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Divorce-American Style



 
 
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Old August 17th 09, 09:36 PM posted to alt.child-support
Dusty
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Default Divorce-American Style

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

 




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