May 2, 2008 by Walter Schneider.

The Times (Britain)
1 May 2008

Vengeful mothers leave good fathers powerless to see child, says judge
By Rosemary Bennett, Social Affairs Correspondent

A senior judge spoke out against child access law yesterday, saying that
the courts were powerless to help decent fathers to see their children if
vengeful mothers stood in the way….(Full Story)

Posted in Divorce, Child-Custody Awards, Feminist Jurisprudence, Child Abduction | Print | No Comments »

April 29, 2008 by Walter Schneider.

From http://marriage.rutgers.edu/Publications/pubtoptenmyths.htm

The Top Ten Myths of Divorce

Discussion of the most common misinformation about divorce

David Popenoe

1 Because people learn from their bad experiences, second marriages tend to be more successful than first marriages.

Although many people who divorce have successful subsequent marriages, the divorce rate of remarriages is in fact higher than that of first marriages.¹ [Sources]

2 Living together before marriage is a good way to reduce the chances of eventually divorcing.

Many studies have found that those who live together before marriage have a considerably higher chance of eventually divorcing. The reasons for this are not well understood. In part, the type of people who are willing to cohabit may also be those who are more willing to divorce. There is some evidence that the act of cohabitation itself generates attitudes in people that are more conducive to divorce, for example the attitude that relationships are temporary and easily can be ended.² [Sources]

3 Divorce may cause problems for many of the children who are affected by it, but by and large these problems are not long lasting and the children recover relatively quickly.

Divorce increases the risk of interpersonal problems in children. There is evidence, both from small qualitative studies and from large-scale, long-term empirical studies, that many of these problems are long lasting. In fact, they may even become worse in adulthood.³ [Sources]

4 Having a child together will help a couple to improve their marital satisfaction and prevent a divorce.

Many studies have shown that the most stressful time in a marriage is after the first child is born. Couples who have a child together have a slightly decreased risk of divorce compared to couples without children, but the decreased risk is far less than it used to be when parents with marital problems were more likely to stay together “for the sake of the children.”⁴[Sources]

5 Following divorce, the woman’s standard of living plummets by seventy three percent while that of the man’s improves by forty two percent.

This dramatic inequity, one of the most widely publicized statistics from the social sciences, was later found to be based on a faulty calculation. A reanalysis of the data determined that the woman’s loss was twenty seven percent while the man’s gain was ten percent. Irrespective of the magnitude of the differences, the gender gap is real and seems not to have narrowed much in recent decades.⁵ [Sources]

6 When parents don’t get along, children are better off if their parents divorce than if they stay together.

A recent large-scale, long-term study suggests otherwise. While it found that parents’ marital unhappiness and discord have a broad negative impact on virtually every dimension of their children’s well-being, so does the fact of going through a divorce. In examining the negative impacts on children more closely, the study discovered that it was only the children in very high conflict homes who benefited from the conflict removal that divorce may bring. In lower-conflict marriages that end in divorce—and the study found that perhaps as many as two thirds of the divorces were of this type—the situation of the children was made much worse following a divorce. Based on the findings of this study, therefore, except in the minority of high-conflict marriages it is better for the children if their parents stay together and work out their problems than if they divorce.⁶ [Sources]

7 Because they are more cautious in entering marital relationships and also have a strong determination to avoid the possibility of divorce, children who grow up in a home broken by divorce tend to have as much success in their own marriages as those from intact homes.

Marriages of the children of divorce actually have a much higher rate of divorce than the marriages of children from intact families. A major reason for this, according to a recent study, is that children learn about marital commitment or permanence by observing their parents. In the children of divorce, the sense of commitment to a lifelong marriage has been undermined.⁷ [Sources]

8 Following divorce, the children involved are better off in stepfamilies than in single-parent families.

The evidence suggests that stepfamilies are no improvement over single-parent families, even though typically income levels are higher and there is a father figure in the home. Stepfamilies tend to have their own set of problems, including interpersonal conflicts with new parent figures and a very high risk of family breakup.⁸ [Sources]

9 Being very unhappy at certain points in a marriage is a good sign that the marriage will eventually end in divorce.

All marriages have their ups and downs. Recent research using a large national sample found that eighty six percent of people who were unhappily married in the late 1980s, and stayed with the marriage, indicated when interviewed five years later that they were happier. Indeed, three fifths of the formerly unhappily married couples rated their marriages as either “very happy” or “quite happy.”⁹ [Sources]

10 It is usually men who initiate divorce proceedings

Two-thirds of all divorces are initiated by women. One recent study found that many of the reasons for this have to do with the nature of our divorce laws. For example, in most states women have a good chance of receiving custody of their children. Because women more strongly want to keep their children with them, in states where there is a presumption of shared custody with the husband the percentage of women who initiate divorces is much lower.¹⁰ [Sources] Also, the higher rate of women initiators is probably due to the fact that men are more likely to be “badly behaved.” Husbands, for example, are more likely than wives to have problems with drinking, drug abuse, and infidelity.

