Dr. Steven
Baskerville On the Destruction of Marriage and
Children By the For Profit Divorce Industry
Article at MovieGuide.org - Ted Baehr Movieguide®
The advent of “no-fault” divorce has given rise to a system that strips fathers of their children, accelerates the breakdown of families, and makes a mockery of the marital contract.
By Stephen Baskerville
For the moment, while the Federal Marriage Amendment is moved to a back burner, it’s a good time to heighten our awareness of a broader menace. Same-sex marriage is a symptomatic threat to families, compared to the more fundamental effect of “no fault” divorce. “Commentators miss the point when they oppose homosexual marriage on the grounds that it would undermine traditional understandings of marriage,” writes Bryce Christensen of Southern Utah University. “It is only because traditional understandings of marriage have already been severely undermined that homosexuals are now laying claim to it.” Michael McManus of Marriage Savers writes that “divorce is a far more grievous blow to marriage than today’s challenge by gays.”
The Bush administration and Congress have allocated $150 million annually to promote “healthy marriages and responsible fatherhood.” The effectiveness of these efforts turns on how well they mesh gears with the underlying realities of the family crisis. In order to face the bitter truths about why families are dissolving at such an alarming rate, we must move from the precincts of moral exhortation, to take an analytical look at the mechanics of the family court system and related legal agendas.
It is a grievous misconception that an
increase in marital “break downs” warranted
new laws to simplify the divorce process, as
if to minimize a futile expense for an
unavoidable outcome. Under “no-fault”
divorce laws, 80% of divorces are
unilateral. In other words, most “no-fault”
divorces are unilateral, over the objection
of one spouse, who is often committed to
keeping the family together. Further, it is
more often the spouse who is opposed to the
divorce that will be burdened with on-going
legal fees and court actions. Evidence
suggests that those who influenced the new
laws had an ulterior motive which has
developed a system that exploits the
opportunity for professional involvement in
a growing divorce industry. Since “no fault”
divorce opened the court room doors wider,
the market of professional family services
has grown exponentially.
In contradiction to another myth, that
husbands take advantage of the simpler
divorce method, the mother of minor children
is overwhelmingly most often the divorcing
parent. In Divorced Dads: Shattering the
Myths, Arizona State University psychologist
Sanford Braver has shown that at least
two-thirds of divorces are initiated by
women. Moreover, these divorces rarely
involve abandonment, adultery, or violence.
The most common reasons are “growing apart”
or “not feeling loved or appreciated.”
Divorces initiated by women climbed to
more than 70% when no-fault divorce was
introduced, according to Margaret Brinig of
the University of Iowa and Douglas Allen of
Simon Fraser University. Mothers “are more
likely to instigate separation,
despite…evidence that many divorces harm
children.” The bottom line is indeed the
children. After analyzing 21 variables,
Brinig and Allen concluded that “who gets
the children is by far the most important
component in deciding who files for
divorce.”
~~~
The importance of this finding cannot be
overestimated. Political leaders who call
for repeated crackdowns on allegedly
dissolute fathers clearly promote the
assumption that fathers are to blame with
regard to the welfare of children of
divorce. “I believe children should not have
to suffer twice for the decisions of their
parents to divorce,” Senator Mike DeWine
stated on the Senate floor in June 1998;
“once when they decide to divorce, and again
when one of the parents evades the financial
responsibility to care for them.” But most
fathers make no such decision. They are
expelled by a divorce to which they become
obligated without consent.
Family law now allows mothers to walk away from marriages at any time and take the children with them. Not only is this permitted, it is encouraged and rewarded with financial incentives. Even more disturbing, in some cases, mothers are actually pressured by social service agencies into filing for a divorce that they don’t want. The Massachusetts News reported how Heidi Howard was ordered by the state’s Department of Social Services to divorce her husband Neil or lose her children, though DSS acknowledged he had not been violent. When she refused the social workers seized her children, including a newborn and attempted to terminate the Howards’ parental rights. News reporter Nev Moore says she has seen hundreds such cases.
The problem runs much deeper than the existing bias against fathers in custody decisions. “Washing their hands of judgments about conduct…the courts assume that all children should normally live with their mothers, regardless of how the women have behaved,” observes Sunday Times columnist Melanie Phillips. “Yet if a mother has gone off to live with another man, does that not indicate a measure of irresponsibility or instability, not least because by breaking up the family…she is acting against their best interests?”
