Violence prompts closer look at plight of divorced fathers

The Star-Ledger ^ | November 25, 2002 | DAVID CRARY

[RogerFGay]

One divorced father committed suicide on the steps of San Diego's courthouse, while another set his car afire outside Alaska's child support office. Others, in an all-too-common scenario, killed their ex-wives, their children, then themselves.

Men who snap in such violent ways have few defenders. Yet fathers' rights groups, joined by a few academic experts, see a common denominator in these recent bursts of rage, and ask whether America's family court system could be partly at fault by deepening the despair of many divorced men.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Maybe the problem is really rampant and far too-easy divorce.

[MissMillie]

Not knowing the details of these cases, it's hard to understand what it is that is leading these men to violence.

Interestingly enough, a very small percentage of women and children who are owed child support actually receive (on a regular basis) all that is owed to them, yet we don't ususually see women acting this violently.

When my child support check arrived last week, it was shy by $363.72. The agency in charge of finding out why I received < 10% of the court order says it will take them 15 to 30 days to contact the absent parent's employer for details. (That's 15 to 30 days to make one phone call!)

I'm sure no one would argue that this gives me license to go shooting anyone.

[EternalVigilance]

I was the very first person to hold each of my children when they were born---and was blessed to form strong, unbreakable bonds with each of them.

The lowest point in my life was when my wife of 20 years walked out on me. I could have lived without her...the marriage was pretty well shot by that time...but losing the daily fellowship of my kids just about did me in...I was devastated.

So, the actions of these men are of course indefensible...but having been in their shoes, I can tell you that for me they are understandable...losing your kids is hell on earth for a parent who loves them with all of his heart.

People always can relate to the fact that the mother-child bond is so strong, and of course it is...but the father-child bond is treated as a second-rate relationship. That's wrong.

[wideawake]

Ssshhh . . . don't scare anybody. Just repeat to yourself "divorce, contraception and abortion are good for society" over and over again.

[Intimidator]

bump

[Freedom2specul8]

I've heard cases in which the child support was just so incredibly high! $300 - $500 a month for each child... That's way too much for some dad's to pay. For those good fathers who try to do this..it would be nice if "Mom" would be nice and actually let the dad pay an amount that won't "Hurt" him. Would it be too much to let the average dad pay $150 a month per child, provide health/life insurance and visit regularly... Maybe help with some of the clothes ..ie summer and school clothes.. (of course the richer, the higher the amount...)

[phasma proeliator]

"the father-child bond is treated as a second-rate relationship. That's wrong. "

I couldn't agree more!

[Chancellor Palpatine]

Roger the Swede is at it again.

My guess is that he is waiting for his rent boy to arrive while he types up this dreck.

[Mariner]

Child support that runs OVER $3000/mo IS the problem.

[thepitts]

it's hard to understand what it is that is leading these men to violence.

It would be, for the custodial parent.

[Cultural Jihad]

I'm sure no one would argue that this gives me license to go shooting anyone.

Bingo. Roger the Swede likes to tout these sorts of stories since people are all victims of society and have no free will or responsibility for their own actions, blah, blah, blah.

[SunnySide]

"...but the father-child bond is treated as a second-rate relationship. That's wrong."

Now men know how women have been treated since the beginning, as second-rate humans. Which is WRONG too!

[thepitts]

The agency in charge of finding out why I received < 10% of the court order says it will take them 15 to 30 days to contact the absent parent's employer for details. (That's 15 to 30 days to make one phone call!)

And you fully expect the government to solve your problems IMMEDIATELY?

[SCalGal]

Roger the Swede likes to tout these sorts of stories since people are all victims of society and have no free will or responsibility for their own actions, blah, blah, blah.

I thought he just hated women.

[HamiltonJay]

Or maybe these guys wound up divorced because they were violent nutballs?

I am not saying they were, and I agree that courts are stacked now a days against men, more often than not.

I cannot imagine the pain it would be to be seperated from my children.

