The Parent Trap

http://louisville.snitch.com/louisvi...117parents.htm

Parent trap
Caleb O. Brown
Staff Writer
Nov. 17, 2004



Custody battles, charges of bias spark nationwide class-action suit

Any child of divorced parents knows the drill. The weekend is over and it's
time for Dad to say his goodbyes and send his progeny back to Mom's house.
The parents meet up for the handoff at a restaurant, rest stop or any other
large concrete structure with a parking lot, provided it's about halfway.

The handoff - awkward, quick and joyless - means moving luggage and a child
from one car to another. The kid wants none of the stilted discussion,
avoiding the sight of the two most important people in her life exchanging
mirthless pleasantries just long enough for Dad to give his goodbye kiss and
then pull away.

The marriage wasn't perfect, the breakup wasn't clean, and no one is happy
with the result. Still, for many splintered families, the above handoff
would be a dream. Some fathers and mothers are trapped in legal battles
without end, fighting not for scheduled visitations, but for any
visitations. Spending significant time away from their young children has
left these non-custodial parents depressed, worried their own young children
may begin to forget them. In some cases, the custodial parent realizes the
power of wielding a child as an emotional, legal and financial weapon to
injure a former spouse.

In an adversarial court system, there are always two sides. In child custody
cases, one side - the non-custodial parent - seems to lose more than the
other. Sensing a pattern, hundreds of thousands of non-custodial parents are
signing on to a nationwide class-action lawsuit that seeks a redress of what
they feel are serious, consistent problems and biases in court systems
across the country. The end result of those problems, the parents claim, is
a consistent violation of the constitutional rights of parents to be
parents.

The following Kentucky fathers represent one side of this contentious
battle.

The first thing she took was our lawyer

Michael Peters got divorced in 1995. His two kids (neither the ex-wife nor
the children will be named here) were 4 and 6 at the time.

Peters won't say precisely that he hates his ex-wife, but he'll say this: "I
despise what she does."

Those actions, he says, include: absconding with the children to another
state when they were supposed to be with him for the Christmas holiday;
telling the kids it's their father's fault she has to go to court; three
contempt of court orders for interference with court-ordered visitations;
and - the winner by a comfortable margin - moving to another state without
notifying him or the court.

Peters says his "personal struggle" has been made worse by a slow family
court system that, nearly 10 years later and in spite of regular illegal
interference from his wife, has not granted him anywhere near half his
children's time.

"It's not equal time, not equal financial support. It's very much stacked.
My ex-wife gets the lion's share of my children's time. I've done my part.
I've followed the court rules. I've never had a negative issue in my own
personal case. The only ground that I feel like I can maintain is when I
petition the court. But that's time and money, and there's only a finite
amount of that. There's not much incentive to do anything different. You
fight so long, and years go by, and it goes on and on."

And fight he has. Peters says he's had to develop several means to get his
wife to comply with his court-ordered child visitations.

"With my case, that has been the only way that I can really see my kids," he
says. "If I were to do nothing, I would not get to see my kids, even with a
court order. There's a well-documented history of visitation interference. I
go to pick up my kids and they're not available."

When his ex-wife remarried within a year of their divorce, it was to a man
in the military. When he was moved, she went with him, taking the kids and
not informing the court, or her ex-husband, that she was doing so.

"She just left, packed up in the middle of the night," he says. "The kids
didn't know they were going. So it was this big secret. Three months later,
I finally get a call from the kids, but they don't know where they live."

The children were 5 and 7 at the time. It took Peters another three months
to learn the location of his children and get a court order to see them.
They met in Oklahoma City, spending a few days with each other in a hotel
room, but he says it took a year and a half in court to get a physical
address for his children.

To deal with other violations that he says are ongoing, Peters sends
registered mail to document communication with his ex-wife. With child
support checks, he encloses the court-ordered terms of upcoming visitations.
Shelling out a few bucks for registered mail is far cheaper than hours of
attorney time, which he says has consumed about $30,000 over the past nine
years. At $125 an hour, Peters says access to his children definitely
carries a pricetag.

"I'd just get angry if I kept a tab on it," he says.

Other expenses have included having off-duty police officers come with him
to collect his children, even if it's only to prove the children weren't
available when his ex-wife said they would be, and to have a credible
witness to testify to that fact.

"We have a colossal case history," Peters says. "They say we have eight
volumes and over a thousand pages of case history. It is quite literally a
foot-thick court record of all the actions that have passed through there."
It would be even thicker, he says, if he'd learned right away to use the
tactics he's using now to see his kids.

With registered mail setting the tone for his relationship with his ex-wife
and a series of fines and court orders keeping his children visiting
regularly, Peters says he shouldn't have to fight so hard in a situation
that's already slanted heavily against him.

He also says he loves being a dad and wonders why the court system continues
to "just put a Band-Aid on the problem" of bias.

The court seems capable only of dealing with his wife's violations with
contempt of court orders and fines or awarding him make-up time for missed
visits, he says.

"Make-up time is fine, but it doesn't fix the problem," he says, adding "the
court system is so biased in favor of women in general," that it's hard to
see how his situation could change.

"I want to see my kids. I want to be an important part of their lives," he
says. "It's a frustrating road as an individual, and that's where this class
action is very appealing. There is strength in numbers. I'm not the only
person. Together we have a louder voice, and maybe we can make a difference.
For me, personally, this likely won't impact my situation with my children,
but it might help somebody else."

Judgment days

Robert Wilkins has joint custody with his ex-girlfriend, Amanda, of their
daughter, Camille. In the last two years - since Oct. 6, 2002, by Wilkins's
recollection - he has spent 19 hours with his daughter.

Wilkins knows he's not the best example of a non-custodial parent, but says
that doesn't change his right to be one. He says he owns his mistakes.

A few months into dating Amanda, a woman he admits he "had no business
with," she became pregnant. He was 30. She was 21. Feeling the obligation
he'd helped create for himself, Wilkins and she moved in together. He worked
as she stayed home with their daughter. As the relationship began to crumble
atop its poor foundation, the pair agreed to separate.

It was all going well until they had to get down to the nuts and bolts of
custody of their daughter.

In August 2001, as Wilkins was emerging from a shower, he says, Amanda had
taken a sleeping Camille from her bed and was ready to leave the house once
and for all. It ended in a Domestic Violence Order against Wilkins.

"We were in a confronation. She wanted to take my daughter who was asleep
upstairs." Wilkins says he pulled Amanda's hair in an attempt to keep her
from taking Camille from him, but says that was the extent of any physical
confrontation.

"I made a dumb mistake," he says. "I've paid for it for three years."

That DVO, he says, was used as a club against him in court as he's tried to
fight for some arrangement for regular time with his daughter.