Mothers who separate children from their fathers are routinely given immediate custody. Although considered temporary, once a mother has custody, it cannot be changed without a lengthy court battle. The sooner she can establish herself as the sole caretaker, the more difficult and costly it is for the father to regain custody. Further, it is the tendency of a mother who cuts off the father to use his absence to embitter the child with false charges against him, while she delays custody proceedings, and obstructs the father’s efforts to see his children. The most common end result is that she retains sole custody.
As for the father, he is most likely to
discover too late that any restraint in his
effort to regain custody will cost him
dearly. Often only reciprocal belligerence
and aggressive litigation on his part
carries any hope of reward. Astoundingly,
the latest wisdom counsels nervous fathers
that the game is so rigged that their best
chance is not to wait for their day in
court, but to snatch first, then conceal,
obstruct, delay, and so forth. “If you do
not take action,” writes Robert Seidenberg
in The Father’s Emergency Guide to
Divorce-Custody Battle, “your wife will.”
Thus we have the nightmare scenario of a
“race to the trigger” and the pre-emptive
strike reminiscent of nuclear deterrence
strategy. Whoever snatches the children
first wins.
~~~
Far from merely exploiting family breakdown, domestic relations law has turned the family into what political scientists call the game of “prisoners’ dilemma,” in which only the most trusting marriage can survive and the emergence of the slightest marital discord renders not absconding with the children perilous and even irrational. Willingly or not, all parents are now prisoners in this game.
How did all this come about? Under the assumption that only mutual consent would precipitate the dissolution of a marriage, “no fault” laws provided for the removal of grounds for divorce. Subsequently divorces, commonly blamed for causing hardship to wives and children, has increasingly left husbands vulnerable to desertion and the confiscation of their children. “No-fault” divorce is a misnomer for the creation of what Maggie Gallagher calls in her book The Abolition of Marriage “unilateral” divorce, allowing either spouse to end the marriage, without any agreement or fault by the other.
What’s more alarming is that these laws
were passed while no one was looking; no
clamor to dispense with divorce restrictions
preceded their passage; no public debate was
held in the national media. “The divorce
laws…were reformed by unrepresentative
groups with very particular agendas of their
own and which were not in step with public
opinion,” writes Phillips in her book The
Sex-Change Society. “All the evidence
suggests that public attitudes were
gradually dragged along behind laws that
were generally understood at the time to
mean something very different than what they
subsequently came to represent.”
Attorney Ed Truncellito agrees. In August
2000, he filed suit with the Texas Supreme
Court against the state bar. Truncellito
contends the legislative history of no-fault
divorce law in Texas makes clear that the
law was meant for “uncontested-only” cases.
He insists that “the state bar knew all
along that the no-fault law was being
misapplied, but they covered it up for
financial gain.” Truncellito claims that,
effectively, “no one is married” because the
laws created “unilateral divorce on demand.”
~~~
Dickens’ observation “the one great
principle of the…law is to make business for
itself” couldn’t be more starkly validated.
Nothing in the law requires a judge to grant
the divorcing parent’s initial request to
strip the other parent of his children. A
judge could simply rule that, prima facie,
neither the father nor the children has
committed any infraction that justifies
being forcibly separated and that neither
the mother nor the court has any grounds to
separate them. Yet such rulings are
virtually unheard of. One need not be
cynical to recognize that judges who refused
to grant the request would be denying
earnings to an entourage of lawyers, custody
evaluators, psychologists and psychiatrists,
guardians ad litem, mediators, counselors,
child-support enforcement agents, social
workers, and others – all of whom profit
from the ensuing custody battle and have a
strong say in the promotion of judges.
With all the concern shown for family breakdown and judicial power, it is surprising that family advocates and judicial critics have paid so little attention to family courts. Without a doubt they are the arm of the state that reaches farthest into the private lives of individuals and families. Though lowest in the judicial hierarchy, they are the most powerful. “The family court is the most powerful branch of the judiciary,” according to Robert Page, Presiding Judge of the Family Part of the Superior Court of New Jersey. According to Judge Page, “the power of family court judges is almost unlimited.” Others have commented on their vast power rather less respectfully. Former Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas once characterized them with the term “kangaroo court.” Contrary to basic principles of open government, they generally operate behind closed doors, often excluding even family members and leaving no record of their proceedings.
These bureaucratic courts emerged in the 1960s and 1970s along with the divorce revolution. Their existence and virtually every problem they address – divorce, custody, child abuse, child support enforcement, even juvenile crime – depend upon one overriding principle: The removal of the father as head of the family. When parental authority functions properly, family courts have little reason to exist, since these problems seldom appear among intact families. While both fathers and mothers may fall afoul of family court judges, it is fathers against whom their enmity is largely directed, because fathers are their principal rivals.
