangement 50/50 joint physical and legal custody when parents split up, absent egregious circumstances. This would replace the current system which leaves it up to a judge’s whim to decide what constitutes “the best interests of the child.” Shared parenting bills are being introduced in state legislatures around the country, and several states now have some version of shared parenting. In those states, studies are finding that divorce rates are lower and the children are better adjusted.

In addition to passing shared parenting laws, there must be tougher requirements for issuing restraining orders and reform of child support laws. 50/50 shared custody should not include child support unless there are egregious circumstances. Child support creates an incentive to continue fighting. Neither parent wants to get stuck paying it, and some parents greedily want it as a source of income to use as they please, since there is little monitoring of how it is spent. Eliminate child support in all but the most egregious situations, and most of the fighting clogging our family courts will cease.

The “deadbeat dad” roundups by law enforcement of fathers who are behind in child support needs to stop. Many of them are fathers who were not lucky enough to be awarded custody, and are now working two jobs just to try and keep up with expenses and child support. Figures from the Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement solution lies in renewing the importance of marriage. He proposes eliminating no-fault divorce laws and requiring couples where only one spouse wants a divorce to work out the divorce agreement themselves. This would disincentivize divorce, since couples could no longer simply run to court to end the marriage, but would be forced to work with each other to come up with a custody situation they both agree to. Currently, marriage is about the only kind of contract where one party can unilaterally end the contract. The Center for Marriage Policy recommends shared parenting that would place a child primarily with one parent for the first half of their childhood, then with the second parent for their later years.

The small changes that have been made in recent years are encouraging. Thanks to organizations likeFathers and Families, last year Massachusetts, which has some of the most punishing child support laws in the country, reduced the interest on overdue child support by 50%. Legislation has been passed in several states around the country within the past year protecting disabled and military parents from child custody abuses. As families continue to modernize, and more women also suffer the effects of outdated child custody laws, the laws will be finally forced to keep up. It may just not be in our lifetime. This is a new kind of civil rights struggle, and one day our great-grandchildren will look back and remember their forefathers who fought so hard for their right to have meaningful time with both parents. Read more at rightwingnews.com

 

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175 Killer Dads: Fathers who ended their children’s lives in situations involving child custody, visitation, and/or child support (USA)

Amplify’d from americanmotherspoliticalparty.org

Update February 2011

175 Killer Dads: Fathers who ended their children’s lives in situations involving child custody, visitation, and/or child support (USA)

An update to our previous 76 Killer Dads, 88 Killer Dads, and 138 Killer Dads lists. This is NOT a comprehensive list of all U.S. fathers who have killed their children in situations involving domestic violence and/or child abuse. This list is limited to articles I have found where there is an identifiable child custody, visitation, and/or child support angle in the children’s deaths. Even then, I can’t claim that this is a comprehensive list of child custody, visitation, and or child-support- related murders. Quite often, newspaper articles just don’t provide enough information to make a judgment call. There is no time limit to the actual dates of death on this list, though most are comparatively recent— usually (but not always) with an article on the deaths appearing in the last three years or so. (Often it takes years for charges to get filed in these cases, or for cases to go to trial.) Note that there are several cases going back to the 1990s. Feel free to use this as a data base for additional research or to narrow the deaths down to the time period, geographic setting, or other criteria of your choosing. If you know of a worthy case that has been omitted, feel free to contact me and I will see about adding the case during the next update. This is very much a work in progress.

Because many have asked which cases specifically involve a family court which ignored the concerns of a protective mother or involved notable court and/or CPS incompetence/corruption, I have marked some of the more egregious cases of that type with an asterisk. Of course, the criterion is somewhat subjective, and is also based on having enough media coverage to discern whether these factors were present. Once again, that doesn’t mean that other cases on this list didn’t involve those factors. Only that I have insufficient information at this time. Additional information can be found on all these cases by searching the Dastardly Dads site. 175 Killer Dads: Fathers who ended their children’s lives in situations involving child custody, visitation, and/or child support (USA) ALABAMA Read more at americanmotherspoliticalparty.org

 

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