_______________

The information shown above is from The [US] National Marriage Project:

Leadership

The project is co-directed by two nationally prominent marriage experts. David Popenoe, Ph.D., a professor and and former social and behavioral science dean at Rutgers, is the author of Life Without Father, Disturbing the Nest, and many other scholarly and popular publications on marriage and family. Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, Ph.D., an author and social critic, writes extensively on issues of marriage, family and child wellbeing. She is the author of Why There Are No Good Men Left: The Romantic Plight of the New Single Woman (Broadway Books, 2003), The Divorce Culture (Knopf, 1996) and the widely acclaimed Atlantic Monthly article “Dan Quayle Was Right.”

The list of the Top-Ten Myths of Divorce attracted my attention because of the comments provided in Item #10 in the list. Somewhat more comprehensive and to-the-point views of the cited Brinig and Allen report provide more relevant information. For example:

The proportion of divorces initiated by women ranged around 60% for most of the 20th century, and climbed to more than 70% in the late 1960s when no-fault divorce was introduced….The Brinig-Allen study also explodes the myth of the brutish husband, finding, for instance, that cruelty is cited in only 6% of divorce applications in Virginia, one of the few states that still uses fault grounds for divorce….adultery cases are evenly split between men and women…. (”Look who doesn’t want a divorce,” Alberta Report, January 11, 1999, page 30)

Brinig and Allen, the authors of the report “These Boots are Made for Walking: Why Wives File for Divorce,” found that “who gets the children is by far the most important component in deciding who files for divorce, particularly when there is very little quarrel about property, as when the separation is long.” They found that to have or to be assured that they will get the children (and “child-support” payments) “the probability that she’d file increases to .69,” while “if the husband got custody, the probability that the wife files would decrease to .32.” (Table 7. How much do the numbers matter?)

In divorcing families with children, depending on locality, wives file for divorce in between 75 percent to 85 percent of the cases.

Note also the last statement under Item #10 in the list: “Also, the higher rate of women initiators is probably due to the fact that men are more likely to be “badly behaved.” Husbands, for example, are more likely than wives to have problems with drinking, drug abuse, and infidelity.”

That statement is pure speculation and not corroborated by any research nor by any citations of such research. The statement appears to be based on another myth, namely that women always tell the truth. That “truth” is largely debunked in the report by Brinig and Allen and in a variety of similar studies (e. g.: Divorced Dads : Shattering the Myths : The Surprising Truth About Fathers, Children, and Divorce (Hardcover - 288 pages (October 1998) J P Tarcher; ISBN: 087477862X ) Review).

For example, in the vast majority of cases wives file for divorce, and they file not because of adultery by their husbands or because they were being physically abused (the latter is theleast important reason of all stated by wives - alleged in only about six percent of the reasons given for divorce) but because they are bored with their marriages.

The myths and slander of men who are “badly behaved” and “are more likely than wives to have problems with drinking, drug abuse, and infidelity” are most likely founded in the myth that women don’t lie. However, even supposedly objective social researchers are not yet quite ready to examine the true circumstances of that reality. The impact of decades of incessant and all-pervasive indoctrination by feminists is often difficult and sometimes impossible to shed by those who are members of the captive audience of the feminist-controlled and -dominated education system.

Posted in Education, Media Bias, Divorce, Child-Custody Awards, Family, Feminist Jurisprudence | Print | 1 Comment »

April 24, 2008 by Walter Schneider.

Hello Tom (I presume),

Your inquiry, re: Father-custody - outcomes in children of divorce

Thanks for your phone call.

I am not commenting here in a specifically constructive manner, as far as the topic of interest to you is concerned. All I am doing here is to copy-and-paste a few of many relevant references listed or otherwise shown at http://fathersforlife.org. To be more specific would require many hours, even days of work. Sorry, but I cannot do that for you. I only have the time to point you into the general direction for the right information. (However, I am giving you a few items of general advice.)

You can find these and many other related references by using the search input field at the upper right-hand corner of virtually every web page at http://fathersforlife.org. The search string to enter is:

outcome children father-custody

Here goes:

• The case for Father-Custody
  By Daniel Amneus, Ph.D.
  The Case for Father-Custody is a well-researched and valuable source of information and statistics relating to fatherlessness. The book is accessible as a an easily navigable PDF file at Fathering Magazine

[The end notes in that book are an excellent source for citations relating to what you need for your case. The book itself contains many excellent quotes (see end notes for citations) that will provide you with exactly what you are looking for. Although the book is a bit dated, the information it contains is still true. –WHS]

• The following is a collections of links to more articles and study reports that focus on father absence or fatherlessness.

