I was working on some continuing education articles today on legal issues and came across the case of Turner vs. Rogers that I thought would be of interest to readers here. In this case (which examines child support) according to an article on mental health and medical rights by Steven R. Smith, JD:
…the question was whether there is a right to have appointed counsel in such civil contempt proceedings. Typically, such civil contempt findings must be based on the fact that there is a valid child-support order, and that the noncustodial parent was able to comply with it, but failed to do so.
In a 5-4 decision the Court held that the state is not necessarily obligated to provide counsel for indigent parents facing incarceration for civil contempt related to the failure to pay child support. At a minimum, however, states must have in place procedures to ensure “a fundamentally fair determination of the critical incarceration-related question, whether the supporting parent is able to comply with the support order.”
There is much more to this case than the lack of counsel being provided that I will not get into here but I was disappointed to see that Justice Clarence Thomas authored a dissenting opinion:
Thomas further argued (with Justice Antonin Scalia, but not Chief Justice John G. Roberts or Samuel Alito joining) that the majority opinion did not consider the effects of this decision with respect to child support payments, and expressed concern that the majority opinion would undermine state efforts to collect child support payments.[4]
What didn’t surprise me is how many people (my guess is mostly or all men) are imprisoned for not paying child support:
A person being in arrears on child support payments is not unusual: in 2008, 11.2 million U.S. child support cases had arrears due.[1] The number of persons kept in jail or in prison for child support arrears is not generally tracked. Based on a publicly available collection of relevant data, an estimated 50,000 persons are kept in jail or in person [sic]on any given day in the U.S. for child support arrears.[2] Hence Turner v. Rogers does not merely concern a technical question of legal procedure. Being in arrears on child support payments is a situation that many persons experience. Moreover, as a result of child support debt, many persons in the U.S. are being imprisoned.
If 50,000 on any given day is accurate, it is unbelievable how many men are being kept in jail for owing money. Many people feel that child support is a different kind of debt but I disagree. Debtors’ prisons are long gone, so much so that people are actually nonchalant and even contemptuous about owing others money. They know that jail is not an option for them.
I believe that the jails are full of fathers because of their sex exclusively. We have a higher percentage of deadbeat moms, but few are held accountable and I doubt that many, if any, of the 50,000 in jail on any given day are female. Why does our society allow men to be thrown in jail this way? Are there that many chivalrous men and white knights like Thomas out there who believe that men’s rights end when it comes to reproduction? Are there that many totalitarian women out there who believe that a man in jail is par for the course and a source of smug satisfaction?
Given how many of our nation’s men sit in jail over child support, I guess the answer is a resounding “yes.”
We continue to legalize misandry but at what cost?
The whole “Family Court” system is in need of judicial and legislative review at the highest level.
Parents, almost always men, are deprived of their basic legal rights, which are designed to protect us from tyrannical prosecution and guarantee justice, such as due process, habeas corpus, discovery, jury trial, standard rules of evidence, and the right to competent representation.
In these “courts”, men can lose their rights to see their child, be ordered to undergo psychiatric examinations or counseling that they must pay for, lose custody of their children and even the right to spend time with them alone or see them at all, be ordered to pay large amounts of money, often time despite their lack of the ability to pay, under pain of imprisonment, with none of the safeguards taken for granted in other courts, and without a lawyer if they are poor. And the courts appear to operate under the principle that women are telling the truth unless proven otherwise, while men are assumed to be lying unless proven otherwise. If the only evidence is of the, “he said – she said”, variety, it is usually assumed she is right and he is wrong.
American fathers are deemed a special criminal class, so vile that they need special courts to dispense speedy justice, with none of that silly rights stuff getting in the way. They have even brought back debtor’s prison under the rubric that they are not in jail for non payment of bills, but rather for contempt of a court order to pay their bills.
This system is the biggest single injustice in America’s legal system today. It is a mockery of everything we thought was true about our system of “Justice”. Most men never realize the peril they are in by fathering children until they get hauled before one of these evil Kangaroo Courts. Where are the civil libertarians concerned about these victims of rampant injustice?