"It took five and a half months for me to even get visitation with my
daughter," he says, and that came only after the case was, perhaps
mistakenly, bumped into another courtroom, that of Juda Hellman.

"Once I got into Judge Hellman's courtroom, I started seeing my daughter
every other weekend and every Wednesday," he says. "Thank God for her."

This went on for seven or eight weekends in a row. Over the same time, his
ex-girlfriend's attorney somehow got the case bumped back in front of his
original judge, Joan L. Byer.

"Ever since then, I haven't seen my daughter but 19 hours," he says.

The DVO, combined with ongoing allegations of abuse and drug use from his
ex-girlfriend, meant Wilkins is stuck without his daughter. All of the
allegations, Wilkins says, were thrown out. All except the guilty plea on a
DVO, a "nightmare" for Wilkins to overcome.

"Since then, I'd been able to see her through supervised visits, one hour a
week at Family Place."

Family Place proved to be an emotional roller coaster for Wilkins. Through a
steel door in the lower portion of the building, Wilkins says staff ran
magnetometers over his body, a police officer patted him down before
allowing him to sit in a 10-by-12-foot room with Camille for one hour.

Those visits, Wilkins says, were often observed by young volunteers who
would author reports and submit them to the judge. And though he treasured
those hours (among the final 19 he spent with his daughter), the experience
proved to be too much for him to take anymore.

"Camille would cry and say, 'I miss my Daddy already.' It was heartbreaking.
It was a happy moment when we'd see each other, and then heart-wrenching
when she would leave because you'd have one or two minutes until the clock
hits 12 and you're just watching the clock go away. You're thinking, 'My
God, I'm not going to be able to see her until next Tuesday. How horrible
can this be?'"

Wilkins says Family Place staffers would then whisk his daughter out of the
room and the "three-day letdown" would commence. The cycle of the letdown
after a visit and the buildup over the weekend to the next visit left
Wilkins drained.

"I couldn't work," he says. "I couldn't do anything but focus on hatred for
her mother, for the judicial system, for her family, for what they'd done. I
just had to let it go."

The last time he saw his daughter was during a court-ordered custody
evaluation. That evaluation, at a cost of $3,000 and several months, turned
out favorably for Wilkins, and he's currently waiting for the judge to
decide how to weigh the report. That won't happen until his next hearing in
January.

The DVO has fallen off Wilkins's record, but he says more allegations
against him are forthcoming.

"They're using new things now - I'm a druggie. I'm a steroid user. I have
manic-depression."

Wilkins says he's at least thankful his ex-girlfriend has recanted her claim
of child sexual abuse against him. He's hopeful the class action lawsuit
will help him "have a healthy relationship" with his daughter.

"I can't get back the time, but I don't want her to be 15, 16 or 17 years
old saying, 'Where were you, Daddy?' I want to be able to tell her, 'I was
there fighting for you and I was waiting for you.'"

Unstacking the decks

Wes Collins is coordinating Kentucky's class-action lawsuit on behalf of
non-custodial parents.

The stress of trying to literally build a home with his wife and two
children was too much. His wife took the children and left while he was at
work one day. The resulting legal mess and the alienation of his older child
have left him jaded about the legal system.

Much of the systemic problems he sees in the court system dealing with
non-custodial parents deals with poor controls in how cases are handled and
too much judicial discretion. Add what he sees as a prevalent and often open
bias against men and he says that's a recipe for the violation of parental
rights. He says tapes of his own pretrial hearing in his Fayette County
divorce exist, but he's been unable to find them. Fayette is among counties
that record pretrial conferences.

Just after the divorce, Collins's now ex-wife was awarded full custody of
both children following a hearing in which Collins had no counsel.

A weekend visit from Collins's son ended with a terse phone call in which
says his ex-wife's boyfriend threatened to "bust his f***ing head."

He didn't want to return his young child to a home he felt was threatening
to him and his son, he told his ex he would call her back to make final
arrangements. She did not answer the phone again.

Within days of calling police to report the threat, Collins says he was
facing a claim from his wife of refusing to return their son as scheduled.

Collins's attorney asked to be dismissed, and Collins's request for a
continuance to get an attorney to represent him was denied in the hearing.

Collins says he attempted to explain his call to police, but was ordered by
the judge to undergo a mental evaluation at a facility she chose. After the
evaluation, the social worker involved recommended Collins attend her
domestic violence class.

"Boy, I sure wish I could rule business in my favor," Collins says. "It's
been a nightmare."

Collins hasn't seen his 5-year-old son in seven months, and is now limited
to speaking with him by telephone. He says his ex-wife interferes with the
scheduled calls.

Legal mumbo jumbo

The nationwide effort at organizing the class action on behalf of the
parents is organized by the Indiana Civil Rights Council (indianacrc.org).
That group has been so swamped with requests for information, the
coordinator of the national class-action effort, Council president Torm L.
Howse, is now just sending out an informative e-mail to potential
plaintiffs.

The basic parameters for parents who want to be a part of the suit is that
they be a legally designated non-custodial parent with a minor child for
whom child support is still being paid. The parent must also have never been
convicted of any serious abuse or neglect of the child.

Collins says the claims against the courts are fairly broad in attempting to
bring abuses to light: the violation of rights of both parents and children
and the willful mismanagement of government. The violation of rights, the
plaintiffs say, is as simple as freedom of association and equal protections
under the First and 14th Amendments.

The Indiana Civil Rights Council estimates - the group calls it a
conservative estimate - more than 16 million non-custodial parents could
sign onto the suit, which they estimate will seek an estimated $48 trillion.


--
"The most terrifying words in the English language a
I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
--- Ronald Reagan

The situations outlined below are so common. Yet I think very, very few
young men contemplating marriage and having a family have any idea about how
common they are -- or how (in the U.S. at least) there is a 50 percent
chance that this is the fate awaiting them.

I live in a small group of about 15 houses. During the 14 years I have
lived here, in that small area I have seen four of these marital breakdown
situations playing themselves out, three of them involving young children.
Then there's me and my next-door neighbor, both long-time divorced men who
are not remarried. Admittedly, it's a microcosm, but it pretty much reflects
the overall statistics in the U.S.

It's very unlikely that this situation will change until some way is
found of communicating IN ADVANCE to men in the U.S. what often happens
after marriage. This is more proof of the need for my little proposal, the
"Truth in Marriage Act," under which all couples contemplating marriage
would have to sign a statement saying that they had been told about the
brutal realities of divorce, child custody, and "child support." After
all, when you take out a loan in the U.S., there is the Truth in Lending
Act, which requires that you be told all the terms of the loan. And getting
married is of far more significance than taking out a loan.