• Effects on children of removing a father from the life of a child., Center for Children’s Justice

• The Consequences of Fatherlessness — The [US] National Center for Fathering

• Effects of Fatherlessness on Children – Social Consequences.
  Statement of Bill Wood and Jay Gell, Children’s Legal Foundation, Charlotte, North Carolina

• National Review: Fatherlessness: The Root Cause: The link between crime and fatherlessness is astonishing, By Dave Kopel, Independence Institute

• Turning the Corner on Father Absence in Black America, A Statement from the Morehouse Conference on African-American Fathers; Washington, June 16,1999

• Fatherlessness is the greatest social problem in Canada, Canadian Children’s Rights Council

• THE FACTS ON FATHERLESSNESS, Prepared for the Fatherhood Foundation by Bill Muehlenberg, Australian Family Association - August 2002

• Transforming the Culture of Fatherlessness, by Rev. Robert A. Sirico, Acton President

• Boston Globe: The black rebellion against fatherlessness, By Eugene F. Rivers III | July 9, 2006

• Townhall.com: Fatherlessness A Problem for Kids, Not Mothers, By Maggie Gallagher
  Tuesday, June 12, 2001

  That is a fairly weighty collection of facts and opinions regarding fatherlessness. It is important to note that even the U.K. lately joined the choir singing praise of fatherhood, sort of, but nevertheless welcome after more than eight years of continuous slander, vilification and demonization of fathers. Here it is, the first pro-father commentary after about ten years in an official party organ in the U.K.:

thisislondon.co.uk: Married parents are best, admits Blairite think tank

That is all nice and good, although it is obvious that the U.K. is a late-comer in the debate on fatherlessness and may need a while longer to catch on to what is going on in that department.

It seems that Maggie Gallagher deserves the last word on what we should be after.

In the early ’80s, Becky Peck was one of a new generation of women experimenting with what optimists dub alternative family forms. She chose to use an anonymous sperm donor to create a deliberately fatherless household. Just her and her cuddly babies. Sixteen years later, she tracked down the DNA provider, David Ross. After making sure her motives were not financial (i.e. meeting his kids wouldn’t cost him any money), David was thrilled. Instant family — no diapers to change, no college to pay for. What’s not to love?

But why would a woman who chose anonymous sperm donation suddenly decide at that late date to attach a face and a name to the DNA? The kids, of course. In spite of all the love a mother could provide, they still longed for Daddy. Becky never planned on that. Too many women still don’t.

The actress Calista Flockhart, Miss Ally McBeal, adopted a baby. She recently confessed to the New York Post, “I want more children. I guess it would be nice to have a husband, too, and if you know where I might find the right one, let me know. But meanwhile, the baby is all I really want.”

Maybe so. But what does her baby want, or what will he want a year from now? Children’s hearts will keep fracturing until more mothers, especially privileged mothers, recognize that giving their baby everything he needs includes giving him a loving father. That’s the old, stubborn idea of marriage, the place where a man and woman pledge themselves in love, not only to each other, but to their future children.

As President Bush said so bravely and truthfully, “a child’s greatest source of security today is not only knowing ‘my mom loves me’ and ‘my dad loves me,’ but also that Mom and Dad love each other. If we are serious about renewing fatherhood, we must be serious about renewing marriage.”

But wait a minute, that means that what the children need comes first, and that mutual love between the two parents, marriage for life, that is, will be a necessary social obligation for parents! Exactly!!

Children’s hearts will keep fracturing until more mothers, especially privileged mothers, recognize that giving their baby everything he needs includes giving him a loving father.

Those quotes are from the Fatherlessness — Main Page at Fathers for Life.

There is more:

• UN survey on what ails the world’s children — The state of …

  Father custody children were higher in all outcomes (academic achievement and adjustment) than those in mother custody families”

The following google-search will provide more specific returns for the whole Internet (159 entries on the search-return list)

Using a search term that fits what you are specifically looking for reduces that to three entries on the search return list:

The search string: “better outcomes” children “father-custody” “when conflict”

The search returns:

[PDF]
The Future of Children

File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML better outcomes. The average for each group of children ….. mother or father custody is. inherently better for children, … www.futureofchildren.org/usr_doc/vol4no1ART9.pdf - Similar pages - Note this

JSTOR: Life-Span Adjustment of Children to Their Parents’ Divorce

When conflict between parents is marked, frequent con- tact with the ….. On a few outcomes, children were better off in father-custody households. … links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1054-8289(199421)4%3A1%3C143%3ALAOCTT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-W - Similar pages - Note this

[PDF]

Managing the impact of separation and divorce on children …

File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML
children’s adjustment improves when conflict declines after divorce (Kitzmann & Emery, …… Advantages of father custody and contact for the psychological …
auseinet.flinders.edu.au/files/resources/auseinet/divorce.pdf - Similar pages - Note this

You sounded as if you are pressed for time, but it also seems that you feel that by presenting facts in your favour you can influence the outcome of your custody hearing in your favour. Being pressed for time is real, but the assumption that you will be able to influence the outcome of a custody hearing is largely an illusion. On average, custody decisions are in about nine out of ten cases in favour of the woman. Facts have little, and endemic anti-male bias of the courts everything, to do with that.

I strongly recommend that you read the following book:

Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family

More and purchase information for “Taken Into Custody” at http://www.stephenbaskerville.net/

There is an important thing that you should consider doing. Get in touch with a local fathers rights organization. Here is a directory that you can use to find such an organization near you.

All the best,

Walter Schneider
http://fathersforlife.org

Posted in Divorce, Men's Issues, Child-Custody Awards, Family | Print | No Comments »

April 12, 2008 by Walter Schneider.

Ms JW wrote:

Please can you explain how Quebec Laws allow fathers and mothers who wish to avoid paying child support emigrate to your beautiful country.

Why is Quebec not part of the REMO treaty with the UK and other countries of the world.