And before you say, while they are just deadbeat dads, they get what they deserve, remember, once the camel’s nose is under the tent, it isn’t long before you are sleeping with a camel. The authorities love efficient prosecutions where they always win, and there will be pressure to bring the efficiencies and fairness of family Court to all proceedings. All sorts of things could be streamlined if they had more efficient courts that did away with the rights of The People.
Consider the fact that all those metal detectors in court houses where put in because of family court judges being threatened and the worst part is it was more often than not justifiable. On a daily basis men have their lives ruined by self womanized judges arbitrarily and capriciously using two sets of standards one for men the other for women.
Here in California it’s even more fun. I know two different men who have children for whom, at one time, they paid child support. The one guy’s divorced, the other never married the mother in the first place. The divorced guy had some sort of divorce agreement with his ex-wife, where they each had 50% custody of their two children. Since he didn’t have a majority of either child (believe it or not) according the the IRS (for purposes of deductions for dependants) 50% of 2 is 0. Though this 50% thing was in effect, the children lived with their mother (by the contract). When they kids were young, the mom remarried, and the new husband was an army officer. This was back in the day, and so he got sent to Germany, and took his wife and her kids with him. My friend had joint custody of the children: that meant any time he wanted he could visit them, provided he could pay for airfare to Germany. When the daughter turned 14 and had a fight with mom, and then decided to live with dad, mom went to court and got the child support on the remaining child increased to about quadruple she’d been getting for him before his sister moved out. There was a hearing, and the mother was provided with an attorney from the county public defender’s office; my friend didn’t even have standing at the hearing. He sat in the audience and watched as his ex-wife argued the money she received should be increased, but he wasn’t allowed to respond. Finally the son had enough of mom using him to beat his dad over the head with, and *he* moved in with dad too. Child support stopped, but of course didn’t go the other way. This wasn’t because of misandry or anything like that; my friend worked for the county, and had documented income; his ex-wife sold arts and crafts for cash, and her husband by then was out of the army and worked in construction, mostly getting paid in cash. On paper, the ex-wife and her husband were impoverished, so they didn’t have to pay child support.
My other friend had an affair with a woman, from which a child resulted. Not the most responsible thing ever; but then again the man was an alcoholic. While he was still drinking the woman came to him a couple of times, and asked him for financial assistance for their daughter; he gave her money. Several years later (while he was still drinking) she filed for child support through the state. This friend worked in a municipal job too, so it wasn’t hard to find him. One year they garnished his tax return, for the child support, but somehow the paperwork got goofed up and she was never able to actually collect real child support from him. She didn’t try too hard, either. Years later, my friend’s on the wagon now, has pretty much forgotten her completely (never had much contact with the child, now has his own family) and he hears that his ex-girlfriend’s boyfriend has dumped her, and so she’s filing for back child support because she needs the money. Her daughter is 17 and almost out of high school, at which time of course child support won’t be an issue, but if she can show that she tried to get child support from him back when her daughter was a little girl, she can collecte 15 years of back child support, *with interest*, from her ex-boyfriend. The total was $125,000 or so, if I remember correctly, which of course would have broken him financially. The garnishment of his tax return that one year was the key. When that happened, he should have known what it was for and responded, starting to pay her child support at the time.
I don’t think, in either of these cases, that the men involved were saints, or their wives/girlfriends demons. But the system is so outrageously rigged in favor of the females that it’s ridiculous. The whole thing is done with the understanding that men are evil bastards, and women would never ever use the system nefariously, to get back at a boyfriend they’re pissed at. It’s just stupid.
50,000 child-support detainees would be around 2 percent of the total population incarcerated in the US. Doesn’t that seem a little high?
Yes, 2% seems “a little high.” 2% of 300 million is 6 million.
Still, 50,000 is way too many even if it isn’t 2% of the entire US population.
Recently, Radley Balko’s Agitator site has had several articles about how many people are incarcerated daily in large municipalities because of identity confusion and paperwork foul ups. In LA and Denver, at any time, there are 2 to 3 people in jail who are the wrong person.