"Dusty" wrote in message
...
http://louisville.snitch.com/louisvi...117parents.htm

Parent trap
Caleb O. Brown
Staff Writer
Nov. 17, 2004



Custody battles, charges of bias spark nationwide class-action suit

Any child of divorced parents knows the drill. The weekend is over and
it's
time for Dad to say his goodbyes and send his progeny back to Mom's house.
The parents meet up for the handoff at a restaurant, rest stop or any
other
large concrete structure with a parking lot, provided it's about halfway.

The handoff - awkward, quick and joyless - means moving luggage and a
child
from one car to another. The kid wants none of the stilted discussion,
avoiding the sight of the two most important people in her life exchanging
mirthless pleasantries just long enough for Dad to give his goodbye kiss
and
then pull away.

The marriage wasn't perfect, the breakup wasn't clean, and no one is happy
with the result. Still, for many splintered families, the above handoff
would be a dream. Some fathers and mothers are trapped in legal battles
without end, fighting not for scheduled visitations, but for any
visitations. Spending significant time away from their young children has
left these non-custodial parents depressed, worried their own young
children
may begin to forget them. In some cases, the custodial parent realizes the
power of wielding a child as an emotional, legal and financial weapon to
injure a former spouse.

In an adversarial court system, there are always two sides. In child
custody
cases, one side - the non-custodial parent - seems to lose more than the
other. Sensing a pattern, hundreds of thousands of non-custodial parents
are
signing on to a nationwide class-action lawsuit that seeks a redress of
what
they feel are serious, consistent problems and biases in court systems
across the country. The end result of those problems, the parents claim,
is
a consistent violation of the constitutional rights of parents to be
parents.

The following Kentucky fathers represent one side of this contentious
battle.

The first thing she took was our lawyer

Michael Peters got divorced in 1995. His two kids (neither the ex-wife nor
the children will be named here) were 4 and 6 at the time.

Peters won't say precisely that he hates his ex-wife, but he'll say this:
"I
despise what she does."

Those actions, he says, include: absconding with the children to another
state when they were supposed to be with him for the Christmas holiday;
telling the kids it's their father's fault she has to go to court; three
contempt of court orders for interference with court-ordered visitations;
and - the winner by a comfortable margin - moving to another state without
notifying him or the court.

Peters says his "personal struggle" has been made worse by a slow family
court system that, nearly 10 years later and in spite of regular illegal
interference from his wife, has not granted him anywhere near half his
children's time.

"It's not equal time, not equal financial support. It's very much stacked.
My ex-wife gets the lion's share of my children's time. I've done my part.
I've followed the court rules. I've never had a negative issue in my own
personal case. The only ground that I feel like I can maintain is when I
petition the court. But that's time and money, and there's only a finite
amount of that. There's not much incentive to do anything different. You
fight so long, and years go by, and it goes on and on."

And fight he has. Peters says he's had to develop several means to get his
wife to comply with his court-ordered child visitations.

"With my case, that has been the only way that I can really see my kids,"
he
says. "If I were to do nothing, I would not get to see my kids, even with
a
court order. There's a well-documented history of visitation interference.
I
go to pick up my kids and they're not available."

When his ex-wife remarried within a year of their divorce, it was to a man
in the military. When he was moved, she went with him, taking the kids and
not informing the court, or her ex-husband, that she was doing so.

"She just left, packed up in the middle of the night," he says. "The kids
didn't know they were going. So it was this big secret. Three months
later,
I finally get a call from the kids, but they don't know where they live."

The children were 5 and 7 at the time. It took Peters another three months
to learn the location of his children and get a court order to see them.
They met in Oklahoma City, spending a few days with each other in a hotel
room, but he says it took a year and a half in court to get a physical
address for his children.

To deal with other violations that he says are ongoing, Peters sends
registered mail to document communication with his ex-wife. With child
support checks, he encloses the court-ordered terms of upcoming
visitations.
Shelling out a few bucks for registered mail is far cheaper than hours of
attorney time, which he says has consumed about $30,000 over the past nine
years. At $125 an hour, Peters says access to his children definitely
carries a pricetag.

"I'd just get angry if I kept a tab on it," he says.

Other expenses have included having off-duty police officers come with him
to collect his children, even if it's only to prove the children weren't
available when his ex-wife said they would be, and to have a credible
witness to testify to that fact.

"We have a colossal case history," Peters says. "They say we have eight
volumes and over a thousand pages of case history. It is quite literally a
foot-thick court record of all the actions that have passed through
there."
It would be even thicker, he says, if he'd learned right away to use the
tactics he's using now to see his kids.

With registered mail setting the tone for his relationship with his
ex-wife
and a series of fines and court orders keeping his children visiting
regularly, Peters says he shouldn't have to fight so hard in a situation
that's already slanted heavily against him.

He also says he loves being a dad and wonders why the court system
continues
to "just put a Band-Aid on the problem" of bias.

The court seems capable only of dealing with his wife's violations with
contempt of court orders and fines or awarding him make-up time for missed
visits, he says.

"Make-up time is fine, but it doesn't fix the problem," he says, adding
"the
court system is so biased in favor of women in general," that it's hard to
see how his situation could change.

"I want to see my kids. I want to be an important part of their lives," he
says. "It's a frustrating road as an individual, and that's where this
class
action is very appealing. There is strength in numbers. I'm not the only
person. Together we have a louder voice, and maybe we can make a
difference.
For me, personally, this likely won't impact my situation with my
children,
but it might help somebody else."

Judgment days

Robert Wilkins has joint custody with his ex-girlfriend, Amanda, of their
daughter, Camille. In the last two years - since Oct. 6, 2002, by
Wilkins's
recollection - he has spent 19 hours with his daughter.

Wilkins knows he's not the best example of a non-custodial parent, but
says
that doesn't change his right to be one. He says he owns his mistakes.

A few months into dating Amanda, a woman he admits he "had no business
with," she became pregnant. He was 30. She was 21. Feeling the obligation
he'd helped create for himself, Wilkins and she moved in together. He
worked
as she stayed home with their daughter. As the relationship began to
crumble
atop its poor foundation, the pair agreed to separate.

It was all going well until they had to get down to the nuts and bolts of
custody of their daughter.

In August 2001, as Wilkins was emerging from a shower, he says, Amanda had
taken a sleeping Camille from her bed and was ready to leave the house
once
and for all. It ended in a Domestic Violence Order against Wilkins.

"We were in a confronation. She wanted to take my daughter who was asleep
upstairs." Wilkins says he pulled Amanda's hair in an attempt to keep her
from taking Camille from him, but says that was the extent of any physical
confrontation.