I do know what it was like to be a child of a broken home, and I can tell you this much... while nothing is certain in this world, I make damned sure that my family is number one at all times in my life. Neither me nor my wife has any intention of it becoming any other way.

However if it should ever become some other way, I can guarantee you this much, no matter how much pain I would feel, I would never do something as selfish as killing my own kids just so my wife can't have them! Those are not the acts of a loving caring father, those are the acts of a selfish narcisistic pathetic excuse for a human being. It is no wonder people like that wind up divorced, if they are that selfish there is no way they could ever have been a good decent and caring father and husband.

[calenel]

There is no excuse for the violence or carnage, and the likely fact that the father had cracked means that they were just another of the victims.

That being said, I can understand the rage at the injustices frequently imposed on the fathers. I'm sure that the blame for failed marriages can be pretty evenly distributed between the spouses and that it is very seldom just one spouse's fault, and this post is NOT about whose fault it is.

When there are children involved in a divorce, the resulting arrangements are almost always the same. What happens in virtually every case and in every state is the assumption of culpability of the father. He is male, therefore he is wrong. The children are awarded like a prize to the mother, and the father is obligated to pay her a salary. Now, the mother may very well be the most suitable parent for those children, but even if she is not she is almost certain to be awarded custody. Furthermore, the father certainly has an obligation to support his children, but very often he is financially crippled by excessive mandatory statuatory burdens on his income, far beyond what it would actually cost to support the children in question.

I know of cases where people have had to pay child support for children that weren't even theirs simply because they happened to be married to the woman who bore them while a divorce was being litigated (the infidelity being the cause of the divorce).

I know of cases where the mother received custody of the kids in spite of being certifiably insane.

I know of cases where the mother has disappeared with the children and, because of the peculiar arrangements in the state in question, the father was not able to get any information from the state in order to track his children down, even though he still had to make (indirect) child support payments.

I know of cases where the children have been abused and neglected over and over by the mother or her flavor-of-the-week consort and the court will do nothing in defense of the children.

Certainly, many of the fathers are not good guys. But that becomes irrelevant since they are virtually never awarded custody. I know of cases where the father abandons a perfectly good job to reduce his own income to hurt the mother (and incidentally the children but that isn't his goal, just a side effect).

So, there are bad-guys on both sides, but the anti-male lobby has insured that fathers suffer the majority of it.

[HamiltonJay]

Now men know how women have been treated since the beginning, as second-rate humans.

There is so much inately wrong with this statement that I am not even going to begin to pick it apart... product of feminist brainwashing over historical accuracy.

[Saundra Duffy]

Oh, my God! My son could write a chapter in this book. You would not believe the crap he has had to endure. At one point, he was paying $1,400 A MONTH to court-appointed COUNSELORS. Counselors!!! He has been victimized and I'm not kidding. My heart goes out to these fathers. The court system is corrupt, inept and evil. God help us all.

[Ches]

"it would be nice if "Mom" would be nice and actually let the dad pay an amount that won't "Hurt" him."

That would be nice but the courts seem to think that the amount of support paid is their decision; Mom and Dad's wishes have nothing to do with it. As long as we have a system that rewards "Mom" for walking out the door and taking her kids with her, "Dad" is going to be hurt.

[Saundra Duffy]

but the father-child bond is treated as a second-rate relationship

You're right, pal, that is very wrong. God bless you. Hang in there. Your kids need you.

[Intimidator]

That would be nice but alot of mothers use the high child support to 'punish' the dad for whatever ill feelings they feel towards him.

[Rebelbase]

"I'm sure no one would argue that this gives me license to go shooting anyone"

Who has a license to go around shooting anyone anyway?

[Catspaw]

Let's be positive. At least in this article, Roger the Swede didn't try to deify John Mohammed as a poor, misunderstood non-custodial father who was compelled to murder 11 or so people in five or six states because his ex-wife done him wrong.

[Xenalyte]

Maybe the problem is really rampant and far too-easy divorce.

What you said. Do you have enough asbestos, or would you like to borrow some of mine? It's about to get WARM in here.