So 50,000 child support detainees nationwide? I’m surprised the number isn’t higher.
the so called ‘legal profession’ lost any sense of ethics decades ago. the precepts of law (truth, fairness, equality) lead to justice. there are actually four, but i can’t remember the last one.
anyway, these words are to form the basis for our system of justice. however, they must all be present to work. for instance, you allow inequality you force unfarness, and then must lie constantly about it to try to maintain the sham. no justice possible unless you read and follow directions.
these precepts are all over the supreme court. our forefathers were concerned we would not follow them and lead to our destruction, so they carved them up where you have to walk under them to get in the door. i guess roberts just wears blinders until he gets into his office. it is easier for everybody to milk the system like that. call it all contempt of court and deny men their right$, and their freedom. call them vile names (deadbeat) and use feminist shaming tactics to attack anybody who doesn’t think they are trash.
from what i see personally of our failing system of corrupt government, where lawyers are thick as thieves, i guess our forefathers knew well the enemy. we are one election away from losing our free country and if you look at the potential thieves you will see corruption among lawyers rampant on every front. i wouldn’t want to count on a bunch of soulless lawyers to be telling any truth about how they are going to save us. to them men in prison are just future prospects well positioned for the fleecing to come.
Child support issues are complex and controversial. But, the underlying goal of forcing fathers to support their children is both critical and unavoidable. This is especially true today given the frighteningly high statistics on single parent families. Single parent families are the major cause of problems resulting in generational cycles of poverty, and all the attendant social dysfunctions that follow these children throughout their entire lives. Obviously, the process involves some mistakes and unfairness; but men who refuse to support their own offspring deserve exactly what the current system provides. The lesson is simple: Don’t make children you won’t support.
And here we have the root of the problem… It’s a fact that more mothers are the deadbeats in the child support arena, and yet the number of them incarcerated for failing to pay is tiny. Not only was this stated in the original article, a story with supporting information was linked. You then argue, fully ignoring the stated information, that the “complex and controversial” problem must be solved with the “goal of forcing fathers to support their children”.
The problem is not “deadbeat fathers” or “deadbeat mothers”; it is, at the minimum, a problem of “deadbeat parents”. I’d further argue, and your blinding bias at least anecdotally confirms, that the court system, and general society, finds it perfectly acceptable to pin the mess entirely on the male segment of society.
Where is this evidence that more women are deadbeat moms? Sorry, that’s weak. Most single parents are women…not the other way around..providing the sole care for their children. The reason the men in question find themselves in prison is a last resort of the courts to get them to live up to their financial obligation to their child as they should. Further, the law is not sexist. If a mother was legally required to pay child support and didn’t, the law would treat her in exactly the same way. I don’t buy this argument at all.
I think the best High School graduation present you could give an 18 year old male is a free Vasectomy with a lifetime sperm bank voucher included so reproduction would be truly a “joint” decision, not based purely on the whim of the female. Why anyone male would want to father a child in this legal environment is beyond me. It’s voluntary slavery.
Wouldn’t a very big box of condoms be simpler? Not to mention reducing STD risks as well.
This doesn’t seem to make sense on the face of it: If they are imprisoned for child support arrears, how can they possibly make the money needed to pay child support?
D
Oh! So now you think the legal system has anything whatsoever to do with sensibility? Or decency? Or Truth?
Did I fail to mention lawyers were involved? How can those things exist where lawyers are involved?
Spend a day at your local courthouse, if you really want to become outraged on this subject. Just sit through the cases, and watch the constant and imperious abuse of power that goes on. The only ones with nothing to fear are the real criminals. After all, it’s where they work. If you’re falsely accused, and you can pay, you’re guilty. As charged!
Would the nice police officer lie? IMPOSSIBLE!
The whole “family ha-ha court” system has become a criminal enterprise designed to put lawyers to work while furthering the cause of the radical feminists. It is a mockery of everything older Americans were raised to believe in and an affront to every honest person, male and female, in this country.
It is best symbolized by the armed guards and metal detectors at the door of every courthouse. What the judges and lawyers don’t care to understand – indeed, what the government refuses to see – is that a government that needs armed guards between itself and its citizens is a government that has failed.
Our government has failed. And “family ha-ha court is just one more example of that.
I have done child support work for a mid-sized western state for 2 decades. About 18% of my cases involve a woman owing money to the caretaker. My experience with “contempt” proceedings against moms is mixed. Often, the moms have other children living in their home: (step-kids, or a new child or 2). The courts are loath to put a mom in jail when she is the primary care-giver for other children. Also, sometimes the moms are undereducated; it’s harder to show the “ability to pay” with moms.