"I made a dumb mistake," he says. "I've paid for it for three years."

That DVO, he says, was used as a club against him in court as he's tried
to
fight for some arrangement for regular time with his daughter.

"It took five and a half months for me to even get visitation with my
daughter," he says, and that came only after the case was, perhaps
mistakenly, bumped into another courtroom, that of Juda Hellman.

"Once I got into Judge Hellman's courtroom, I started seeing my daughter
every other weekend and every Wednesday," he says. "Thank God for her."

This went on for seven or eight weekends in a row. Over the same time, his
ex-girlfriend's attorney somehow got the case bumped back in front of his
original judge, Joan L. Byer.

"Ever since then, I haven't seen my daughter but 19 hours," he says.

The DVO, combined with ongoing allegations of abuse and drug use from his
ex-girlfriend, meant Wilkins is stuck without his daughter. All of the
allegations, Wilkins says, were thrown out. All except the guilty plea on
a
DVO, a "nightmare" for Wilkins to overcome.

"Since then, I'd been able to see her through supervised visits, one hour
a
week at Family Place."

Family Place proved to be an emotional roller coaster for Wilkins. Through
a
steel door in the lower portion of the building, Wilkins says staff ran
magnetometers over his body, a police officer patted him down before
allowing him to sit in a 10-by-12-foot room with Camille for one hour.

Those visits, Wilkins says, were often observed by young volunteers who
would author reports and submit them to the judge. And though he treasured
those hours (among the final 19 he spent with his daughter), the
experience
proved to be too much for him to take anymore.

"Camille would cry and say, 'I miss my Daddy already.' It was
heartbreaking.
It was a happy moment when we'd see each other, and then heart-wrenching
when she would leave because you'd have one or two minutes until the clock
hits 12 and you're just watching the clock go away. You're thinking, 'My
God, I'm not going to be able to see her until next Tuesday. How horrible
can this be?'"

Wilkins says Family Place staffers would then whisk his daughter out of
the
room and the "three-day letdown" would commence. The cycle of the letdown
after a visit and the buildup over the weekend to the next visit left
Wilkins drained.

"I couldn't work," he says. "I couldn't do anything but focus on hatred
for
her mother, for the judicial system, for her family, for what they'd done.
I
just had to let it go."

The last time he saw his daughter was during a court-ordered custody
evaluation. That evaluation, at a cost of $3,000 and several months,
turned
out favorably for Wilkins, and he's currently waiting for the judge to
decide how to weigh the report. That won't happen until his next hearing
in
January.

The DVO has fallen off Wilkins's record, but he says more allegations
against him are forthcoming.

"They're using new things now - I'm a druggie. I'm a steroid user. I have
manic-depression."

Wilkins says he's at least thankful his ex-girlfriend has recanted her
claim
of child sexual abuse against him. He's hopeful the class action lawsuit
will help him "have a healthy relationship" with his daughter.

"I can't get back the time, but I don't want her to be 15, 16 or 17 years
old saying, 'Where were you, Daddy?' I want to be able to tell her, 'I was
there fighting for you and I was waiting for you.'"

Unstacking the decks

Wes Collins is coordinating Kentucky's class-action lawsuit on behalf of
non-custodial parents.

The stress of trying to literally build a home with his wife and two
children was too much. His wife took the children and left while he was at
work one day. The resulting legal mess and the alienation of his older
child
have left him jaded about the legal system.

Much of the systemic problems he sees in the court system dealing with
non-custodial parents deals with poor controls in how cases are handled
and
too much judicial discretion. Add what he sees as a prevalent and often
open
bias against men and he says that's a recipe for the violation of parental
rights. He says tapes of his own pretrial hearing in his Fayette County
divorce exist, but he's been unable to find them. Fayette is among
counties
that record pretrial conferences.

Just after the divorce, Collins's now ex-wife was awarded full custody of
both children following a hearing in which Collins had no counsel.

A weekend visit from Collins's son ended with a terse phone call in which
says his ex-wife's boyfriend threatened to "bust his f***ing head."

He didn't want to return his young child to a home he felt was threatening
to him and his son, he told his ex he would call her back to make final
arrangements. She did not answer the phone again.

Within days of calling police to report the threat, Collins says he was
facing a claim from his wife of refusing to return their son as scheduled.

Collins's attorney asked to be dismissed, and Collins's request for a
continuance to get an attorney to represent him was denied in the hearing.

Collins says he attempted to explain his call to police, but was ordered
by
the judge to undergo a mental evaluation at a facility she chose. After
the
evaluation, the social worker involved recommended Collins attend her
domestic violence class.

"Boy, I sure wish I could rule business in my favor," Collins says. "It's
been a nightmare."

Collins hasn't seen his 5-year-old son in seven months, and is now limited
to speaking with him by telephone. He says his ex-wife interferes with the
scheduled calls.

Legal mumbo jumbo

The nationwide effort at organizing the class action on behalf of the
parents is organized by the Indiana Civil Rights Council (indianacrc.org).
That group has been so swamped with requests for information, the
coordinator of the national class-action effort, Council president Torm L.
Howse, is now just sending out an informative e-mail to potential
plaintiffs.

The basic parameters for parents who want to be a part of the suit is that
they be a legally designated non-custodial parent with a minor child for
whom child support is still being paid. The parent must also have never
been
convicted of any serious abuse or neglect of the child.

Collins says the claims against the courts are fairly broad in attempting
to
bring abuses to light: the violation of rights of both parents and
children
and the willful mismanagement of government. The violation of rights, the
plaintiffs say, is as simple as freedom of association and equal
protections
under the First and 14th Amendments.

The Indiana Civil Rights Council estimates - the group calls it a
conservative estimate - more than 16 million non-custodial parents could
sign onto the suit, which they estimate will seek an estimated $48
trillion.


--
"The most terrifying words in the English language a
I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
--- Ronald Reagan

Brilliant idea. Sadly it's necessary only because of the court's failure to
provide protections to all parties involved. It's not an absence of
protections since they are already there, but the legal interpretation and
resolutions which seem to cause most of the damage.

In my case it was only necessary to show that we disagreed. There was only
an allegation of domestic violence. These two combined were enough to create
an interim order which gave the mother full-custody. Some months later and
at a cost, we had a lawyers meeting and haggled out joint-custody. In the
bargain I released goodies such as birthdays and Christmas in return for the
joint-custody arrangement. In essence, there was no real change. I had no
better access to information nor time with my child. There seemed to be less
arguments than without joint-custody.

A few years later after numerous requests for some minimal increase in time
and being consistently refused, I filed an unrepresented motion to court
asking for more time, and a reduction in child-support. Both were refused,
joint-custody was removed as were my Tuesday evenings. Oh, I paid for her
lawyer since the mother asked for court costs.

