The other side of the story

Pilloried, broke, alone
an article By Donna Laframboise


"Men’s lives are being devastated by courts and governments who
consider no measure too punitive in their war against "deadbeat dads."

Whenever fathers and divorce are discussed, one image dominates: the
'deadbeat dad,' the schmuck who'd rather drive a sports car than support
his kids. Because I write about family matters, I'm regularly inundated
with phone calls, faxes, letters and e-mail from divorced men. It's not
news that divorced individuals have little good to say about their
ex-spouses. What I'm interested in is whether the system assists people
during this difficult time in their lives, or compounds their misery. From
the aircraft engineer in British Columbia, to the postal worker on the
prairies, to the fire fighter in Toronto, divorced fathers' stories are of
a piece: Though society stereotypes these men relentlessly, most divorced
dads pay their child support. Among those who don't, a small percentage
willfully refuse to (the villains you always hear about).
What you haven't been told is that the other men in arrears are too
impoverished to pay, have been ordered to pay unreasonable amounts, have
been paying for unreasonable lengths of time, or are the victims of
bureaucratic foul-ups.

Today, and on Monday and Tuesday, the National Post will tell you the
stories of fathers who have been driven to suicide by a system deaf to
their pleas. We'll introduce you to a man who is still paying child
support for a 23-year-old employed daughter. We'll tell you about an
executive with take-home pay of $7,455 a month who is left with $302 after
handing over child support and alimony to his ex-wife.

Divorced fathers get a bad rap for not supporting their children. The
truth is, many can't. And, tragically, some are driven to desperate
measures, including suicide.

Last July, in a run-down part of Regina, a 39-year-old divorced father
tied a rope around his neck and hanged himself in his basement.

His children, ages eight, nine and 11, and an older adopted child, have
not yet been told how their father died, so his family has requested that
his real name be withheld. We'll call him Jim.

Jim was tall and thin, with dark eyes and hair. He worked as a mechanic at
an auto dealership, specializing in transmission repair. In addition to
four fatherless kids, he left behind grieving parents, two sisters and a
brother.






In his suicide note, Jim, the father of four children, protests that "not
all fathers are deadbeats". Jim hanged himself because he couldn’t
see any alternative.


And a neatly written, two-page suicide note: "The last five years has been
very difficult emotionally and financially for me, since the separation I
tried my best to support my children and make a living," it reads. "The
end result was that it forced me into bankruptcy ... This is the only
solution because I just see absolutely no light at the end of the tunnel."



In his letter, Jim protests that "not all fathers are deadbeats" and
expresses his anguish at being stripped of "the right to parent" his
children after his former wife was awarded sole custody.

"Twice in the past five years I wanted to take my own life but because of
the love and the good times I had with my kids I could not go through with
it," he wrote.

"I hope someday my kids will understand and forgive me for leaving them."








Jim is not the only divorced father driven to desperate measures. Last
week, police recovered the body of Darrin White, 34, of Prince George,
B.C. Mr. White hanged himself after being ordered to pay 2,070 a month in
family support -- even though he'd told the court he was on stress leave
from work and had a take-home pay of about $1,000 a month. Despite doing
everything in their power to live up to their obligations, many divorced
men receive little sympathy.




Lillian White and family watch as the coffin of her son, suicide victim
Darrin White, is carried to a hearse on what would have been his 35th
birthday.




In October, 1995, Andrew Renouf of Markham, Ont., left a similar suicide
note. Describing how the Ontario government had seized all but 43 cents
from his bank account on pay day three days earlier, he wrote: "I have no
money for food or for gas for my car to enable me to work." Although he
had tried to explain his situation to the child-support enforcement
office, he said, "their answer was: 'we have a court order' several times.
I have tried talking to the welfare people in Markham, [but] since I
earned over $520 in the last month I am not eligible for assistance."


Mr. Renouf said in his note that he had no contact with his daughter in
four years. "I do not even know if she is alive and well," it reads.
"There is no further point in continuing my life. It is my intention to
drive to a secluded area near my home, feed the gas exhaust into the car,
take some sleeping pills and use the remaining gas in the car to end my
life. I would have preferred to die with more dignity."

Hazel McBride, a Toronto suicide researcher and psychotherapist, says she
has encountered a number of such cases since the early '90s. One involved
a small businessman who'd faithfully made his child-support payments until
the recession hit. After the support-enforcement office seized money from
his business bank account, his business went under, his house was
repossessed and he suffered a heart attack. Eventually, he blew his head
off with a shotgun.

"These are not unusual cases," she says. "I had a man who came to see me,
and he had cancer and had to leave his job as a long-distance truck
driver. Being self-employed, he had no long-term disability. His wife had
remarried and was living quite well, and she had the children. The only
thing he had left was a house that he had inherited from his parents. Not
a very big house. And once he made his support payments, he had no money
for heat.

"It's one of the reasons I stopped doing the clinical work," says Dr.
McBride, "because the stories were so terrible and there was so little you
could do for people. This man said, 'I want to go out and kill myself. It
won't get better.' And he was right, it wasn't going to get better."