It’s really easy to find terrible sounding anectodes about child support; they definitely are “out there”.
Once the states got into the business of helping poor folks with children, the die was cast. More and more “welfare” programs have been layered into the cake (FS, child care, medical insurance etc), and the huge costs of these programs gives an opening to the fed and state goverments to “cost shift” to the “absent” parent. (the parent not living in the home with the child).
The truth is that BOTH men and women take advantage of each other and the system; there is plenty of blame to go around.
One interesting newer development; men are increasingly pursuing disability claims. The finding of disability triggers more programs (med ins, FS, housing), and the disability money is not often “collectable” by child support or other agencies or private collectors. Plus, people are then able to have a “slam dunk” downward modification of their order (to $0, or some really minimal figure, and even to get some money “written off” if it’s owed to the state. A whole lotta “win” there for a small margin of people.
But, but, but, it’s for the chillin’s!
The “other debtors prison” is, of course, the virtual prison caused by states that have drivers responsibility taxes (ie, Michigan, New Jersey, etc). In fact, such a tax is routinely called “debtors prison.”
Most people get such fees by driving on a suspended license, which is suspended due to non-payment of any number of minor tickets. Most people can’t afford to pay the tax — if you can’t pay a $50 ticket on time, what chance do you have at $4500? — and the high fees mean that most people don’t get their license back. And without a drivers license, most people in places like rural Michigan (which is most of the state) can’t get a job.
You do understand that there must be a finding of both ability to pay the support and a willfull refusal to pay?
Says who? The Judge?
Don’t make me laugh!
As a father who went through Family Court hell (I never was arrested for nonpayment — just for something else) allow me to shed a little light on “the effects of this decision” (quoting Justice Thomas) and similar Family Court decisions against fathers.
As a result of my Family Court experience I realized I am not treated as a worthwhile member of society. If I am not a worthwhile member of society I no longer feel any necessity to contribute to society. Especially in the form of tax money. Tax money which can and has been used to pay for institutions which degrade me.
In more than a dozen years I have paid zero federal or state income taxes. On the other hand I have found a way to get myself a form of welfare. For the last dozen years or so not only have I not paid taxes, I have collected various forms of welfare. I collect about four times more per month than I had to pay per month in child support.
Over the course of history various elements have stolen children from parents. Kings, pirates, opposing armies and such. The difference between these child kidnappers vs modern Family Courts is that once pirates steal your children they leave you alone. The modern Family Court system is different. Once Family Court steals your children they harass you and harass you for years on end with not only no apologies and no respite, but with their sense of moral smugness.
If Family Court wants to steal my children, the least I can do is not feed them more fuel in the form of my tax money. And make them pay me back a bit of money as compensation for stealing my children.
Do not expect fathers who are treated as subhumans to be willing contributors to this regime. That is “the effects of this decision.”
I have a close friend who – based on the unbelievable primitivism of American family legislation – contends that the basic reason that the US and Saudi Arabia are such great bedfellows isn’t Realpolitik but simply a shared retrograde view of social issues. The notion of the US as the Saudi Arabia of feminism certainly feels like a justified idea when you read stuff like this.
My thoughts at this point are if it is a womans absolute choice, then it should be their absolute responsibility, if the woman is single and there wasn’t a prior agreement to have children by both participants. Women should NOT have an avenue for 22 years of monthly cash payments to them simply because they couldn’t be bothered to deal with their own fertility, or they wish to have access to somebodys wallet and not have to work.
Women who want equality need to take responsibility for their uterus. Sure it takes two to tango, but where is it written that the man bears primary responsibility for the results?
Oh, is that based on old evil patriarchal societies where men control women utterly? We don’t have that here anymore, so get with the times, girls! You are victims of your own success.
Don’t claim equality and autonomy in reproductive choice and then try to act like someone else is responsible for your pregnancy, like he snuck up on you in your sleep.
where i practice criminal law (NV) i’ve seen a pretty fair number of females jailed over child support. i will also say that most of my child support clients are deadbeats who ignore child support until they get arrested. i don’t take a position here on the larger principles at stake. just one man’s experience, and i would add that when i wade through all the BS very few of the child support clients have much of a defense to the non-payment (whether this should potentialyy lead to a felony conviction is another question). we have a deferred prosecution setup which has a nearly 100% success rate.