Or hopefully I am totally wrong and you can kindly give me the contact of the correct office to contact and claim maintenance as his father has run away and RETIRED to your country.

Thanking you kindly

Ms JW

Hello Ms JW,

The short answers are, no, I can’t explain it but can only speculate on it, and, yes, I can direct you to sources of the information you seek.  However, there is also a more fundamental question that you perhaps should have asked but did not.  Why do laws exist that force expunged parents (usually fathers) to pay for “crimes” they did not commit, for children whom they cannot see, and for divorces they did not want or deserve?

Here are the long answers.

I neither reside in Quebec nor speak French.  Therefore I am not very familiar with child-support enforcement rules in Quebec and  don’t have precise and certain answer to your questions, but it appears to me that Canada has a reciprocal agreement with the UK, in relation to the enforcement of the collection of child support.  I do not know that Quebec is exempt from that international agreement.

If Quebec is not part of that agreement, that could be because family- and divorce law in English-speaking Canada and in Quebec evolved differently over time.  In English-speaking Canada, jurisprudence is based on English Common Law, while in Quebec, jurisprudence is based on the Code Napoleon.  That the evolution of family laws diverged somewhat in various portions of Canada is entirely possible and even a fact, as those laws are largely provincial and not federal matters.

However, that there is a difference such as that which concerns you seems somewhat incongruous.  With the aid of lavish and enormously generous government funding derived from taxes paid by all Canadian income earners who were generally totally unaware of the socially destructive unconstitutional laws with which they were about to be hit, the domination and control of Canadian jurisprudence by father- and family-hostile law societies and interest groups were foisted on Canada in the 1960s (e. g.: “no-fault” divorce against the wishes of the other partner in an ostensibly life-long contract, and the legalization of extortion for the financing of the filching of the children of the non-custodial parent - usually the father).

Quebec jurisprudence is even more rabidly father- and family-hostile than is the case in English-speaking Canada and other developed nations.  It is incomprehensible that the feminist interest groups and the feminist lawmakers that drive the increasingly totalitarian, anti-family family laws in Canada would have overlooked Quebec as a source of profit to be derived from reciprocal child-support enforcement procedures for the UK and Canada.  Still, it is possible - however unlikely - that the lawmakers (i. e.: legislators) in Quebec refused to be railroaded into the feminist-desired unconstitutional changes to Canadian family law to the extent that such changes were considered and advertised in international agreements for child-support enforcement.  After all, such laws are a nationa shame.

I suggest that you ask your lawyer the question of why it would be that Quebec is exempt and that you change lawyers if he hasn’t got the answer.

Failing that, you may wish to direct your inquiries to some family-rights organizations in Quebec, although the best avenue of success would probably be to go directly to the Quebec government or to the Canadian Embassy.  The most obvious agency that should be able to provide you with the information you seek would be the one you should contact through the web page that you perhaps visited already: http://www.csa.gov.uk/en/case/remo.asp

I copied your information request and my answers to some other pro-family and pro-father activists.  Perhaps they will provide more precise information.

Permit me to ask questions.  Did either you or your ex-husband break your marriage contract against the objections of the other parent of your children?  After separation and divorce, did you regularly and equitably share access to and custody of your children?

If your separation and divorce were the outcome of a mutual agreement between you and him, and if child access and -custody were shared equitably while the father was still present in the UK, then there was really no need for a child-support order.  There would then not even have been any motivation for the father of your children to “avoid paying child support [and to] emigrate” to Canada, right?  After all, what motivation would there be to escape from something that doesn’t exist?

It appears to me that the father of the children you had by him quite possibly and naturally tried to escape the paying of extortion money for goods and services he can’t enjoy.

Regards,

Walter Schneider
http://fathersforlife.org

Posted in Child-Custody Awards, Family, Feminist Jurisprudence, Child Abduction | Print | No Comments »

April 7, 2008 by Walter Schneider.

Dr. Albert Mohler’s blog features an entry today that is very favorable of Stephen Baskerville’s book “Taken into Custody”, a damning expose of the widespread corruption in the government-designed and -run divorce industry: a conglomerate of racketeering involving not only legislators, judges, prosecutors, social workers, police and bureaucrats but also a host of private-industry adjuncts to the government’s sector of the divorce industry, namely: child-support enforcement and similar agencies (in whom many politicians have a vested interest); psychologists; psychiatrists; mediators; lawyers; bar associations; law societies; universities; journalists; reporters and other interests in the media, and so on.

As Professor Stephen Baskerville describes in his book, all of those parties, especially those connected with the family-court system, conspire to intrude and insert themselves into families - even into the most intimate parts of family life - to expunge loving fathers from their families and their children’s lives, to apprehend and control children for the purpose of financially and emotionally devasting fathers (but not exclusively just fathers), to control women (for example, so as to dictate to women that they must choose between being married to the fathers of their children or to lose their children).

“Taken into Custody provides overwhelming evidence that a major reason for the existence and cancerous growth of what Dr. Albert Mohler calls the “Divorce Industrial Complex,” is the overwhelming greed and corruption that permeates the divorce industry.