Fathers pushed close to the breaking point rarely attract media attention
because everyone assumes they are deadbeat dads. Government fact sheets
call men whose support payments are in arrears "delinquent parents" who
"hide from their child support debts" and need to be "forced to live up to
their obligations."

The Ontario government claims that such parents owe $1.2-billion in
outstanding support in that province alone, and that only 24% of
registered support payers are in full compliance. A damning portrait of
all divorced fathers has been painted.

But the issue is far more complicated. For starters, support-enforcement
records are notoriously unreliable and out of date. Last year, Wayne Sagle
of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., was told he owed $51,000 in arrears.

Only after the National Post contacted Mr. Sagle's former wife did the
government admit the $51,000 was an illusion. With the former wife
acknowledging the children had lived with their father since 1990, it
became clear the real problem was out-of-date paper-work.

In another instance, months after a support payer committed suicide,
Ontario's enforcement agency continues to send notices to one of his
previous mailing addresses, and, no doubt, to count his arrears in the
total tally of money owed. (One U.S. study found that up to 14% of the men
listed as deadbeat dads in state records were, in fact, dead.)
In some Canadian provinces, men who religiously pay support every two
weeks on pay day are classified as being in arrears for half of each month
-- because the enforcement agencies' book-keeping is based on a monthly
cycle.

No research is available on Canadian child-support payers, but studies
elsewhere indicate the vast majority of divorced men meet their
obligations -- and that those who don't often have good reasons.

According to Roger Gay, an internationally recognized child-support expert
based in Stockholm, the only meaningful child-support statistic is the
percentage of support ordered by the courts that actually gets paid. In
the U.S., he says, "fathers overall pay between 70% and 80% of what is
due."

What's more, the highly publicized garnishments, suspension of drivers'
licenses, revocation of passports and jail sentences have accomplished
little. Despite the efforts of the 50,000 people employed by the U.S.
child-support collection bureaucracy -- which costs $4-billion a year --
Mr. Gay says the percentage of child support paid hasn't changed since the
mid-'70s. "We've let too many years go by without admitting to the public
that these measures have been a failure."

The difficulty in collecting the remaining 20% to 30% is due largely to
the fact that the war against deadbeats is really a war against the poor
-- against men who have always been economically marginal or have been
impoverished by the divorce process itself.

According to the Institute on Poverty, half of non-paying fathers in
Wisconsin earn less than $6,200 a year and only one in 10 earns more than
$18,500 annually. Other research shows the unemployment rate is one of the
most accurate predictors of child-support compliance. (Although even then,
half the men who were out of work in one sample still managed to pay the
full amount of support.)

In 1996, an Oklahoma child-enforcement officer, writing in the Christian
Science Monitor, accused politicians "hungry for the perfect scapegoat,"
of demonizing non-paying fathers. "Most deadbeat dads are frightened,
angry and depressed men," wrote the official, who admitted to putting
hundreds of them behind bars.

"Not only are many deadbeat dads destitute, it is often their failure as
providers which led their ex-wives to divorce them. I prosecuted one
deadbeat dad who had been hospitalized for malnutrition and another who
lived in the bed of a pick-up truck.

"Many times I prosecuted impoverished men on behalf of ex-wives who had
remarried successful men and were living in comfortable conditions."

Yet the stereotype of the divorced father with scads of money who
mean-spiritedly refuses to hand it over persists – and negatively
influences the courts.

In the words of Pauline Green, a Toronto family lawyer, "Some judges think
men have gotten off much too easy in the past with things like child
support. [Their position is:] 'that's it, I don't care what anybody says,
I don't care what the excuses are.' "

Adds Susan Baragar, a Winnipeg lawyer and feminist: "There isn't equality
within the family court. I mean, there's a standard joke among us family
lawyers. We say: 'If you're the guy, just put on your helmet and duck.'
There are injustices that go the other way, on a case by case basis. But
generally speaking, I know if I represent the woman it's going to go
easier for me in court."

While society insists that divorced fathers be "held accountable" some
researchers are asking whether our desire for accountability results in
persecution.

In Throwaway Dads, co-authors Ross Parke and Armin Brott present a litany
of horror stories -- including the case of a janitor wrongly accused of
murder. After spending nearly a decade in Texas prisons, the man was
released, only to be handed a $22,000 bill for child-support arrears that
accrued while he was behind bars.

Support payers are also automatically assumed to be in the wrong. In late
1997, George Roulier's former wife, Carol McIntosh, signed a sworn
statement claiming he was in child-support arrears by $1,220. Five weeks
later, the Ontario government instructed Mr. Roulier's employer to begin
garnisheeing his pay cheque.

Rather than conducting an investigation, the enforcement agency appears
instead to take support claimants at their word. "They told me they tried
to send me a letter," says Mr. Roulier. "I said 'Okay, please send me a
copy of that letter.' And they said, 'No, we won't do that.' "

Seven months later, when Mr. Roulier presented a judge with his cancelled
cheques for the period in question, the judge declared he had paid
"everything owing up to 31 Jan. '98 directly to Carol McIntosh" and that
"there were no arrears of support."