My brother’s ex demanded child support in cash, and like a fool, my brother complied. Unknown to him, she applied for welfare and claimed that no child support was ever paid. When they got around to dunning him for the welfare money, he had no proof and thousands in debt to the state. And of course, no lawyer.
And it gets worse. Under the welfare reform laws in some states, a woman who gets welfare for a child must name the father (even if she hasn’t a clue). The state then sends a notice to the named individual (or, in many cases, someone with the same name) warning them they will be liable for this child’s welfare payments. In the past, at least, these warnings have been flawed in that they fail to mention that the purported father has 30 or so days to contest the claim in court and in person, or they forfeit ALL rights to dispute. After that, nothing matters and the man is stuck with this undischargable debt for 18 years.
For the children.
Just kill the fucking women.
And it makes it harder for women like me who do have husbands who are violent and deadbeats and now I have to fight against him AND the perception that all women are out to hurt men. Can’t we just be humans? Could we try the facts of the cases without names/genders and see how judges would decide?
While the current system is definitely rigged against fathers, I think the real fundamental problem is that the family courts system is a adversarial legal process and therefore like all such adversarial processes consistently rewards the most ruthless and determined party, regardless of gender.
The advocates of both men and women can both trot out horror stories because the system is biases towards. and effectively rewards, the man or women in a trial who stoops the lowest. That is especially true is one parent has no problem torturing the children in the process. If you have a loving and caring parent on one side and a sociopath on the other, the sociopath is walking away with a payday (and usually the children) regardless of their gender.
Yes, the presumption is always against the man but the presumption is always that both parents actual care about the children and each other to some extent. The courts simply aren’t configured to handle people who are actually up to no good. Family courts do little to no independent investigation to justify claims of either party and they seldom penalize for perjury even when it does. Instead they rely on basic good will and integrity and people that lack those qualities turn the courts into weapon for themselves.
Family courts need to grow up and realize that it’s not the 1950s anymore when divorce was stigmatized and most people wanted to cooperate to handle the matter quietly and fairly. Today, family court is every bit as competitive and vicious as torts and we need to start thinking of it that way.
@Jeff Rigsby: No, it’s not a little high. It’s normal. Having spent some time a couple decades ago in Florida county jails, I can tell you that about 25% were awaiting trial or sentencing for drug related crimes, ~25% were probation/parole violators, ~35% were doing “county time” for “minor” crimes, domestic violence and DUI, 5% were just “passing through” before being extradited to other jurisdictions, and about 10% were in there for child support arrears. Yes, 10%.
Florida could only keep a man in jail for child support arrears for 30 days…but could lock them up again in 30 days if they hadn’t caught up. So half of the year, these men could be in jail for not paying. Which is a Catch-22 because of course they don’t earn money in a county jail. Those that did “purge out” by paying the back child support did so by getting loans from their family and friends, imposing a wider hardship. Plus, many of these men had an existing family from to support in addition to the children they were obligated to pay support for.
And on top of the frequent incarcerations, Florida revoked the driver’s licenses of the “deadbeat dads”, making it impossible to legally drive to work (or drive FOR work, in many cases), and a felony offense if caught driving on the suspended license. They essentially criminalized vast swaths of the Florida male population that was otherwise law-abiding and productive.
What’s even worse, is if you put a man in jail for half a year, wipe him out financially, teach him to be in actual, real contempt of the “system”, and surround him with career criminals, there’s a very high likelihood you’ll create a REAL criminal. Or at the very least, somebody who is not above risking going to jail to earn money to avoid certain jail time.
I left Florida in 2000, so I’m not sure what the situation is now, but I doubt it has improved much, if any since then.
Demographically, I’d classify these men as lower-middle class, and most were not “minorities”. And in a lot of cases, it was the State that pressed the matter more than the mothers…because the mothers had applied for Welfare support.
Oh, it gets much worse. For one thing, ‘child support’ is indexed to income rather than costs of the child. Hence, it is really ‘mommy support’ and encourages women to use children as pawns to extract money, and perhaps an incentive to divorce itself.
Everyone needs to read The Misandry Bubble, the granddaddy of all articles about anti-father bias.