[MEGoody]

"Maybe the problem is really rampant and far too-easy divorce."

Exactly.

[EternalVigilance]

Thank you. I will...they mean the world to me.

We're going to be spending the weekend together...can't wait.

[Rebelbase]

Feminist.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

Thats true. He did it in the last one, and then I guess he felt too much heat from it.

I guess rewording it a little and taking out the John Muhammed lionization piece makes it a little more palatable here.

[Saundra Duffy]

I don't think it's always about the amount of money the Dad's have to pay. I think it's about the harassment that goes on by the ex and the court system in cahoots with each other. It's a nightmare beyond belief! If you have a vicious ex wife - AND THERE ARE LOTS OF THEM OUT THERE - and throw in a corrupt, inept and evil court system which treats the Dad like crap - you have the makings for a disaster. Of course, there's no excuse for violence but this system perpetuates it just the same.

[EternalVigilance]

Who has a license to go around shooting anyone anyway?

Bond. James Bond.

I know, I know...that was too easy... ;-)

[Rebelbase]

Ha, don't lose your sense of humor! Have a Happy Thanksgiving+1 with your kids.

[EternalVigilance]

I have a friend who was recently divorced (he caught her screwing around with another guy). No kids, thankfully. But part of the divorce decree was that he was supposed to pay off all of HER credit card bills.

But that's not the worst of it. He has not done well financially since the breakup, to the extent he has gone without electricity for the past couple of months, just to have enough money to eat, meet the mortgage and pay her something.

But that wasn't enough for her. She dragged him into court last week, and it was a very left-wing judge, who knew my friends political persuasion and that of his attorney (the lawyer is also the county GOP chairman for a very large urban county).

To make a long story short, the judge told him that if he didn't get a job, any job...even if it was at McDonalds...he was going to cite him for contempt and send him to jail for a year.

Unbelievable that this sort of thing can go on in America...but it does.

[Catspaw]

He wasn't working? Did he have some medical condition that prevented him from getting a job?

[EternalVigilance]

He has been severely underemployed in his profession. As I said, its not as if he hasn't paid her anything. (Not that the traitorous ***** deserved anymore of his money anyhow).

Hard for me to understand how a judge can force someone to get a job that is outside their profession...but I guess they can.

[Stand Watch Listen]

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[Chancellor Palpatine]

"Seriously underemployed" generally equals not going out and hustling up a job when times get bad, then laying around the house in torn underwear and ragged socks.

When times get tough, that is when men generally need to explore other options and do some "caretaker" type work in order to stay focused while hunting up new careers.

I hear that when men fall into the "not working quite enough" pit, their women lose respect for them as men, and will be more available to others.

[cherry]

"Others, in an all-too-common scenario, killed their ex-wives, their children, then themselves"

just who are we supposed to feel sorry for....some disgruntled exspouse who doesn't get his way and SLAUGHTERS his entire family...or maybe just the family he killed....duh???

this guy wants us to believe that its men given the bad end of child custody that end up being so murderous...the truth is that men kill their child-less girlfriends and ex's just as routinely....

maybe its time to start wondering why men are so very violent....

I am sure it has nothing to do with the male violence towards women peddaled and bought my millions of men in this world...no, it couldn't be that.

and no, it couldn't be the continual flood of bashing and hatred and disrespect that is spewn from the likes of Tommy "the lie " Lykas...or the "Man SHow" or even these sport shows that show absolutely no respect for women in any but as servents to their needs...

its this mind-set that "I am man" and " I will have my way" no matter what that prevades our society and reinforced daily ....

[Chancellor Palpatine]

Its a slap in the face to the vast majority of men who manage to deal with their divorces sanely, and who manage to not become losers.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

I'm willing to bet that very few viewers of "The man Show" go out and act like loser psychopaths. if anything, watching silliness like that implies a sense of humor - which is a good thing.

[HaveGunWillTravel]

Why should you resort to violence? You're the one with the kids and the positive cash flow.

