http://mensnewsdaily.com/2009/08/17/...merican-style/
Divorce-American Style
By Paul Elam
Aug 17, 2009
Family court, the place with which we are forced to contend when matrimonial
bliss goes bust, has become the demolition derby for troubled families. It's
a shooting gallery, where children and fathers are driven past women and
lawyers like pop-up targets, not for the sake of justice, but because
generating the carnage is a cash cow for all the wrong people.
This is not just a scenario endemic to divorce. It is not just the best we
can do with a system that means well. It is a bad system that does bad
things for all the wrong reasons, with, of course, money at the root.
The family law system has evolved, or devolved, depending on how you look at
it, into an adversarial theater of the damned, where turpitude and
mendaciousness are considered good breeding; where children, fathers and
families are exploited as a matter of routine.
Court officials are quick to tell anyone interested that they act in "the
best interest of the children." They even practice saying it in a haughty,
sanctimonious tone.
Don't buy it. The courts are about only two things. Money and winning, in
that order. They even have it rigged so that we usually know who the winner
is before the gavel ever hits the wood. The only real mystery is the final
tab.
And children? Their best interest is the first thing to go, disposable as
Kleenex. That's what happens when you turn them into property and use them
as bargaining chips along with houses, cars and bank accounts, and when you
put them at the mercy of judges and lawyers that see them not as children
being traumatized by the unraveling of their families, but as marks in a
carnival side show.
The money game goes much deeper than the bottom of the average pocket. Carol
Rhodes, author of the highly recommended "Friend of the Court, Enemy of the
Family," was involved in the family courts for 20 years. She is a former
enforcement officer and investigator for the 37th circuit family court in
Michigan.
Her considerable experience in a system touted to be in the best interest of
the child, was quite actually the opposite.
"It was all about money," she says.
"How to get the federal and state dollars that were allotted each case for
enforcement. In fact," she continues, "our director would say regularly, 'we
are not the friend of the family, we are the friend of the court.'"
In her book she goes on to describe how caseworkers were instructed to push
through increases in child support, with rubber stamping from the judge,
because it meant increases in revenue to the court. She details how her
offices were managed with a philosophy of deception and a focus on increased
revenue rather than the interests of families.
It was a system, she maintains, that regularly buried complaints over
visitation because there was no money in enforcing the rights of the
visiting parent, or in acting in the interest of the children from which
those parents were severed.
"In the years I worked in the system," she says, "I witnessed regular
deception to clients that was mandated by office policy. I saw gender bias
and discrimination. I saw records destroyed."
Ultimately the 37th Circuit became such a success at generating revenue for
the court that they became a model of training for other counties and states
that were only too happy to emulate their practices.
Gathering up the cash from broken families isn't limited to the courtrooms
and the lawyers.
Dr. Stephen Baskerville, in his enlightening book, "Taken into Custody,"
also exposes the rampant corruption in the entire system. Baskerville points
out that psychotherapists, social workers and various social agencies are
also in the game; all cogs in a great machine that demolishes what is left
of broken marriages and sorts the remains, separating cash from the broken
dreams.
He cautions us to remember and consider, and I quote, that "Involuntary
divorce involves government agents forcibly removing innocent people from
their homes, seizing their property, and separating them from their
children. It requires long term supervision over private life by state
functionaries, including police and jails."
It is evident, both from sound research and common sense, that it would be
in the best interest of the child to maintain a close, loving relationship
with both parents regardless of the marriages collapse; to let the parenting
continue, to insist on it, even as the marriage ends. Courts could make that
the objective if they were interested in children's welfare. Instead what
usually happens early in the process is the first strike by the court on the
core of the family, the restraining order, almost always on the father. They
issue them without proof or corroboration, not to protect children, but to
take the family down the road to child support orders and the money the
courts make from enforcing them.
Read Roades and Baskerville. It's all there.
Fighting the process is treacherous. Rhodes informs us that when men who
knew their rights or fathers rights activists came to the court, the word
was passed around beforehand and they were targeted for all the punitive
wrath at the judges considerable disposal.
It's all part of protecting the game; in the best interest of the court, as
it were; perhaps violating Rico Statutes as much as it does the lives of
children.
And the bias toward women as better guardians of children from earlier days
fits in quite well with the schemes of modern courts. All the better and
easier for the fixed fight to have a designated winner. No one has to take a
dive when the judges hold the scoring cards and have them marked before the
opening round.
Best interest of the child? Indeed.
If it stopped there, at the money, it would still be bad enough. But that is
the problem. The courts set up Mom and Dad as lifetime adversaries. They
system instigates continued battles long after the final decree, sending
them back to court repeatedly, like addicts to a crack house. Their children
(remember them?) ever caught in the crossfire.
Let's be really clear about what child custody means. It translates quite
literally to ownership. It isn't just the ability to control when and where
Dad and children see each other and how much he will pay Mom and the courts
for the privilege of doing so. Managing conservators have the unilateral
power to undermine visitation and the father-child bond with impunity. The
courts give it to them.
They have the daily opportunity, and quite frequently the desire, to
assassinate the character of the absent parent, aka, the father; to twist
the child's memory and perceptions to fit with those of the embittered
mother.
Over time, fathers go from being Daddy to being a visitor to being estranged
to being a memory, and probably not a good one. It's not uncommon. You know
people to which this, or something like it, has happened. And likely as not
you have witnessed their children deteriorate socially, academically and
otherwise in the process.
And the next time you hear someone bemoan that Dad doesn't even try to spend
time with the kids since the divorce, consider what he might be dealing with
when he does.
Sara Jane: "Daddy, did you beat mommy up?"
Dad: "No, sweetie, I never did anything like that!"
Sara Jane: "Mommy said you did and that is why you had to leave."
Dad: "Well, honey, I never did."
Sara Jane: "Daddy?"
Dad: "Yes, sweetie?"
Sara Jane: "Are you going to beat me up, too?"
He can't fight this. He doesn't have enough parenting time to give the
needed, corrective balance to his daughters life. The courts have made sure
of it. The ex knows it and uses it.
It is easy to tell Dad that he just needs to man up and rough it through
seeing the minds of his children poisoned with lies and hatred against him.
But of course, if we do that then we are no more really concerned with the
best interest of the child than the courts or some of the mothers. For in
the conversation you just read, it is the child who suffers most. She is
being condemned to a worldview of men and fathers that will stain each and
every relationship she has for the rest of her life.
Restructuring a family is a delicate and difficult matter. But it will
remain much more difficult than is necessary until we restructure or
eliminate the corrupt, arrogant and destructive family courts that currently
have the responsibility for doing so.
There is no panacea, though getting government out of marriage and divorce
would be a good idea. In the absence of that, removing incentives for courts
to exploit broken families would be a start. False allegations in family
court to obtain restraining orders should result in prison terms. And judges
should be removed from the bench and prosecuted themselves for severing a
parent-child relationship without a proven reason.
It's child abuse, pure and simple, and sadly illustrates that while what we
need desperately are judges with integrity and a passion for justice, what
we have in reality are legions of Tony Soprano's in black robes.
Paul Elam is the editor of A Voice for Men