The government is strongly disincentivizing men from becoming fathers and husbands, and instead incentivizing them to become pickup artists. It is all about the incentives.
Why does our society allow men to be thrown in jail this way?
Well, for a comprehensive explanation,
Read the Misandry Bubble.
Are there that many totalitarian women out there who believe that a man in jail is par for the course and a source of smug satisfaction?
Is that a trick question? The answer is YES.
As soon as women get the right to vote, their first order of business is to strip men of all rights. Note that men have no such desire to oppress women.
When women talk of being ‘oppressed’, they are actually projecting what THEY would do to men if they were in the position to do so (and nowadays, they are).
As one of the millions held to be behind in child support I offer this insight: My company, a defense contractor, withheld money from my paycheck, wrote the checks, sent them to the state child support agency, which forwarded them to my ex-wife, who cashed the checks. I have her signature and the child support agency stamp on the canceled checks. The state (Texas) child support agency for 6 months didn’t note in a ledger book that they had received the checks, and sued me for back child support to have me pay the money that I had already paid. I faxed them copies of the canceled checks, but their lawyer would not drop charges unless I hired a lawyer in Texas to defend against the baseless charges. Rather than hire a lawyer, I submitted to the court order which deducted even more money from my paycheck, and sent it to my ex-wife. When my security clearance came up for review, I provided to the Department of Defense clearance agency a statement explaining the situation, and copies of the canceled checks, signed by my ex-wife and stamped by the state child support agency, and I got the security clearance with no difficulty. Apparently this is not a rare event.
I submit that a substantial fraction of ‘deadbeat dads’ may be clerical errors on the part of a government agency.
No 50,000 is not too high an estimate. Scenairo: The guy has a job, gets put in jail for non payment of child support, loses his job. VISCIOUS circle once it starts. ONce the charges start to accumulate, there is NO RELIEF. Yes, she can get an atty provided by the state, but NEVER the man.
Given that some women are not above getting pregnant — making that unilateral decision, why then is the man held accountable. We are destroying “manhood”. I THink drama queens might be a little more careful if they thought the state wasnt going to go to bat for them.
Take King Solomon’s advice and don’t sleep with loose women- EVER. No matter how good it may feel, a loose woman is a death trap. Also, don’t use condoms or donate sperm. Then, if a woman falsely accuses you of fathering her child, sue her for slander. She is, after all, falsely accusing you of fornication/adultery and attempting to extort money by ruining your reputation based on a lie.
my ex owes around 200k in back child support and will never face any jail time. the woman has convinced the judge that due to depression she can’t get/or hold a job. even after proof has been given showing that she has money for drugs and booze.
Having kids is a nice hobby and it does have its risks. In my 56 years Ive heard every one of the stories told above over and over. Thanks goodness I never felt the need to go down that road. The world can live without any progeny from me. Your welcome world.
“And before you say, while they are just deadbeat dads, they get what they deserve, remember, once the camel’s nose is under the tent, it isn’t long before you are sleeping with a camel. ”
An excellent point. Consider: Kelo v. New London has already established the principle that real property can be taken from its owner by the government, if a different use of the property that would (potentially) generate more tax revenue exists. The same principle can be applied to income. All of us could be making more money if we took a second job, or put in a ton of overtime, or switched to a more lucrative (but more stressful) line of work. If we did that, we would be paying more income taxes. Therefore, not being willing to do so is a form of tax evasion. Not interested in that second job? Off to jail with you!
enjoy your feminazi country, i left and love it here in the other hemisphere…
Wally
“Debtors’ prisons are long gone, so much so that people are actually nonchalant and even contemptuous about owing others money. They know that jail is not an option for them.” False. Jailing debtors may not be as extinct of a practice as you think:
http://indianalawblog.com/archives/2011/03/courts_welcome.html
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2011/03/17/on-the-rise-of-debtors-prison-the-scariest-thing-that-ever-happened-to-me/
Six states (Arkansas, Arizona, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, and Washington) allow debt collectors to seek arrest warrants for debtors in default if all other collection methods have failed.
I went outside the country to find my wife. American women are raised to be leaches and those few who get through their formative years and did not succumb to that evil are hard to find. I plan for marriage to be for life and I expected my wife to have that same world view.