“Taken into Custody” was popular from the time the first printing was released in the summer of 2007, but even now, quite a few months later, its popularity and appeal are still growing.  Last night the reader reviews at amazon.com for “Taken into Custody” numbered 37. This morning their number had increased to 41, all of them favorable and five-star rated. The most remarkable thing about those reviews is that amongst them is not a single one written by a family- or father-hostile feminist.  Just a few years ago that would have been unimaginable, while a dozen years ago Stephen Baskerville would have had a very serious problem with finding a publisher willing to produce and distribute his book.

The vast majority of the reader reviews originated in the USA, but quite a few are from reviewers in other countries, such as the U.K., Sweden, Australia and one with an origin identified as “International”.

There is apparently as of yet no review by a Canadian reader. I should have written one, but have not yet finished reading the book, having received it, finally, and after two inexplicably failed attempts, just a couple of days ago.  I will make up for my missing review as soon as I am through reading “Taken into Custody.”

The fundamental issues discussed in “Taken into Custody” are not exclusive to the USA.  They are endemic of all English-speaking nations (as Stephen Baskerville identified with numerous examples and citations pertaining to many of those nations).  Still, they are applicable to - to mention a few such nations other than the USA - Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, the countries of the former Soviet block, India, Japan, Egypt, Spain, Italy, France, Holland, Germany, Canada, South Africa, and so on.  The preceding list of countries is based on what is being reported to and discussed with me by fathers and by pro-father- and pro-family activists from around the world.

If you haven’t yet obtained a copy of “Taken into Custody”, get one, and you will find out that - if you dare to dream of having a family - civil rights and liberties are only an illusion.  You will also find out that families make up the fabric of society, and that society is being destroyed when governments engage on a deliberate war designed to rip families apart.

As I am reading “Taking into Custody,” I cannot help but feel that the views I have held for years are confirmed.  We managed in the ostensibly “free” West to install absolute totalitarianism by the government bureaucracy.

Posted in Shared Parenting, Men's Issues, Divorce, Media Bias, Child-Custody Awards, Family, Propaganda Exposed, Feminism, Feminist Jurisprudence, Child Abduction | Print | No Comments »

February 14, 2008 by Walter Schneider.

Military deployment often causes family conflict and serious problems with parenting.

The Army Times
2006 12 25

Changing their tune

Programs ease the plight of single leathernecks

…Some who marry while in the Corps will have a long-lasting relationship. Unfortunately, for many married couples, the stress of military life can cause an irrevocable rift and lead to divorce. Divorce, needless to say, has both financial costs and emotional strains for all involved. Financial expenses such as legal and civilian attorney fees, the costs of dividing property, possibly child support and alimony, and the costs of separate living places put even more stress on the Marine. The emotional stress associated with child custody and care issues and adjustment to being single again can be extremely difficult….(Full Story)

The Army Times

Custody hearing goes on despite deployment

The Associated Press
Posted : Tuesday May 29, 2007 10:36:15 EDT

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — While Spc. Mary Hollingsworth dispensed weapons at Camp Anaconda outside Balad, Iraq, there was another battle waiting for her at home.

During her deployment, the father of her 5-year-old son filed legal papers trying to get custody. Victor Diaz Jr. portrayed Hollingsworth as more interested in being a soldier than taking care of her son.

Hollingsworth shipped home from her National Guard duties a month early to appear in court, and she has custody — for now.

“I shouldn’t have had to leave before they did,” she said, referring to her unit. “I had to. I mean, we’re talking about my son.”….(Full Story)

The Army Times

Mom, AWOL over child custody, turns herself in

By Katharine Webster - The Associated Press
Posted : Friday Jun 8, 2007 6:07:47 EDT

CONCORD, N.H. — A New Hampshire soldier charged with deserting while trying to ensure her 7-year-old daughter’s safety at home surrendered to the Army in New Jersey on Tuesday, her lawyer said.

New Hampshire National Guard Spc. Lisa Hayes, 32, of Rindge, took emergency leave from Iraq in February after learning of possible domestic violence in her ex-husband’s home, lawyer Linda Theroux said.

The Army extended her leave briefly three times, but finally refused further extensions and charged her with being absent without leave March 25, then with desertion a month later….(Full Story)

The Army Times
2008 01 21

Editorial: Fix custody rules

A New York appeals court has upheld a 2006 ruling that should send chills through the ranks.

The ruling forced divorced Spc. Tanya Towne to give up full physical custody of her son to her ex-husband — simply because she was deploying to Iraq….(Full Story)

It is ironic. The problem of a parent losing his children as a result of military deployment has been around for many years.  Predominantly and almost exclusively fathers lost child custody on account of their deployment.  Nevertheless, it took the relatively rare case of a woman losing child custody to bring the problem into view.

The Army Times
2007 10 22

Handling custody after a divorce

Each state has its own laws on child custody, but generally speaking, there are two forms: legal and physical. Each form of custody provides a parent with different rights, and it’s crucial that parents seeking custody of their children know the different forms of custody and what each form means for them and their wallet….(Full Story)

The Army Times

Deployed troops protected from custody fights

By Pauline Arrillaga - The Associated Press
Posted : Thursday Jan 31, 2008 11:15:50 EST

It had become an unintended and heart-wrenching side effect of war: Some deployed military parents left battling on two fronts, for the country they are sworn to defend and the children they were losing in custody disputes because of that duty.