Fast forward through what seems like 7 years from the Twilight Zone, I've
been somehow able to maintain some level of sanity until recently when after
a number of days trying to negotiate summer holidays with the mother. In the
final order I'm to submit dates for summer holidays to the mother before May
1 but since she can simply reject my dates arbitrarily, I've just asked her
which dates she wants to give me. This seems to work out a bit better and
all I have to do is be available for any two weeks during the summer and be
willing to have very little advance notice. In other words, I never say no.
I suspect she thinks that if she asks me to pick up the kid on my hands and
knees, I will likely refuse, but I don't. Gets her real ****ed too.

Back to the point, after the days of negotiating, and trust me, she was
seeking legal ammunition, I uttered a threat (in a calm manner I might add,
not that it matters). Some 4 weeks later, she filed charges.

My case pending in a few weeks.

There are other details of course with which I will not bore the reader.

I hope this post will assist others in similar situations.




"Kenneth S." wrote in message
...
The situations outlined below are so common. Yet I think very, very
few
young men contemplating marriage and having a family have any idea about
how
common they are -- or how (in the U.S. at least) there is a 50 percent
chance that this is the fate awaiting them.

I live in a small group of about 15 houses. During the 14 years I
have
lived here, in that small area I have seen four of these marital breakdown
situations playing themselves out, three of them involving young children.
Then there's me and my next-door neighbor, both long-time divorced men who
are not remarried. Admittedly, it's a microcosm, but it pretty much
reflects
the overall statistics in the U.S.

It's very unlikely that this situation will change until some way is
found of communicating IN ADVANCE to men in the U.S. what often happens
after marriage. This is more proof of the need for my little proposal,
the
"Truth in Marriage Act," under which all couples contemplating marriage
would have to sign a statement saying that they had been told about the
brutal realities of divorce, child custody, and "child support." After
all, when you take out a loan in the U.S., there is the Truth in Lending
Act, which requires that you be told all the terms of the loan. And
getting
married is of far more significance than taking out a loan.

"Dusty" wrote in message
...
http://louisville.snitch.com/louisvi...117parents.htm

Parent trap
Caleb O. Brown
Staff Writer
Nov. 17, 2004



Custody battles, charges of bias spark nationwide class-action suit

Any child of divorced parents knows the drill. The weekend is over and
it's
time for Dad to say his goodbyes and send his progeny back to Mom's
house.
The parents meet up for the handoff at a restaurant, rest stop or any
other
large concrete structure with a parking lot, provided it's about
halfway.

The handoff - awkward, quick and joyless - means moving luggage and a
child
from one car to another. The kid wants none of the stilted discussion,
avoiding the sight of the two most important people in her life
exchanging
mirthless pleasantries just long enough for Dad to give his goodbye kiss
and
then pull away.

The marriage wasn't perfect, the breakup wasn't clean, and no one is
happy
with the result. Still, for many splintered families, the above handoff
would be a dream. Some fathers and mothers are trapped in legal battles
without end, fighting not for scheduled visitations, but for any
visitations. Spending significant time away from their young children
has
left these non-custodial parents depressed, worried their own young
children
may begin to forget them. In some cases, the custodial parent realizes
the
power of wielding a child as an emotional, legal and financial weapon to
injure a former spouse.

In an adversarial court system, there are always two sides. In child
custody
cases, one side - the non-custodial parent - seems to lose more than the
other. Sensing a pattern, hundreds of thousands of non-custodial parents
are
signing on to a nationwide class-action lawsuit that seeks a redress of
what
they feel are serious, consistent problems and biases in court systems
across the country. The end result of those problems, the parents claim,
is
a consistent violation of the constitutional rights of parents to be
parents.

The following Kentucky fathers represent one side of this contentious
battle.

The first thing she took was our lawyer

Michael Peters got divorced in 1995. His two kids (neither the ex-wife
nor
the children will be named here) were 4 and 6 at the time.

Peters won't say precisely that he hates his ex-wife, but he'll say
this:
"I
despise what she does."

Those actions, he says, include: absconding with the children to another
state when they were supposed to be with him for the Christmas holiday;
telling the kids it's their father's fault she has to go to court; three
contempt of court orders for interference with court-ordered
visitations;
and - the winner by a comfortable margin - moving to another state
without
notifying him or the court.

Peters says his "personal struggle" has been made worse by a slow family
court system that, nearly 10 years later and in spite of regular illegal
interference from his wife, has not granted him anywhere near half his
children's time.

"It's not equal time, not equal financial support. It's very much
stacked.
My ex-wife gets the lion's share of my children's time. I've done my
part.
I've followed the court rules. I've never had a negative issue in my own
personal case. The only ground that I feel like I can maintain is when I
petition the court. But that's time and money, and there's only a finite
amount of that. There's not much incentive to do anything different. You
fight so long, and years go by, and it goes on and on."

And fight he has. Peters says he's had to develop several means to get
his
wife to comply with his court-ordered child visitations.

"With my case, that has been the only way that I can really see my
kids,"
he
says. "If I were to do nothing, I would not get to see my kids, even
with
a
court order. There's a well-documented history of visitation
interference.
I
go to pick up my kids and they're not available."

When his ex-wife remarried within a year of their divorce, it was to a
man
in the military. When he was moved, she went with him, taking the kids
and
not informing the court, or her ex-husband, that she was doing so.

"She just left, packed up in the middle of the night," he says. "The
kids
didn't know they were going. So it was this big secret. Three months
later,
I finally get a call from the kids, but they don't know where they
live."

The children were 5 and 7 at the time. It took Peters another three
months
to learn the location of his children and get a court order to see them.
They met in Oklahoma City, spending a few days with each other in a
hotel
room, but he says it took a year and a half in court to get a physical
address for his children.

To deal with other violations that he says are ongoing, Peters sends
registered mail to document communication with his ex-wife. With child
support checks, he encloses the court-ordered terms of upcoming
visitations.
Shelling out a few bucks for registered mail is far cheaper than hours
of
attorney time, which he says has consumed about $30,000 over the past
nine
years. At $125 an hour, Peters says access to his children definitely
carries a pricetag.

"I'd just get angry if I kept a tab on it," he says.

Other expenses have included having off-duty police officers come with
him
to collect his children, even if it's only to prove the children weren't
available when his ex-wife said they would be, and to have a credible
witness to testify to that fact.

"We have a colossal case history," Peters says. "They say we have eight
volumes and over a thousand pages of case history. It is quite literally
a
foot-thick court record of all the actions that have passed through
there."
It would be even thicker, he says, if he'd learned right away to use the
tactics he's using now to see his kids.