Child support stopped, but of course didn’t go the other way. This wasn’t because of misandry or anything like that…
Oh, you really think that?
…his ex-wife sold arts and crafts for cash, and her husband by then was out of the army and worked in construction, mostly getting paid in cash.
If the judge did to the ex-wife what she’d do to the ex-husband if he were working under the table, she’d impute income to the ex-wife and put the ex-wife through the wringer.
“Wasn’t because of misandry,” eh? Think again. It’s because of misandry that “child support stopped, but of course didn’t go the other way” when the children chose to move into Dad’s custody. Misandry, misandry, misandry – and a thick double standard, in this case a habit of treating females like some sort of privileged class that is exempt from bearing the burdens routinely demanded of men.
I hate to say it, but I wonder if men now are paying for women’s father’s then. B/c the sort of woman who will have a child out of wedlock isn’t the sort to trust a man at all. So I wonder if now, it’s blowback from the seventies cultural nadir.
Are the kids on welfare? Were the parents married and then divorced? That’s one sort of family.
We lived in an apartment complex, which I will work very hard to never do again. I was happily married to my husband, with two young sons. I was called a big baby for relying on him. I was called stupid for being married, and waiting at home on a Friday night for him, rather than getting a divorce, and going dating. I was getting advice on how to divorce him, how to file for AFDC- all sorts of things. We were happily married. He was a good, hard-working, decent man. He was wonderful, we had beautiful, healthy, sheltered children. I was called stupid, and nothing and a zero for caring for my family, for staying faithful, for being a good mother.
The mothers- one had an affair with a married man- she wanted him in jail. another divorced her husband b/c she was bored. Another- they called her stupid- reconciled with her husband.
Personally, I’m down with Ann Coulter on this- if you aren’t married to the guy- you aren’t entitled to his paycheck. And, we need to start calling these women names, b/c there’s enough of them that they’re comfortable calling married women names.
And the guys need to get out of jail. They aren’t slaves, they aren’t serfs, and they aren’t daddies. They are sperm donors. Sperm donors don’t get put in jail.
Not that I’m bitter, or anything…..
David W. Nicholas – your first friend sounds like a standup [as evidenced by the fact that his kids got the heck outta Dodge and went to live with him instead of with their witch of a mother].
But your second “friend” is a good-for-nothing sack of manure – “pretty much forgotten her completely (never had much contact with the child, now has his own family)”??? – screw him.
Seriously.
The insouciance of that kinda worthless half-assed deadbeat is PRECISELY why we suffer from all of the social problems that we have in this country.
And I hope you were using the word “friend” in the vernacular – metaphorically – not literally.
“like a standup” = “like a standup guy”
So how exactly do you raise the money to pay off your ex while in prison (not an intentional gay joke)?
I wonder how many men are counting the days until their kids turn 18 before filing for divorce?
I have just been released from the County Prison
Doing 90 days for Non Support
They wouldn’t listen to the fact that I am a genius
They got all of those they can use,
So I’ve got the steadily depressing, low down mind-messing,
Working at the Car Wash Blues
After ten years of of existing under the “family court” system the only thing I want is to hear that my ex has died (preferably slowly and painfully). I already had the pleasure of hearing the first judge died of cancer and let me tell you it was nauseating to read the deification of someone I knew their must be a special place in hell for. For those of you who “feel” these sentiments are tad on the harsh side I suggest you spend some time dealing with a system where court orders only apply to one party, because apparently if one has to sit down to pee then they are optional to be followed if it’s convenient, along with things like filling fee.
All of the people posting who have never had dealings with this system and don’t know people in the system who think it is protecting the children have no concept of the reality of what goes on.
All this has me wondering what the chances are of a guy in my situation getting child support from my wife. Married for 11 years, always having been faithful and supportive, my wife got fixed, left me with some other guy (who promptly dumped her, of course), left the kids with me and refuses to pay support, even after I lost my job through no fault of my own shortly after she left. I’m getting by on unemployment and food stamps for the time being while trying to support my 2 boys, 10 and 7 years old. I’m not some drunk or druggie, my only crime is probably being a bit too nice and too supportive of an obviously deceived women over the past 11 years. She refused to pay support several times, so I went to the county prosecutors office and filed against her as an absent parent seeking support.
