U.S. Agents Arrest Dozens of Fathers in Support Cases

New York Times ^ | 8/16/02 | ROBERT PEAR

[Don Joe]

Bears repeating:

"The courts serve to legitimize the anti-male vision of the left-wing harpies."

[DNA Rules]

The leaps of ill-logic associated with family court issues is amazing.

You hear, "Well the mother spent more time with the kids therefor she deserves sole custody".

That:

a) presumes that the mother spent more time, which is not necessarily true

b) conflates "more time" with "better parent".

c) ignores the fact that most parents who are reduced to Visitor status post-divorce spent way more time with their kids than what is to be had with a standard visitation order, so the "one parent, one visitor" arrangement does not accurately reflect the pre-existing parenting schedule, and therefor fails to maintain continuity for the children

d) in cases where the mother spent more time childraising, it usually correlates that the father spent more time earning the money/assets. Should then the father have sole custody of all money assets???

[GatorGirl]

Thank you SO MUCH for keeping the discussion on a rational plane. I had the chance to read some of your prior posts and I commend you for the one proposed solution I could find....

(I'd be interested in knowing why you didn't post it here--either you abhor redundancy or you don't want to open yourself up to attacks from the He-Man Woman Hater's Club by proposing a solution that respects the rights of all THREE parties to a non-intact family instead of simply painting the poor suffering men as victims and vilifying the evil women ;-)

I think your checking account solution is a good start, but wouldn't this open the floodgates for litigation over each and every little expenditure by either party? What about the "extras" such as music lessons, sports, camps, etc...? I have seen extensive litigation over the medical provisions of support orders down to the cost of a bottle of Children's Tylenol because the child's fever was not documented. (I'm not making this up!) Talk about unnecessary cost, heartache and damage to the children!

Here's are some of my ideas (in order of degree of "idealism")

1) Don't have sex out of wedlock (difficult in our depraved society, I know) and/or remain faithful to the marriage vows at all cost during the children's minority. (I think our friends on this thread would take the position that if a woman is "opening her legs" the man has no choice but to accept the invitation and only SHE is at fault for being such a "whore" so I guess this is just too Utopian for the animalistic among us.)

2) Allow parents for whom divorce is inevitable to craft their own solution in accordance with the family's previously established standard of living and needs of the children (I think that' s where you're at.) But as I pointed out (in vain), this solution presupposes that neither party invokes the involvement of the state by seeking enforcement (because support is not being paid) or visitation rights. This also presupposes a formerly married couple who can put their own petty selfishness aside and work together to meet the needs of their child. Plenty of couples do this and they are NOT involved in the child support system because they don't bring it upon themselves. They are not the ones who are complaining--the only ones who complain are the so-called "victims" of the system who have brought it on themselves by failing to adhere to their support orders.

3) Recede from "no fault" divorce back to a fault-based system in which the party who chooses to abandon the marriage would be required to rebut a presumption of parental fitness. (This system would still rest on the premise that one parent should be named custodial parent and one should be held financially responsible, which no one here thinks should happen, unless of course it is mama who is being required to pay!!! --hypocrites--)

4) Allow either parent to divest him-or herself of all legal responsibilty for the child. But of course our anti-government friends would have to concede that many would have no choice but to rely on welfare to meet the child's needs as a result of that solution.

My state has recently implemented some interesting provisions, and since this is a state issue, I can't speak to what goes on in other states...here if visitation can be proven to be historically more than the "every other weekend--one evening per week" variety, an adjustment could be made to the guidelines. Also, there is legal precedent for placing into trust any sums that would exceed the child's basic needs (we've had some professional athletes who have been ordered to pay thousands per month who don't wish to support the mom and her passel of illegitimate brats with the child support money). There is also precedent for requesting an accounting if there is reason to suspect that the support monies are being misallocated by the recipient. Not a complete solution, but a start....

Any other ideas??? As you can see, there are NO good solutions because the flawed family court system is not the disease, it is only the symptom. The disease is the breakdown of the family and that is caused solely by casual sex and the lack of personal responsibility inherent in divorce.

Thank you for the opportunity to bring this thread out of the gutter and address the issues in a respectful, rational way. You and Mountaineer seem to be the only participants capable of doing so....

[Orion]

Mother...Father, I don't care. If they owe child support, make them pay!

Please lay your finger on the part of the Constitution which gives the Feds power over child support enforcement.

[GatorGirl]

*yawn* your rant is way too tiresome to warrant a full response....


But I'm awfully tickled that you would think I'm trying to hide behind my gender to avoid your impotent attacks.....my point was that I find it ironic that you and your misogynist friends would attempt to align yourself with --gasp--Afghan women when all I've seen in the majority of the comments on this thread have been on an intellectual par with the Taliban with regard to the rights of women.

I should know better than to expect a rational discussion with someone so blinded by bitterness and hatred. God help you. Goodnight. GG

[CurlyDave]

0?@?0?k at the reasonableness of just one of these cases:

"A criminal information filed against the Oklahoma man, James A. Circle, says he earned more than $39,000 a year and had been ordered to pay $350 a week for a child in New Jersey.

. On the face of it, this sounds reasonable, but do the math. 52 weeks x $350 = $18,200 per year.