Now family advocates are hopeful that a change to a federal law will help protect these men and women in uniform from having to fight for their kids while serving their country….(Full Story)

However, there is another issue that none of the articles published in The Army Times address.  That is the problem of a man coming back after having served overseas or having even been a POW and finding upon his return that he has to face massive child support arrears and possible incarceration on account of that.

2003 04 04

The Gratitude of Home and Country

Military dads seek fair child support

By Marilyn Gardner | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor ; 2003 04 02

Like many military reservists, Mark Wetzel took a pay cut when he was called for active duty last year. Instead of the $31,000 he earns as a nursing assistant in a Philadelphia hospital, he received $27,000 as a Navy corpsman serving in Kosovo.

But one thing didn’t change: his child-support payments. A family court declined to reduce the $899 a month he pays to his estranged wife and two children.

As more National Guard and reserve units are deployed for the war in Iraq - 216,800 have been called to active duty so far - more noncustodial parents find themselves in the same circumstances that Wetzel did. If they fall behind in child-support payments because of reduced wages, they could incur penalties when they return home…. Full Story

The article in the Christian Science Monitor does not mention another consequence for children of non-custodial dads who served in the military.  It should have.  There have been numerous instances where family courts restricted or even prohibited children of servicemen and ex-servicement who are non-custodial dads from having access to their fathers.  The courts hold that their heroic fathers are trained killers and cannot be trusted to come into contact with their children.

There are other, related issues.  I recall that when I went to school that in every ten of the students in my school there was one who experienced that his father got killed or went missing in action.  The last 10,000 POWs returned ten years after WWII from Russia.  Many of them had gone missing in action and then tried to rejoin their families, of whom many had already declared them dead.

That problem still  occurs today.

2003 03 20

Another “privilege” of being a man.  Just in time for another war….

Iraq Blog [Raed vanished at the end of May 2003.  I wonder why and how.]

Things on Iraqi TV today:

….
-yesterday the last 500 prisoners from the Iraq-Iran war were being exchanged. I can’t believe they are still doing this, …that war ended in 1989. every Iraqi family can tell you a hundred heart br[e]aking stories about things that happen when you have thought you[r] brother/father/son is dead and he suddenly appears after 10 years.

:: salam 12:21 AM [+] ::

Posted in Divorce, Men's Issues, Child-Custody Awards, Family | Print | No Comments »

January 15, 2008 by Walter Schneider.

by Stephen Baskerville

Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, Jan. 2008

(Full Story)

The preceding link is to another article by Stephen Baskerville, “The Failure of “Family Policy””, based on his new book “Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family“, and to a most interesting discussion threat pertaining to the article.

Posted in Child-Custody Awards, Men's Issues, Divorce, Family, Feminist Jurisprudence, Propaganda Exposed, Feminism, The New World Order | Print | No Comments »

January 14, 2008 by Walter Schneider.

Barbara Kay, National Post  Published: Saturday, December 08, 2007

No other topics I write about so consistently provoke passionate personal response as those dealing with systemic discrimination against men. When, for example, I point out double standards for boys and girls in the health care system, or expose the use of bogus statistics around domestic violence, my inbox fills with male gratitude simply for acknowledging an obvious fact: Our culture is profoundly misandric.

Of the myriad forms of discrimination men cite, one looms over the rest: The egregious treatment meted out to fathers in the throes of contested child custody following the “no-fault” divorces most of them did not initiate or desire. My files bulge with stories of disenfranchised fathers ripped from their children’s arms and lives. They have lost their homes, their careers, fortunes, friends and reputations, often on the basis of false allegations of abuse (for which their female accusers are virtually never punished). I wouldn’t mention such anecdotal evidence, if the anguish in these testimonials didn’t jibe with objective data confirming the shameful gender bias that dominates the family law system….(Full Story)

In her commentary, Barbara Kay makes reference to the new book (but does not provide a link to ordering information for “Taken into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family,”) by Stephen Baskerville, president of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children.

Barbara Kay’s comment focuses on Canadian circumstances of divorce.  It may not seem right that she mentions a book written by a US author about the plight of fathers in the circumstances of divorce and separation.  However, the aspects of fathers who are divorced, divorcing and in any way separated from their children are not particular to US fathers.

The feminist war against fathers, marriage and the family is an international war fought intensively in all nations, especially in the developed and developing nations.  It is the key strategy for the implementation of the international agenda for the planned destruction of the family.

Barbara Kay urges that all men should read books like that by Stephen Baskerville — especially those fathers who look down upon divorced, separated or expunged fathers as being losers.

No one is immune:

First they came for the fathers, then for the mothers, and now for both parents in intact families. In the end all children will be in the care, custody and control of the State.

— Walter H. Schneider

In her article, Barbara Kay states: “If the system does not become equitable, don’t be surprised if men choose increasingly, and with reason, to play their trump card: Voting for equality with their condoms.”

That consequence should not merely be expected or feared.  It already is reality.  It is a desired consequence that the social engineers who have the world in their grip wish to use to achieve their ultimate goal, namely an 80% reduction of the world population.