How many other men are in a similar situation now? As a lawyer recently told me, this exact type of situation has become very common over recent years, women are leaving men and leaving their kids behind in droves to run off and play the field, then end up regretting it.
I didn’t think jail paid so well. So just what is the point in destroying the earning ability of a man? Do you think you’ll get money that way?
This is NOT the solution you’re looking for.
A LONG overdue idea – which would not only provide 14th Amendment protections to men but also reduce both abortion and bastardy – is “Choice for MEN!”
Think about it: Women are guaranteed an opportunity to absolve themselves of the lifelong consequences of an ill-conceived sexual union. Men have no “choice” but to foot the bill!
Where’s the EQUALITY?
Essentially, Roe v. Wade said “A man may not force a woman to be a Mother for 9 months” – but a woman may force a man to be a FATHER for 18-to-LIFE?!
WHERE’S THE EQUALITY?!
A man should be guaranteed 60 days from the time he is informed of a pregnancy to file requisite legal-documents essentially saying “don’t want it, won’t pay for it, whatever you do is your choice and your problem.”
This is the closest we could come to equality, as it gives men the equivalent opportunity of a “first-trimester abortion.”
I too see the potential “problem” in “encouraging male irresponsibility” but the FACT is that this would INSTANTLY eliminate the vast majority of “unplanned pregnancies.”
Women know – if even on a subconscious level – that if “an accident” should happen, it will guarantee a sizeable paycheck for the next 18 years. Her incentive to allow (or deliberately CAUSE) such an “accident” goes up with the man’s economic earning potential!
Eliminating this incentive would force women to be more careful – which would without doubt result in fewer abortions and fewer “out of wedlock” births — which would also reduce the number of kids living in poverty!
Lastly, it’s long past time we acknowledge the fact that a moment of irresponsibility leads to roughly six years of SLAVERY for every man so trapped. That may SEEM hyperbolic, but I assure you it is not.
The average “child support” award is roughly one-third of a man’s GROSS earnings (upon which he pays taxes as a single-man, while she gets the money tax free PLUS all of the “tax credits” and other benefits of being a “parent” — but I digress…
One-third of a man’s earnings for 18 years is perfectly equivalent to *ALL* of his earnings for SIX! Ergo, “A moment of bliss, six years of slavery!” is a PERFECTLY accurate description for our current scenario.
Please support “choice for men”!
Both “Equality” and our 14th Amendment DEMAND IT!
I think back to a nineties book: Joan Morgan’s “When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost; Confessions of a Hip-Hop Feminist.” Now, don’t let the title fool you, it was an interesting work. Among other things, she grapples with the “Mac-Daddy” phenomena and proposes that a possible solution would be where the father could legally relinquish all paternal rights in exchange for being relieved of all financial responsibility. It makes horse sense in quite a few (though not all) such cases. You may perhaps recall a well-publicized incident fifteen or so years ago where adoptive parents had to give up their child because the bio-daddy claimed he had not been informed of the child’s existence and demanded custody. That, I gather, put quite a crimp in domestic adoptions.
Also, I found out myself on a contract working at the Passport office, processing routine paperwork, is that when a single mom applies for a passport for her child the father MUST sign off. To damn bad if he refuses to cooperate, cannot be found, or is just plain unknown. The law is ironclad. Ms. Morgan’s proposal makes a lot of sense, especially for the offspring of casual liasons. On an aside, it’s worth noting that one victim of the “MacDaddy” phenomenon are the MacDaddies themselves. While siring bastards may seem like a status symbol for a teenager in the ‘hood, it becomes quite another matter if and when the young rake grows up and wants to make a life for himself. Then, the child support commissariat comes crashing down on him, with the state pursuing him for God knows how many illegitimate offspring. Such men are condemned to a rootless, impoverished existence, getting by on off-the-books menial employment, panhandling and petty crime. So if you see a thirty or forty-something black man, with all his possessions on his back, who nevertheless appears reasonably groomed for his circumstances and not obviously suffering from schizophrenia or substance abuse he just might be one of those (self)-damned souls.
P.S. I also found out that “deadbeat dads” can have their passports yanked, in addition to their driver’s licenses.