April 10, 2005

This issue needs your attention immediately! This is one of the biggest issues in the U.S. today. With the divorce rate over 50%, and millions of children across the U.S., indeed an entire generation, being irreparably damaged by this problem every day, action cannot wait any longer!
 
I have studied this problem for many months now and here is just some of what I have learned:

The family courts are clearly sexually biased and have been corrupted by good intentions gone bad. These courts literally ignore U.S. Supreme Court rulings, the U.S. constitution, and even our own state laws every day, in nearly every case.  And the federal government looks the other way.  Proper shared parenting legislation that FORCES judges to obey the law and provides penalties for not doing so is needed very badly.  One problem, that I am sure you are aware of, is that these judges have no real oversight, accountability, or penalty for abusive practices.  As JFK pointed out: "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely."  These judges are legislating from the bench every day based on personal agendas and preferences, not based on the laws they are sworn to enforce.   

Today’s Topic: Best Interest of the Child
Judges hide behind the vague mantra "Best interests of the children", but it is really "best interests of the lawyers" and easiest boiler plate decisions with little finding of fact.  The research is in, yet the family courts are basing their custody decisions today on research that is several decades old (and was never scientifically valid), and on traditions that should have gone away with the Equal Rights Amendment and woman joining the workforce. Family court’s behavior does not reflect today's parenting, let alone equal rights.
 
In fact, shared parenting is really already the law, as upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, parents should have equal rights to raise their children. This is a fundamental constitutional right, which requires "substantive due process" and "serious harm" to children to override any parent's rights.  Yet the higher court rulings are ignored daily by the state courts in virtually every case by boilerplate custody awards that are clearly sexist. The recent Bridget Marks case in New York is only the latest in a series of complete judicial abuse, where a woman was actually found by the court to be an "unfit mother", to have committed fraud, perjury (and likely committed conspiracy too), and yet she still got full physical custody of the children. Any man would have gotten a jail sentence for that behavior.

As a loving father I want to, and will, see a PRESUMPTION of shared parenting become law, and more importantly, be strictly enforced.  Judges are literally out of control and the checks and balances our forefathers designed into the constitution have been subverted. Money is one powerful root cause of this. More fights between parents generate huge fees for lawyers, and judges indirectly benefit too.
 
Shared parenting is coming to the forefront now.  A huge ground swell is building with hundreds of web sites and fathers groups. Anything besides a full shared parenting presumption creates huge incentives for legal battles, which hurt children and families and drains family finances for the benefit of lawyers. The current system has become a distorted mess over the last thirty years. Effectively the family courts are still living in the 1950s.
 
Imagine if you had to run for election with the presumption you would lose, and therefore (because of that presumption) your opponent got all the money from your fundraising efforts for their campaign! Then the fact that you had no money left was used to show you had no support.  Would that not be outrageous? This is almost what is happening in family courts today.  The children and money is given to the mothers, then the father is told he is the breadwinner and must continue that by paying the ex-wife huge sums of money (40% of his after tax income) (citing). However, now he gets very limited access to his own children - so the mothers are awarded the money AND the children. Both the children and the responsibility to bring them up, financial and otherwise should be shared by both parents.  It has been shown that this is the only way that is truly in "the best interests of the children".(study cites)  That the divorced father is then an indentured servant to is ex-wife for up to twenty-three years,  because he was not the primary caregiver AND he gets only "visitation" is an outrage to fathers today.