–Walter

Posted in Men's Issues, Divorce, Media Bias, Shared Parenting, Child-Custody Awards, Feminism, Feminist Jurisprudence, Family, The New World Order | Print | No Comments »

January 10, 2008 by Walter Schneider.

My aplogies for not posting this earlier, but here, one month after the fact, is a message by Stephen Baskerville that requires you to follow its links.

 My new article, “From Welfare State to Police State,” has just been published in The Independent Review. This is the first comprehensive scholarly treatment of the Title IV-D federal child support enforcement funding system. It documents how federal funding is tearing apart families, driving divorce and single-parent homes, creating fatherless children, demanding patently impossible child support levels, encouraging paternity fraud, and criminalizing innocent parents.

TIR is not an esoteric academic journal. It is highly influential in public policy debates. Please circulate this to your lawmakers, the media, and anyone else involved in the child custody and child support machinery. Glossy offprints of the article are available from the Independent Institute and make very impressive pamphlets to give to legislators.

Stephen Baskerville, “From Welfare State to Police State,” The Independent Review, vol. 12, no 3 (Winter 2008 ).
[Link to Article]

This subject is also treated extensively in Chapter 3 of my book, Taken Into Custody.

Stephen

A 22-page article may seem a lot of reading to some, but no one will understand the intricacies and complexities of the evolution and cancerous growth of the child support system unless he does.  Let there be no mistake.  There is a unifying ideology and much networking amongst bureaucrats and  judiciary activists in the developed nations that makes the problems described by Stephen Baskerville generic and universal.  Here are a few quotes from Stephen Baskerville’s article:

•  Following ten years of welfare reform that was supposed to discourage unmarried childbearing and encourage marriage and two-parent families, these reports are perplexing news, indeed. Whatever the budgetary savings, welfare reform has failed from the standpoint of the family. The figures “clearly show that the impact of welfare reform is now virtually zero,” says Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, “and
  we are going back to the way things were before welfare reform” (qtd. in Wetzstein 2006).
  It has been well known since at least the Moynihan report in 1965 that welfare serves as a disincentive to marriage and an incentive to divorce and unwed childbearing. Yet no explanation has been forthcoming for why cutting back on welfare has failed to reverse the trend.
• Ignored thus far is how expanding welfare-originated entitlement programs have extended the subsidy on single-parent homes to the affluent. Moreover, the perverse incentives create perverse behaviors not only among the population, but also by governments.
• The welfare subsidy on single-mother homes was never really ended so much as it was shifted. Reformers essentially replaced welfare with child support, on the reasonable but largely irrelevant principle that fathers rather than taxpayers should be supporting their children (which is irrelevant for reasons we will see).
• Child support thus transformed welfare from public assistance into law enforcement, creating a federal plainclothes police force with no clear constitutional authority.
• In Maryland, government billboards announced, “We’re Looking for You, Child Support Violators.” Officials do not warn bank robbers or drug dealers that they are being targeted.
• Perhaps the most striking aspect of this mobilization is that the initiative came entirely from government officials. No public outcry ever preceded these measures, nor did any public perception of such a problem even exist until officials began to say that it does. The public never demanded that government take action, nor was any public discussion of this alleged problem ever conducted in the national or local media. No government or academic study ever documented a nonpayment problem.
• Perhaps the most fundamental disconnect between public perceptions and present reality is that whereas child support is invariably presented as a method for requiring men to take responsibility for offspring they have sired and then abandoned, it now functions primarily as a means by which “a father is forced to finance the filching of his own children” (Abraham 1999, 151).
• Data and the research assembled by independent scholars indicate that the problem [of child support arrears] is not entirely what officials and the media claim it to be. In the largest federally funded study ever undertaken on the subject, Sanford Braver demonstrated that little scientific basis exists for claims that large numbers of fathers fail to pay child support. Braver found that government claims of nonpayment were derived not from any compiled database or other hard figures, but entirely from surveys of custodial parents (1998, 21–22 and chap. 2). The Census Bureau simply asked mothers what they were receiving. No corroborative data were produced because none exists.
• Scholars largely agree that unemployment is “the single most important factor relating to nonpayment” (Braver 1998, 33; see all of chap. 4). One study team (Bartfeld and Mayer 1994) found that 95 percent of fathers with no employment problems for the previous five years paid their ordered support regularly and that 81 percent paid in full and on time. A federal pilot study commissioned by the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) itself also found no serious problem of nonpayment. A full-scale government-sponsored study was planned to follow up the pilot, but OCSE cancelled it when the pilot study’s findings threatened the justification for the agency’s existence by demonstrating that nonpayment was not a serious problem.

Those excerpts are only from the first six pages of the article.  If you are not yet interested to read more, then there is no point in quoting more, but if by now you are interested and concerned about the issue, it would not do justice to the article to quote more excerpts.  Read the whole article (241 kB PDF file)

Posted in Child-Custody Awards, Media Bias, Family, Feminist Jurisprudence, Propaganda Exposed, The New World Order | Print | No Comments »

January 6, 2008 by Walter Schneider.

We often receive help requests such as that by Lisa and George (not their real names) quoted here.