In the state of Michigan, a woman has the right to kill her husband if he is threatening the life of her fetus, (punching her, etc.), then go out and get an abortion. All legal.

I read a case about a man who went to jail because he wasn't keeping up with his child support payments. He made $40,000 per year and he was required to pay $16,000 per year. This means that, after paying roughly $16,000 in state and federal income taxes and paying his ex-wife $16,000, he was supposed to live on $8,000 per year and continue to give his ex twice that. Meanwhile, she gets to keep all her income, the kids and twice as much of his income as he gets to keep. How do you live on $8,000 per year?

Also, when he fails to pay he not only goes to jail but the meter does not stop running while he's inside. When he gets out six months later, he is expected to cough up the money he was in arrears when he went in plus the $8,000 he racked up while in jail. If he doesn't pay right away, she can put him right back in and bury him even more. When he tries to get custody of his kids back and put a stop to the madness they say he's a bad father because he didn't pay his child support.

This also applies to men in cases who later find out that their wife had cheated on them and that they were not even the father of the children in question to begin with. If a few years have already gone by when they discover the truth, the courts consider the precedent to have been set and require the man to continue the payments anyway.

For those who know all this, some women realize that they don't really have to have the obligations of having a husband and can still get all the benefits of having one. In these cases, it is the system that encourages divorce in the first place.

A woman doesn't really have to get married in the first place. All she has to do is get a guy drunk at a bar and get knocked up. Since there is no such thing as a woman raping a man, there's no problem. Come to think of it, an adult woman can rape a thirteen year old boy. But guess what? Even if she goes to jail for raping him, when she gets out, she or her relatives can potentially get custody and the kid can be made to pay custody for his kid until his kid is eighteen even though he himself is not eighteen. In fact, this can happen even if the thirteen year old's mother is herself receiving child support for him.

Child support laws represent the worst form of indentured servitude enforced by debtors prison that has existed in America since the slaves were freed. Meanwhile, it only applies to men, not women. If have yet to hear of a single case of a woman going to jail for not paying child support. The only woman I know who has ever been ordered to pay it has to give her ex husband twenty dollars per month. I don't think she does.

You were saying something about not understanding why some men resort to violence?

[EternalVigilance]

You are making far too many assumptions.

[HaveGunWillTravel]

its this mind-set that "I am man" and " I will have my way" no matter what that prevades our society and reinforced daily ....

See post #41. It is women who have the legal right to kill their children when they don't want them and consider theirselves entitled to make men pay them under pain of imprisonment when they do.

[HaveGunWillTravel]

Waiting to be attacked from all sides for posting the truth. Tick tock....

[justshutupandtakeit]

Maybe the problem is these men were nutcases before the divorces.

Burning your Mercedes as a protest against having to pay child support? Boy does that convince. What an idiot.

[Desdemona]

Waiting to be attacked from all sides for posting the truth.

Why should you be? You have some valid points. You're cynical, but have some valid points.

[HaveGunWillTravel]

Well, you never know. Actually, I do realize that I'm pointing out the legal extremes but that's what I think. That they are points worth considering. I'm only cynical about the law. I actually believe that the vast majority of women are good fair people and are unlikely to be corrupted by the law. Most women I know don't even ask their exes for child support even though I think they should get it. I personally believe that a woman who really wants a child should get to have one and a man shouldn't let the prospect of being ruined by her and the state deter him.

[RipSawyer]

Isn't it amazing that in this day of "equal rights" earning a living is still all about the man and if he isn't making enough money the female reaction is still the same as it was a hundred years ago? And then a judge can order him to pay off her debts even though she was running around and there are no children involved? There is no excuse for a man shooting his children but I have known a few who might have felt justified in shooting their wives. Women can be incredibly cruel just as men can.

[ikka]

Guess what?

Court-ordered visitation rights by the father can be completely IGNORED by the mom who has custody.

The son or daughter can be sent to live with relatives, with no proof that the child support payments are actually going to support the child.

The father still has to PAY and PAY.