With registered mail setting the tone for his relationship with his
ex-wife
and a series of fines and court orders keeping his children visiting
regularly, Peters says he shouldn't have to fight so hard in a situation
that's already slanted heavily against him.

He also says he loves being a dad and wonders why the court system
continues
to "just put a Band-Aid on the problem" of bias.

The court seems capable only of dealing with his wife's violations with
contempt of court orders and fines or awarding him make-up time for
missed
visits, he says.

"Make-up time is fine, but it doesn't fix the problem," he says, adding
"the
court system is so biased in favor of women in general," that it's hard
to
see how his situation could change.

"I want to see my kids. I want to be an important part of their lives,"
he
says. "It's a frustrating road as an individual, and that's where this
class
action is very appealing. There is strength in numbers. I'm not the only
person. Together we have a louder voice, and maybe we can make a
difference.
For me, personally, this likely won't impact my situation with my
children,
but it might help somebody else."

Judgment days

Robert Wilkins has joint custody with his ex-girlfriend, Amanda, of
their
daughter, Camille. In the last two years - since Oct. 6, 2002, by
Wilkins's
recollection - he has spent 19 hours with his daughter.

Wilkins knows he's not the best example of a non-custodial parent, but
says
that doesn't change his right to be one. He says he owns his mistakes.

A few months into dating Amanda, a woman he admits he "had no business
with," she became pregnant. He was 30. She was 21. Feeling the
obligation
he'd helped create for himself, Wilkins and she moved in together. He
worked
as she stayed home with their daughter. As the relationship began to
crumble
atop its poor foundation, the pair agreed to separate.

It was all going well until they had to get down to the nuts and bolts
of
custody of their daughter.

In August 2001, as Wilkins was emerging from a shower, he says, Amanda
had
taken a sleeping Camille from her bed and was ready to leave the house
once
and for all. It ended in a Domestic Violence Order against Wilkins.

"We were in a confronation. She wanted to take my daughter who was
asleep
upstairs." Wilkins says he pulled Amanda's hair in an attempt to keep
her
from taking Camille from him, but says that was the extent of any
physical
confrontation.

"I made a dumb mistake," he says. "I've paid for it for three years."

That DVO, he says, was used as a club against him in court as he's tried
to
fight for some arrangement for regular time with his daughter.

"It took five and a half months for me to even get visitation with my
daughter," he says, and that came only after the case was, perhaps
mistakenly, bumped into another courtroom, that of Juda Hellman.

"Once I got into Judge Hellman's courtroom, I started seeing my daughter
every other weekend and every Wednesday," he says. "Thank God for her."

This went on for seven or eight weekends in a row. Over the same time,
his
ex-girlfriend's attorney somehow got the case bumped back in front of
his
original judge, Joan L. Byer.

"Ever since then, I haven't seen my daughter but 19 hours," he says.

The DVO, combined with ongoing allegations of abuse and drug use from
his
ex-girlfriend, meant Wilkins is stuck without his daughter. All of the
allegations, Wilkins says, were thrown out. All except the guilty plea
on
a
DVO, a "nightmare" for Wilkins to overcome.

"Since then, I'd been able to see her through supervised visits, one
hour
a
week at Family Place."

Family Place proved to be an emotional roller coaster for Wilkins. Throu
gh
a
steel door in the lower portion of the building, Wilkins says staff ran
magnetometers over his body, a police officer patted him down before
allowing him to sit in a 10-by-12-foot room with Camille for one hour.

Those visits, Wilkins says, were often observed by young volunteers who
would author reports and submit them to the judge. And though he
treasured
those hours (among the final 19 he spent with his daughter), the
experience
proved to be too much for him to take anymore.

"Camille would cry and say, 'I miss my Daddy already.' It was
heartbreaking.
It was a happy moment when we'd see each other, and then heart-wrenching
when she would leave because you'd have one or two minutes until the
clock
hits 12 and you're just watching the clock go away. You're thinking, 'My
God, I'm not going to be able to see her until next Tuesday. How
horrible
can this be?'"

Wilkins says Family Place staffers would then whisk his daughter out of
the
room and the "three-day letdown" would commence. The cycle of the
letdown
after a visit and the buildup over the weekend to the next visit left
Wilkins drained.

"I couldn't work," he says. "I couldn't do anything but focus on hatred
for
her mother, for the judicial system, for her family, for what they'd
done.
I
just had to let it go."

The last time he saw his daughter was during a court-ordered custody
evaluation. That evaluation, at a cost of $3,000 and several months,
turned
out favorably for Wilkins, and he's currently waiting for the judge to
decide how to weigh the report. That won't happen until his next hearing
in
January.

The DVO has fallen off Wilkins's record, but he says more allegations
against him are forthcoming.

"They're using new things now - I'm a druggie. I'm a steroid user. I
have
manic-depression."

Wilkins says he's at least thankful his ex-girlfriend has recanted her
claim
of child sexual abuse against him. He's hopeful the class action lawsuit
will help him "have a healthy relationship" with his daughter.

"I can't get back the time, but I don't want her to be 15, 16 or 17
years
old saying, 'Where were you, Daddy?' I want to be able to tell her, 'I
was
there fighting for you and I was waiting for you.'"

Unstacking the decks

Wes Collins is coordinating Kentucky's class-action lawsuit on behalf of
non-custodial parents.

The stress of trying to literally build a home with his wife and two
children was too much. His wife took the children and left while he was
at
work one day. The resulting legal mess and the alienation of his older
child
have left him jaded about the legal system.

Much of the systemic problems he sees in the court system dealing with
non-custodial parents deals with poor controls in how cases are handled
and
too much judicial discretion. Add what he sees as a prevalent and often
open
bias against men and he says that's a recipe for the violation of
parental
rights. He says tapes of his own pretrial hearing in his Fayette County
divorce exist, but he's been unable to find them. Fayette is among
counties
that record pretrial conferences.

Just after the divorce, Collins's now ex-wife was awarded full custody
of
both children following a hearing in which Collins had no counsel.

A weekend visit from Collins's son ended with a terse phone call in
which
says his ex-wife's boyfriend threatened to "bust his f***ing head."

He didn't want to return his young child to a home he felt was
threatening
to him and his son, he told his ex he would call her back to make final
arrangements. She did not answer the phone again.

Within days of calling police to report the threat, Collins says he was
facing a claim from his wife of refusing to return their son as schedule
d.

Collins's attorney asked to be dismissed, and Collins's request for a
continuance to get an attorney to represent him was denied in the
hearing.

Collins says he attempted to explain his call to police, but was ordered
by
the judge to undergo a mental evaluation at a facility she chose. After
the
evaluation, the social worker involved recommended Collins attend her
domestic violence class.