Just a hair under half of this poor guys salary has been ordered for child support, and that is based on gross salary. Tax deductions go to custoduial parent, so more than half of his net income has been ordered for child support.

How is he supposed to support himself?

[GatorGirl]

Congress has passed legislation authorizing Federal involvment with child support enforcement as a result of the Federal goverment providing welfare benefits to support children whose parents do not see fit to provide it themselves...

Neither Federal involvement with support enforcement nor Federal involvement with supporting people's children is constitutional, in my opinion.

However, the courts are the final arbiter of that question, and so far this legislation has not been found unconstitutional.

[Don Joe]

Whatever.

[Don Joe]

"Just a hair under half of this poor guys salary has been ordered for child support, and that is based on gross salary. Tax deductions go to custoduial parent, so more than half of his net income has been ordered for child support.

"How is he supposed to support himself?"

What on Earth gave you the idea that whether or not he's able to support himself is even a consideration?

[GatorGirl]

We don't know the whole story. Support guidelines are set based on both parties' salary. If one party's salary is significantly higher, the lower paid parent's share of the support goes down, but the overall support goes up.

What I think may have happened in this case is that support was set in New Jersey based on what this guy earned in New Jersey and when he moved to Oklahoma, he suffered a great reduction in income but failed to petition the court to modify his support obligation. Of course if he did petition for the modification but the court found he willfully divested himself of the ability to continue to earn the higher salary, they very well may have denied his request to lower the support. All hypothetical, of course!!

Of course none of us know anything about the specifics of the case. If the support amount was set by the New Jersey court on a completely random basis, then obviously that is a grevious error and a travesty.

The Feds are involved on a "crossing state lines" theory similar to that which makes a kidnapping a Federal crime if the perp brings the victim across state lines. As I posted to the person who was questioning the constitutionality of Federal involvement, in my personal opinion, the Feds should not be involved at all. But of course it's also my view that in a perfect world there would be no need for any sort of child support enforcement system at all because every child would be born into an intact marriage and remain in that intact marriage throughout his or her minority. It wasn't so long ago that this was basically the case...sigh!

[Robert_Paulson2]

damn that was good jack...

[ImphClinton]

Sorry the courts screwed you in your opinion. However you are responsible for the medical treatment of your children, even ten years ago.

I agree your wife is a bitch. She should never hurt her children to punnish you.

If you go to a lower paying job you had better go to court first and explain this decission to them and get their approval. That is a right you gave up in the divorce agreement. I have heard many fellow men brag about how they avoided child support. It discust me to no end. Many seem to feel no love for the children they fathered. They complain because their ex-wives spend the money this way or that. Who cares how it is spent. A court ordered them to pay it but did not order her to spend it in a particular way. Were she not caring for kids she could make far more in the workplace.
I see men working 16 hour days and complain that their wife spends the CS money on a dress. While they are buying new cars and thier ex drives a 96.

[Robert_Paulson2]

they cannot....
for it is not "in there"

[HiTech RedNeck]

I'm shaking my head in amusment.

Your carrying on would be amusing if it weren't so sad. How long will you fail to see the elephant in the living room of your "logic"? This "person" was not just scraping by, and it made not an iota of difference in the quality of life of her children what she got. In fact when she got paid the life of her children worsened because it enabled her pity party.

[HiTech RedNeck]

It really is starting to look like something out of

the

Dickens.

[IronJack]

Thanks, RP.

[right2parent]

Congress has passed legislation authorizing Federal involvment with child support enforcement as a result of the Federal goverment providing welfare benefits to support children whose parents do not see fit to provide it themselves...

Your getting warmmer. The federal interest, as well as the state's, is in recovering or avoiding these welfare costs. They recover the costs from those who had the means to help the custodial parent (to the point she is not impoverished) when he had the means. They avoid the costs by establishing an enforceable obligation that would bring the family above the poverty level (non-public assistance case). These awards are limited by the amount of the welfare payment that would have been granted, or it would not be justified under the program.

The guidelines were there to protect the non-custodial parent, not the other. The amount of the ongoing award or the amount calculated for reimbursement of past support cannot be so much that it impoverishes the non-custodial parent, hence, the guidelines, much like a limitation under other garnishment laws. If there is no public assistance awarded, or avoided, there is no public interest in establishing an obligation under this program or any other. The laws are not unconstitutional, per se. They are, however, unconstitutionally applied where there is no compelling state interest. Any amount above this level is more properly called alimony. This comes with it's own bag of problems relating to cause for the divorce.

[Don Joe]

"They complain because their ex-wives spend the money this way or that. Who cares how it is spent. A court ordered them to pay it but did not order her to spend it in a particular way."

Who cares how it's spent? Who cares if it's spent to provide for the kids, or, if it's spent to "buy something nice" for the ex wife?

Well, it would appear that the "mothers" don't care. And it would appear that "the system" doesn't care. Any by the same token, it seems that you don't care.

On the other hand, it seems that fathers care. And I care too.

You people are amazing.

[Don Joe]

"The guidelines were there to protect the non-custodial parent, not the other. The amount of the ongoing award or the amount calculated for reimbursement of past support cannot be so much that it impoverishes the non-custodial parent"

Good grief don't tell me anyone actually believes this hogwash!