Anne Archer,
wish I could have attended
Thursday night's meeting and want
to thank you for giving Fathers and
Families this badly needed opportunity
for input. I was at the
first meeting with your predecessor
and the Boston hearing but I did not
get to speak on this topic due to
the lack of time. I had
my kids for an overnight yesterday and
this is like gold given the little
time I get with them now. Hopefully
this letter will communication this
message even more effectively.
I have been a CEO of 5 different companies
over the last 16 years and have lots
of expertise in financial analysis
and management. So I do not
say this without much professional
expertise. Frankly I am always
further horrified with each trip into
court. I have now studied the
relevant law in some depth over the
last year. The lack of understanding
of judges of the financial orders
they make and their impact never
ceases to amaze me. Lawyers say "judges
are not numbers people" - But
this is a gigantic understatement.
I wanted to bring your attention to
the very common scenario where restraining
orders are involved (about 40,000
per year in Mass. now). Simply
stated the result is that 90%
of the dad's take-home
pay is taken by standard operating
procedure by court orders to continue
to pay for both the house he was thrown
out of and then child support on top
of that! We all know Massachusetts
child support is 50% higher than most
states and is the highest in the nation.
It is at least as much welfare for
ex-wives as it is child support.
This is really undeniable, as no one
spends 40% of their take-home pay
on their children. Not to mention
that the mother should be sharing
in this cost too. Clearly this
is wrong and needs to be fixed. However, a
very common scenario actual makes
this even much worse for MEN (almost
exclusively)!
the scenario you need to
understand is when the father is
ordered to pay 40% (after
taxes) of his net income for
Child Support (average
with 2 kids for CS guidelines
at 26%) and on top of
that another 50% of
net income (average bank ratio
allowed for the mortgage PITI at
35% of gross) for housing payments
for the mother and children during
the divorce process. This scenario
leaves someone with an average of
a $50,000 income with
$357/month net to live
on for rent, food, car and everything
else. Only a homeless person
without a car to work can live on
this in Massachusetts.
BACKGROUND:
The first thing you need to understand
is that today restraining orders are
given out to virtually any woman (not
man) that asks for them when no actual
domestic violence has ever occurred.
The judges have been doing this for
over 10 years now I am told, since
some news story where one woman was
killed after an RO was lifted. Shall
we continue to assume ALL men are
batterers and murders because of this
one incident? Of course, this is untrue,
un-American, unconstitutional, unfair
and contrary to the basic foundations
of our legal system, which says we
would rather let nine people go free
rather than put one innocent man in
jail. Yet with restraining orders
we "convict" up to 95 people
for each guilty 5. The
guilty ones will get caught again
soon enough. However, these
ROs are given out even though they
almost never meet the standard
of case law set by the Mass. Appeals
court. You can walk into nearly any
district court, almost any morning
and see these handed out in droves
without any exploration of what actually
happened, why protection is needed
etc. It takes 2-5 minutes
and poor dad isn't even there.
As soon as a woman says the word "fear"
(and attorneys and DV advocates coach
women on this) the judge issues the
restraining order. So the fact of
the matter is that LAWYERS SAY between
50% and 95% of these restraining orders
should never be issued. Judges are
afraid and actually break their oath
of office (I have read this) each
time they issue an RO due to this
outside media pressure. Even
if there was domestic violence, this
is no reason to put someone under
financial orders that are often impossible
to follow, and hence also illegal.
This is how to really manufacture
criminals and that is exactly what
this system does today.
Would
you say the word "fear"
to a judge if you got 1-2 years
free rent for this? What if
you also got many other advantages
in your divorce like automatic child
custody and the ability to throw
dad in jail anytime you wanted with
a complaint? Most women
would and do. I do not pretend to
understand why as I do not
think the legal system should be
used as a bat against your loved
ones, former or not. Unfortunately
this is becoming standard practice,
and is even recommended by many
unethical attorneys. This completely
unconstitutional 209a law is destroying
men, children and families economically
and emotionally. Judges
ignore the Mass. appeals court case
law requiring "reasonable
fear" and the "Serious
imminent physical harm" requirements standard
is the major problem in
this mess. However, this is
just a small piece of the broader
lack of judicial accountability
problem that drives these problems. This scenario
is definitely worth focusing
on, not just because it happens many
thousands of time per year, but because
the case law and unconstitutional
parts make this clearly illegal
for judges to do. Yet I see
1 to 5 of these ROs issued every
time I go to one court in just
a couple of hours in one courthouse.
As soon as the woman says
"fear" most judges
basically issue the RO (unlawfully
ignoring the case law). In
fact Massachusetts issues about 35
times more ROs per capita than
in the state of Virginia -
1,500 versus about 40,000 with less
population in Mass. - They must
actually respect people's constitutional
rights down there.
Worse,
of course, these restraining
orders hardly ever cut the
other way for women. There
is a research study proving this is
an entirely sexist thing from the
Gardner court. Imputing income
is also a sexist practice that judges
do every day. I know my judge
is imputing income of 250% over
my current income, and yet my wife
is earning only about 1/3 of what
she could with her daycare with
both kids in school - no imputing income
for her though. These sexist rulings
have been increase for years now
due to DV lobbying, radical feminist
propaganda (I have personally heard
some DV figures exaggerated not
by 100%, but by 100 TIMES!! I would
be happy to provide you with the
real research in PDF files if you
do not believe this.