"Boy, I sure wish I could rule business in my favor," Collins says.
"It's
been a nightmare."

Collins hasn't seen his 5-year-old son in seven months, and is now
limited
to speaking with him by telephone. He says his ex-wife interferes with
the
scheduled calls.

Legal mumbo jumbo

The nationwide effort at organizing the class action on behalf of the
parents is organized by the Indiana Civil Rights Council
(indianacrc.org).
That group has been so swamped with requests for information, the
coordinator of the national class-action effort, Council president Torm
L.
Howse, is now just sending out an informative e-mail to potential
plaintiffs.

The basic parameters for parents who want to be a part of the suit is
that
they be a legally designated non-custodial parent with a minor child for
whom child support is still being paid. The parent must also have never
been
convicted of any serious abuse or neglect of the child.

Collins says the claims against the courts are fairly broad in
attempting
to
bring abuses to light: the violation of rights of both parents and
children
and the willful mismanagement of government. The violation of rights,
the
plaintiffs say, is as simple as freedom of association and equal
protections
under the First and 14th Amendments.

The Indiana Civil Rights Council estimates - the group calls it a
conservative estimate - more than 16 million non-custodial parents could
sign onto the suit, which they estimate will seek an estimated $48
trillion.


--
"The most terrifying words in the English language a
I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
--- Ronald Reagan

The current situation in the U.S. is not merely the result of COURT
action. God knows, the courts are corrupt enough and judges are grotesquely
prejudiced against fathers. However, the current situation is primarily the
result of the actions of STATE LEGISLATURES. You get married in one state,
and under one set of conditions. Then, years later, when you live in some
other jurisdiction, and when all kinds of changes to divorce law have been
adopted during the time you were married, your wife decides she wants a
divorce. What rules apply? Only those currently in force in the state in
which you now live. Does it do you any good to argue that these are not the
rules under which you got married, and that you would never have married the
woman if you had thought that these would be the rules for divorce? Of
course not.

Can you think of any other legal arrangement that is retroactively
amended by state legislatures in the same way as marriage?

My own feeling is that the long-term solution is for marriage to be
completely privatized. There's no reason for having the most personal of
relationships regulated by politicians -- endlessly subject to retroactive
amendment under pressure from various kinds of pressure groups, notably
feminists. It would be far better to have only one rule governing
marriage -- that everybody getting married have a comprehensive prenuptial
contract that would cover all important matters, including child custody.

Meantime, let's have the "Truth in Marriage Act."

"Meldon" wrote in message
...
Brilliant idea. Sadly it's necessary only because of the court's failure
to
provide protections to all parties involved. It's not an absence of
protections since they are already there, but the legal interpretation and
resolutions which seem to cause most of the damage.

In my case it was only necessary to show that we disagreed. There was only
an allegation of domestic violence. These two combined were enough to
create
an interim order which gave the mother full-custody. Some months later and
at a cost, we had a lawyers meeting and haggled out joint-custody. In the
bargain I released goodies such as birthdays and Christmas in return for
the
joint-custody arrangement. In essence, there was no real change. I had no
better access to information nor time with my child. There seemed to be
less
arguments than without joint-custody.

A few years later after numerous requests for some minimal increase in
time
and being consistently refused, I filed an unrepresented motion to court
asking for more time, and a reduction in child-support. Both were refused,
joint-custody was removed as were my Tuesday evenings. Oh, I paid for her
lawyer since the mother asked for court costs.

Fast forward through what seems like 7 years from the Twilight Zone, I've
been somehow able to maintain some level of sanity until recently when
after
a number of days trying to negotiate summer holidays with the mother. In
the
final order I'm to submit dates for summer holidays to the mother before
May
1 but since she can simply reject my dates arbitrarily, I've just asked
her
which dates she wants to give me. This seems to work out a bit better and
all I have to do is be available for any two weeks during the summer and
be
willing to have very little advance notice. In other words, I never say
no.
I suspect she thinks that if she asks me to pick up the kid on my hands
and
knees, I will likely refuse, but I don't. Gets her real ****ed too.

Back to the point, after the days of negotiating, and trust me, she was
seeking legal ammunition, I uttered a threat (in a calm manner I might
add,
not that it matters). Some 4 weeks later, she filed charges.

My case pending in a few weeks.

There are other details of course with which I will not bore the reader.

I hope this post will assist others in similar situations.




"Kenneth S." wrote in message
...
The situations outlined below are so common. Yet I think very, very
few
young men contemplating marriage and having a family have any idea about
how
common they are -- or how (in the U.S. at least) there is a 50 percent
chance that this is the fate awaiting them.

I live in a small group of about 15 houses. During the 14 years I
have
lived here, in that small area I have seen four of these marital
breakdown
situations playing themselves out, three of them involving young
children.
Then there's me and my next-door neighbor, both long-time divorced men
who
are not remarried. Admittedly, it's a microcosm, but it pretty much
reflects
the overall statistics in the U.S.

It's very unlikely that this situation will change until some way is
found of communicating IN ADVANCE to men in the U.S. what often happens
after marriage. This is more proof of the need for my little proposal,
the
"Truth in Marriage Act," under which all couples contemplating marriage
would have to sign a statement saying that they had been told about the
brutal realities of divorce, child custody, and "child support." After
all, when you take out a loan in the U.S., there is the Truth in Lending
Act, which requires that you be told all the terms of the loan. And
getting
married is of far more significance than taking out a loan.

"Dusty" wrote in message
...
http://louisville.snitch.com/louisvi...117parents.htm

Parent trap
Caleb O. Brown
Staff Writer
Nov. 17, 2004



Custody battles, charges of bias spark nationwide class-action suit

Any child of divorced parents knows the drill. The weekend is over and
it's
time for Dad to say his goodbyes and send his progeny back to Mom's
house.
The parents meet up for the handoff at a restaurant, rest stop or any
other
large concrete structure with a parking lot, provided it's about
halfway.

The handoff - awkward, quick and joyless - means moving luggage and a
child
from one car to another. The kid wants none of the stilted discussion,
avoiding the sight of the two most important people in her life
exchanging
mirthless pleasantries just long enough for Dad to give his goodbye
kiss
and
then pull away.

The marriage wasn't perfect, the breakup wasn't clean, and no one is
happy
with the result. Still, for many splintered families, the above
handoff
would be a dream. Some fathers and mothers are trapped in legal
battles
without end, fighting not for scheduled visitations, but for any
visitations. Spending significant time away from their young children
has
left these non-custodial parents depressed, worried their own young
children
may begin to forget them. In some cases, the custodial parent realizes
the
power of wielding a child as an emotional, legal and financial weapon
to
injure a former spouse.