Mr. Roulier is still trying to get a full refund for the arrears collected
that the judge said were not owed. In September, 1998, the enforcement
agency sent him some of the money.

But in October, David Costen, acting director of the agency that had
failed to verify information before acting on it, washed his hands of the
matter. "The question of whether or not the recipient has misinformed the
plan or failed to provide accurate information," he wrote to Mr. Roulier,
"is a legal matter between you and the recipient."

At the same time that society is demanding divorced dads pay up, our
courts, governments and social services fail to recognize the huge effect
losing daily contact with one's children has on men's ability to earn a
living.

"No government and no court should be allowed to take a child from a
parent unless there is a very, very, very good reason," says Dr. McBride.
"Because to have a child ripped from you, it's the same as a child dying.
It's absolutely uncivilized, barbaric and devastating for any parent. It's
not uncommon for these people to suffer depressive breakdowns."

And while a large, expensive system exists to collect child support from
divorced fathers, no parallel system helps ensure children's and father's
rights to close and frequent contact.

After his marriage broke down in late 1997, Toronto firefighter Alan
Heinz's wife told a court three job offers awaited her in Germany. He
reluctantly agreed to her relocation there with the couple's daughter, who
is now 3, but became disturbed when she went on welfare shortly
afterward.

"Society's message to divorced fathers is that the only thing required of
them is money"


While no one in authority will help Mr. Heinz secure his daughter's
return, the Youth Welfare Office in Neuss, Germany, is trying to collect
child support from him in an attempt to recoup the social-assistance
costs.

Mr. Heinz has gone bankrupt trying to fight a legal battle that has spread
to two continents. At 41, he now lives in his parents' basement.

Edward Kruk, a professor of social work at the University of British
Columbia who has studied divorced fathers for the past 15 years, says that
despite the more active role many contemporary fathers take in their
children's lives, "fathers today are less likely to obtain custody if they
contest it in court than they were in the '70s."

In other words, society's message to divorced fathers is that the only
thing required of them is money. It's a message some of them find too
difficult to bear.

Among Jim's personal papers are documents indicating that, in the year
prior to his death, his financial situation had worsened. In late 1998, he
missed nearly three months of work due to a back injury. In mid-November
of that year he received a letter from the Saskatchewan Worker's
Compensation Board advising him his compensation benefits were being
garnisheed.

According to an affidavit Jim signed a few months before his death,
between August, 1998, and January, 1999, his expenses consistently
exceeded his earnings by more than $100 a month.

Paying a modest $460 plus utilities for accommodation, he had spent only
$40 on clothes in the past year, and only $52 on tools -- even though
mechanics are expected to make regular tool purchases as a condition of
their job.

George Seitz, a friend, says Jim lived in "a very rough neighbourhood, a
place in Regina that I would not live, ever" because rents were cheap.
When the two men got together with their children, Mr. Seitz rarely
remembers Jim eating. "I think because of his financial position, he would
buy his kids something and he wouldn't have anything himself."

As Jim's affidavit notes, out of a monthly take-home pay of about $1,650,
"My most significant monthly expense is the [$800] support payments I make
in relation to my children." But that wasn't good enough.

Although Jim had owned the matrimonial home prior to his marriage, which
lasted five years, a judge granted his ex-wife a half interest in it when
the couple divorced. Based on a formula that valued the house higher than
it actually sold for, Jim was ordered to pay his former wife more than
$8,000 and was held responsible for a $3,400 credit-card bill.

Arguing that he had no conceivable way of raising these funds, Jim
attempted to declare bankruptcy. In March, 1998, Judge Maurice J. Herauf
ruled that the amount of money in question "is not large and should be
paid in full." He added, "It has to be made clear to the bankrupt that he
will be held responsible for his actions."

In June, 1999, the same judge denied Jim's appeal, declaring that his
"intransigence toward paying anything to his ex-wife on the property
judgment is as apparent now as it was at the time of the discharge
hearing."

At both these hearings, an extra $500 -- to cover the legal fees of his
ex-wife, who vigorously opposed his bankruptcy -- was added to Jim's debt.
The judge decreed that the now nearly $13,000 Jim owed would be deducted
in $100 installments from every pay cheque for the next six years, leaving
him about $650 a month to live on.

Three years after Andrew Renouf asphyxiated himself in his car near
Markham, Ont., because he, too, could see no way out, a small group of
people held a memorial service outside the provincial support-enforcement
office.

During his sermon, Rev. Alan Stewart, of Toronto's Westview Presbyterian
Church, made the following remarks:

"The terrible reality of this story is that everyone lost. A daughter lost
her father, a former wife lost her support, society lost a good and
productive member and Andrew lost the most precious thing: his life.
Surely a system that makes everyone a loser has got to be wrong."