Posted on 11/25/2002 10:36:53 AM PST by RogerFGay
Edited on 07/06/2004 6:38:12 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...
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?
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.
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.
I know, that's terrible. How does one know when it's harassment or not? How do we tell the difference?
It breaks my heart for the kids involved.. We all know this abuse/punish style of behaviour goes both ways....Like I said a second ago..how do we figure out a way to prevent or simply detect abuse of the family court system?
So yes... I don't understand the violence.
Even though I agree that a man is morally obligated to support his children and that it is his nature to do so, I have deep concerns about legal enforcement of such an obligation. Especially when men are being ordered to get a job or go to jail. It sounds a lot like slavery. If anything, when push comes to shove, the only one who should be the servant of another is the child.
If a man fails to care for his own children, he is already going to lose plenty without losing his property and his freedom. Sure, a man should be held responsible for his own actions. On the other hand, there are plenty of women who feel that what happens inside their own body is nobody else's business. For those, I don't think the result of that which is no one else's business should be anyone else's responsibility.
There are many who are not so lucky. Many end up relying on state aid.
The surest way to end the welfare state is to force fathers, by what ever means are legal and necessary, to pay for the support of their children.
And no, I this doesn't mean I'm for unreasonable support orders. It simply means that the current success rate for collecting support is inadequate.
And for every annecdote of bad orders you have, I promise you, there are 10 hungry children on the other side of the issue.
Of course, giving a woman money so that she can support a child her way may be a very different thing than the question of whether or not to support ones own child. It's not only a question of support, it's a question of submitting to the woman's authority while still retaining responsibility. I'm sure you have given your ex has no cause to have a problem defering to your approach in any way. I just have reservations when it comes to the question of legal entitlement.
Having the team of the woman and the state replace the man as the ultimate arbiter of who truly owns the product of his work troubles me as a matter of principle. Your position is that it is the lesser of evils to have a man be forced to pay than a child to go hungry. For the greater good and all that. I understand that. Perhaps you are right. Some rights, however, are inalienable, liberty among them. Having the state and the woman become the boss about a man's property and freedom in this one respect may change the whole equation in many other unintended and unwanted respects. For me, the jury is still out.
Let me ask you this....
You have a problem with a the state's interest in protecting the right of life held by the child (by enforcing support orders which house, clothe and feed them) getting in the way of a man's property rights (or right to "liberty"). Does this mean you also take issue with the child's right to life when it comes to a woman's right to privacy (or right to "liberty" when choice is involved)? Which inalienable rights trump other inalienable rights? What is the hierarchy?
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