To Whom it may concern,

My husband and I met 10 years ago. He was briefly married to a women for 1 year and they had a baby boy.

After $30,000 and 3 years later in court fees, my husband finally received joint legal custody.

We have my stepson (now 11) on a one-week-on, one-week-off basis.

The week that we have him we must still pay the ex wife $120.00 and she spends this on herself. (FYI, she has remarried and has 2 more children of her own.)

She wanted my stepson to attend private school and took us to court to pay her more money. Of course she won, and the tuition 5 years ago was $6,500/yr (we pay 60%).

Now that my stepson is going on to highschool (Quebec starts in grade 7) the tuition is $10,500. My husband and I have 2 other boys. This is ridiculous.

Could a judge possible make us pay more? Can my stepson not go to a public school? We have no more money to give and we cannot afford to go back to court unless we are sure we can win this case.

My husband is so distraught.

Is it possible to guide me and my husband to any website, document or even someone we can telephone for more info?

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this.

Lisa

I offer generic advice in such situations and I did so now.

Unfortunately I cannot hold out much hope for you that you or any lawyer can get the injustices against George, against you and against your common children corrected.

The reason for what you experience is not so much a miscarriage of justice that can be corrected than it is a consequence of the implementation of the international agenda for the planned destruction of the family.

One may argue that if that is so, then such injustices should equally befall men and women.  However, the way this starts is that men and fathers are the weakest link in marriages and are therefore the easiest to be removed (and punished for wanting to be fathers in families).  The idea is to prevent the formation of marriages by scaring men (and women) away from forming marriages.  As that objective was promoted for two-hundred years and more by feminists (male and female - there are more of the former than of the latter), it stands to reason that first wives will not lose as much through the culture of divorce as their husbands do.  However, one of the biggest motivators for the creation of the devastation and privation caused by the divorce industry is no longer so much the goal of the complete and total destruction of the institution of the family as it now is - plain and simple - profit.  (See Stephen Baskerville’s articles on the nature and consequences of the war against fathers and families.)

The only ones who consistently win through divorce are the lawyers and the adjuncts of the divorce industry.  Let there be no mistake, judges are lawyers, too, and they win because the divorce industry has grown into a major sector of the legal industry.  Therefore they have become and continue to become increasingly more powerful and richer.  Be clear on this as well, the financial burdens placed upon you by what you call “court fees” are actually minimal.  The majority of your court costs that you had to pay as time went by were in fact fees that had to be paid by you not to the courts but to the lawyers you hired.  Furthermore, it happens very often that divorcing or divorced husbands are being ordered by the courts to pay their ex-wives’ court costs and lawyer fees as well.

Yes, women who are being financially rewarded for having become divorced cannot and will not in any way be held accountable for how they spend their alimony payments in the disguise of “child support”.

You explained that you have become financially exhausted and can no longer fight court battles.  That is bad news, because it is not very likely  that without a lawyer you can manage to get your court-ordered financial obligations disentangled and adjusted so that they become manageable.

I cannot point you to anyone in particular who can help you, but I can direct you to some organizations in Quebec that can help you with advice.  Check these links:

• Fathers Are Capable Too: Parenting Association  (F.A.C.T.)

Their links page (the links page contains listings for Quebec)

Pick organizations that have regular meetings of their members.  By getting in touch with those members at those meetings you will gain from the experiences of others who are going through troubles like yours or who went through them and got them resolved somehow.

You will not only learn what works and what doesn’t, but you will also be able to determine what your chances are and with which lawyers you can make the best progress.

You will quite likely learn far more from working with such an organization than you can from any lawyer.  Be careful with using a lawyer.

Lawyers generally work primarily for themselves, not for you.  Never forget the nature of your relationship with a lawyer you hire: you are the boss, and he (or she) is the contractor you hired to solve your problem.

Therefore, you need to know how lawyers work, what standards they use, what you want them to do for you, where, when and how and - most of all - how well it all needs to be done.

Just as with any other contractor (e. g.: a construction company for building a house), you need to be careful about how to select a lawyer:

1. Have a “blueprint”;
2. Present that to more than one contractor;
3. Ask for an estimate of the costs and of the probability of success;
4. Ask for references as to similar jobs done;
5. Compare the answers you get, and
6. Make your selection.

Things don’t end there.  You need to monitor:

7. Start dates and locations of court actions and be certain that the lawyer is prepared and will be there;
8. That your intentions are properly translated into legal actions, and
9. You need to have included in a court order for visitation or custody that the police will be required to enforce the provisions of the court order issued if the mother of the child obstructs the court order in any way or manner.

Here is another recommendation that I give to all men who come to me with problems similar to yours.  As crazy as that may seem to you, you must have a paternity test done before you do anything else (or as soon as possible and concurrently with anything else that you feel needs to be done right now).  The reasons for that are explained in the following:

• Paternity
• Paternity Fraud
• The Henry-Report on Paternity Fraud (2007)

Hope that helps (but write if you need more pointers).

Walter Schneider
http://fathersforlife.org
http://blog.fathersforlife.org

Posted in Divorce, Men and Women Work, Shared Parenting, Child-Custody Awards, Feminist Jurisprudence, Family, The New World Order | Print | No Comments »