The judges’ contempt for both fathers and constitutional rights was openly expressed by New Jersey municipal court judge Richard Russell: “Your job is not to become concerned about the constitutional rights of the man that you’re violating,” he told his colleagues at a judges’ training seminar in 1994. “Throw him out on the street, give him the clothes on his back and tell him, see ya around…. We don’t have to worry about the rights.”
While all courts complain of being
“overburdened,” judicial powers and
salaries, like any other service, are
determined by demand. Family court judges
are generally appointed and promoted by
commissions dominated by bar associations
and other professional groups who have an
interest in maximizing the volume of
litigation. Political scientist Herbert
Jacob describes how “the judge occupies a
vital position not only because of his role
in the judicial process but also because of
his control over lucrative patronage
positions.” Jacob cites probate courts,
where positions as estate appraisers “are
generally passed out to the judge’s
political cronies or to persons who can help
his private practice.” The principles are
similar, only in family courts what is
passed out is control over children.
Once the parent “loses custody,” in the
jargon of the court, he can be arrested for
trying to see them outside of authorized
times and places. He can be arrested for
running into his children in a public place
such as the zoo, sporting events, or church.
Additionally, parents are routinely summoned
to court for questioning about their private
lives, which attorney Jed Abraham has
characterized as an “interrogation.” Their
personal documents and homes must be
surrendered to government officials without
warrants. Their children are alienated with
the backing of government officials and then
are required to inform on them.
Despite the constitutional prohibition on incarceration for debt, a parent can be jailed without trial for failure to pay not only child support but the fees of lawyers and psychotherapists he has not hired. In these cases, the judge is summoning legally unimpeachable citizens and ordering them to write a check or go to jail. And the weapon he is using to do it is children. If this systematic bullying by courts and enforcement agents begins to sound like a reign of terror, that is precisely how many now see it.
Aside from countless absurd and bizarre
injustices, the family court system has been
cited as a cause for a growing percentage of
fathers being driven to suicide. In March
2000, Darin White was denied all contact
with his three children, evicted from his
home, and ordered to pay more than twice his
income as child and spousal support, plus
court costs for a divorce he never agreed
to. White hanged himself from a tree. No
evidence of any wrongdoing was presented
against him. White’s fate is increasingly
common. “There is nothing unusual about this
judgment,” the Vancouver Sun quotes former
British Columbia Supreme Court Judge Lloyd
McKenzie, who pointed out that the judge in
White’s case applied the same guidelines
used in the US and other western countries.
Augustine Kposowa of the University of
California Riverside writing in the Journal
of Epidemiology and Community Health
attributes a dramatic increase in the
suicide rate of divorced fathers directly to
family court judgments.
Family law denies rights as basic as free
speech and freedom of the press. In American
jurisdictions it is a crime to criticize
family court judges. Earlier this year,
Kevin Thompson received an order from
Massachusetts Judge Mary Manzi prohibiting
distribution of his book, Exposing the
Corruption in the Massachusetts Family
Courts. Following his congressional
testimony critical of the family courts, Jim
Wagner of the Georgia Council for Children’s
Rights was stripped of custody of his two
children and jailed. “We believe…the court
is attempting to punish Wagner for exposing
the court’s misconduct to a congressional
committee,” said Sonny Burmeister, president
of the Council.
~~~
The divorce industry has, in affect, rendered marriage a fraudulent contract. While the dissolution of families affects the health of the entire society, parents and especially fathers must demand that marriage be made an enforceable contract. “No fault” divorces granted by family courts also confront church leadership, not only along lines of morality, but as it touches on the validity of their ministry. If marital bonds can be dissolved by government officials with no grounds or agreement between the marriage partners, the sanctity of a wedding ceremony is subject to disregard. Unless marriage is an enforceable contract, there is little point in preaching trust in it. It is not surprising that ever fewer are willing to marry while the marriage contract offers no protection of family, children, homes, or privacy, even to the extent of life-threatening impositions.
It is one thing to tolerate divorce. It is another to allow government to impose it on unwilling spouses. When courts stop dispensing justice, they must start dispensing injustice. There is no middle ground.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Stephen Baskerville, PhD is president of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children. For more information, including how to join those who are working to restore the family, marriage, and fatherhood against the ravages of the divorce industry, contact these links:
http://www.acfc.org
http://www.divorcereform.org
http://www.marysadvocates.org
http://www.ancpr.org