I am
convinced this unbridled combination
of restraining orders and child
support payments is one
major reason people start going into
the underground cash economy and lying about
their income - they basically
have no choice to survive. Few
people can live on 10% of their previous
income for the entire 12-24 month
divorce cycle to play out. Could
you live on 10% of your current take-home
pay? Of course not.
This creates a bit of a spiral effect over
time, as the judges see this happen
and then assume everyone is lying
and therefore compensate by INCREASING
their orders further - and so on,
and so on . . . What happens is honest
people like me get the shaft due to
the sins of others because judges
apply stereotypes instead of actually
judging. Personally, as you can probably
tell, I think the judges are totally
out of control and break the law more
than the criminals. I have seen my
judge break the law between 2 and
5 times every time I have gone to
court in my case. I can't say if it
is out of ignorance or arrogance,
but does it really matter? Bureaucracies
need to have checks and balances against
individuals. Our forefathers designed
juries for this purpose and this has
been unconstitutionally removed from
family court as an option. Anyone
with a civil claim of $20,000 gets
a jury trial in superior court, yet
with our children at stake and 40%
of our income for up to 23 years we
get a single judge, with questionable
qualifications.
So what does this mean for child
support guidelines?
well these these housing
payments are ordered support by
judges and they should be directly
credited to child support. Yes 100%
deducted right off the top
of the calculated CS figure.
if dad is already paying 50% of
his income for all the home
expenses, he should not be paying
another 40% for child support
on top of that. Who could possible
think this is fair or reasonable?
It is insane.
It places almost any man in an untenable
situation, unable to live, unable
to work, unable to even defend himself
legally in the divorce. They must
focus on survival. And how can they
be fathers to their children when
they are fighting for their own
survival? No wonder so many
men are leaving the state and the
country - they have little choice
- jail or run. Obviously this
is also one major reason the suicide
rate for men involved in divorce
is 9.9X that of women.
It is
hard to believe that anyone could
find a 90% income
garnishment reasonable, but
this is done in two easy steps by
judges every day as standard operating
procedure! In fact this
practice is already totally
illegal under federal law which limits
wage garnishment to
60% of anyone's take-home pay and
50% if you have a second family.
It is also illegal, and the order
is automatically void, under Mass GL
209 Section 32 if the
person is not left with enough money
to live on. Yet this is totally ignored
by judges, and these oppressed fathers
rarely know about it or can afford
the time and money for an appeal in
these circumstances. Worse yet lawyers
refuse to contest this issue, as they
are afraid to confront judges in any
way, even when their clients are being
illegally crushed!!
So what
I am suggesting you do here is ACTUALLY
ALREADY THE LAW both on state and
federal levels BUT TOTALLY IGNORED
BY JUDGES. Judges who need far
more oversight and training. This system
has run amuck. A simple line placed
on the CS guidelines worksheet for
this deduction would partially solve
this problem and force more judges
to obey the law to some degree. Although
the law also requires the court to
fill these worksheets out, many do
not. This also needs to be enforced. My
judge has never once fill this out, he
just picks a round figure out of the
air for speed and convenience of time.
This is truly arrogance and indicative
of a massive problem of a lack of
any real judicial oversight. I
bet if you went through dockets in
many court there would be no worksheets
in them. Easy to test.
This
simple correction to the guidelines
(to follow current law) would likely
increase a person's ability to conform
and give judges the message. Also
note that the Supreme court clearly
says that impossible orders by judges
are always illegal. However, this
never stops judges from throwing people
in jail for not conforming to these
impossible financial order. I personally
was under an order to pay about 300%
of my income for combined child support
and housing costs for over 11 months
and was found in contempt illegally
(still on appeal) for not being able
to do the impossible. This is
just plain extortion and ignorance.
This is pure tyranny by definition. Therefore
many of these court orders are actually
unlawful in 3 different ways!! If
this correction was made compliance
would go up. Fathers would not be
criminalized for being under impossible
orders, and there would also be more
incentive to get the divorce over
with, without all the onerous legal
fees continuing for many extra months.
It is very clear lawyers love this
very broken system because it drives
their potential fees much higher.
ust having to spell this problem out
for people is a little scary. How
can this system not be aware
of all these blatantly illegal actions.
I would think that is not possible.
If this is not the case then the entire
system is actually corrupt by intentionally
violating the laws as a matter of
standard procedure. It seems
few people have a broad enough perspective
on this problem to understand this. Very
soon the many fathers groups now organizing
will be bringing this to light and
a scandal will result. Everyone
may understand only their own small
piece of this problem but ignorance
is no excuse for illegal activity.
I sincerely
hope you understand and then communicate
and address this problem. This system
is very broken and it must be fixed
one way or another. As
I said, these practices are already completely
illegal, under several state
and federal laws. A small amount of
research will verify this. I
think you could solve part of this
problem simply by incorporating this
one line into the child support guidelines
worksheet.
Thank
you again for being open for input
and for your time.
Sincerely, Robert
- A concerned father whose children
have been kidnapped by the state |