In an adversarial court system, there are always two sides. In child
custody
cases, one side - the non-custodial parent - seems to lose more than
the
other. Sensing a pattern, hundreds of thousands of non-custodial
parents
are
signing on to a nationwide class-action lawsuit that seeks a redress
of
what
they feel are serious, consistent problems and biases in court systems
across the country. The end result of those problems, the parents
claim,
is
a consistent violation of the constitutional rights of parents to be
parents.

The following Kentucky fathers represent one side of this contentious
battle.

The first thing she took was our lawyer

Michael Peters got divorced in 1995. His two kids (neither the ex-wife
nor
the children will be named here) were 4 and 6 at the time.

Peters won't say precisely that he hates his ex-wife, but he'll say
this:
"I
despise what she does."

Those actions, he says, include: absconding with the children to
another
state when they were supposed to be with him for the Christmas
holiday;
telling the kids it's their father's fault she has to go to court;
three
contempt of court orders for interference with court-ordered
visitations;
and - the winner by a comfortable margin - moving to another state
without
notifying him or the court.

Peters says his "personal struggle" has been made worse by a slow
family
court system that, nearly 10 years later and in spite of regular
illegal
interference from his wife, has not granted him anywhere near half his
children's time.

"It's not equal time, not equal financial support. It's very much
stacked.
My ex-wife gets the lion's share of my children's time. I've done my
part.
I've followed the court rules. I've never had a negative issue in my
own
personal case. The only ground that I feel like I can maintain is when
I
petition the court. But that's time and money, and there's only a
finite
amount of that. There's not much incentive to do anything different.
You
fight so long, and years go by, and it goes on and on."

And fight he has. Peters says he's had to develop several means to get
his
wife to comply with his court-ordered child visitations.

"With my case, that has been the only way that I can really see my
kids,"
he
says. "If I were to do nothing, I would not get to see my kids, even
with
a
court order. There's a well-documented history of visitation
interference.
I
go to pick up my kids and they're not available."

When his ex-wife remarried within a year of their divorce, it was to a
man
in the military. When he was moved, she went with him, taking the kids
and
not informing the court, or her ex-husband, that she was doing so.

"She just left, packed up in the middle of the night," he says. "The
kids
didn't know they were going. So it was this big secret. Three months
later,
I finally get a call from the kids, but they don't know where they
live."

The children were 5 and 7 at the time. It took Peters another three
months
to learn the location of his children and get a court order to see
them.
They met in Oklahoma City, spending a few days with each other in a
hotel
room, but he says it took a year and a half in court to get a physical
address for his children.

To deal with other violations that he says are ongoing, Peters sends
registered mail to document communication with his ex-wife. With child
support checks, he encloses the court-ordered terms of upcoming
visitations.
Shelling out a few bucks for registered mail is far cheaper than hours
of
attorney time, which he says has consumed about $30,000 over the past
nine
years. At $125 an hour, Peters says access to his children definitely
carries a pricetag.

"I'd just get angry if I kept a tab on it," he says.

Other expenses have included having off-duty police officers come with
him
to collect his children, even if it's only to prove the children
weren't
available when his ex-wife said they would be, and to have a credible
witness to testify to that fact.

"We have a colossal case history," Peters says. "They say we have
eight
volumes and over a thousand pages of case history. It is quite
literally
a
foot-thick court record of all the actions that have passed through
there."
It would be even thicker, he says, if he'd learned right away to use
the
tactics he's using now to see his kids.

With registered mail setting the tone for his relationship with his
ex-wife
and a series of fines and court orders keeping his children visiting
regularly, Peters says he shouldn't have to fight so hard in a
situation
that's already slanted heavily against him.

He also says he loves being a dad and wonders why the court system
continues
to "just put a Band-Aid on the problem" of bias.

The court seems capable only of dealing with his wife's violations
with
contempt of court orders and fines or awarding him make-up time for
missed
visits, he says.

"Make-up time is fine, but it doesn't fix the problem," he says,
adding
"the
court system is so biased in favor of women in general," that it's
hard
to
see how his situation could change.

"I want to see my kids. I want to be an important part of their
lives,"
he
says. "It's a frustrating road as an individual, and that's where this
class
action is very appealing. There is strength in numbers. I'm not the
only
person. Together we have a louder voice, and maybe we can make a
difference.
For me, personally, this likely won't impact my situation with my
children,
but it might help somebody else."

Judgment days

Robert Wilkins has joint custody with his ex-girlfriend, Amanda, of
their
daughter, Camille. In the last two years - since Oct. 6, 2002, by
Wilkins's
recollection - he has spent 19 hours with his daughter.

Wilkins knows he's not the best example of a non-custodial parent, but
says
that doesn't change his right to be one. He says he owns his mistakes.

A few months into dating Amanda, a woman he admits he "had no business
with," she became pregnant. He was 30. She was 21. Feeling the
obligation
he'd helped create for himself, Wilkins and she moved in together. He
worked
as she stayed home with their daughter. As the relationship began to
crumble
atop its poor foundation, the pair agreed to separate.

It was all going well until they had to get down to the nuts and bolts
of
custody of their daughter.

In August 2001, as Wilkins was emerging from a shower, he says, Amanda
had
taken a sleeping Camille from her bed and was ready to leave the house
once
and for all. It ended in a Domestic Violence Order against Wilkins.

"We were in a confronation. She wanted to take my daughter who was
asleep
upstairs." Wilkins says he pulled Amanda's hair in an attempt to keep
her
from taking Camille from him, but says that was the extent of any
physical
confrontation.

"I made a dumb mistake," he says. "I've paid for it for three years."

That DVO, he says, was used as a club against him in court as he's
tried
to
fight for some arrangement for regular time with his daughter.

"It took five and a half months for me to even get visitation with my
daughter," he says, and that came only after the case was, perhaps
mistakenly, bumped into another courtroom, that of Juda Hellman.

"Once I got into Judge Hellman's courtroom, I started seeing my
daughter
every other weekend and every Wednesday," he says. "Thank God for
her."

This went on for seven or eight weekends in a row. Over the same time,
his
ex-girlfriend's attorney somehow got the case bumped back in front of
his
original judge, Joan L. Byer.

"Ever since then, I haven't seen my daughter but 19 hours," he says.

The DVO, combined with ongoing allegations of abuse and drug use from
his
ex-girlfriend, meant Wilkins is stuck without his daughter. All of the
allegations, Wilkins says, were thrown out. All except the guilty plea
on
a
DVO, a "nightmare" for Wilkins to overcome.

"Since then, I'd been able to see her through supervised visits, one
hour
a
week at Family Place."

Family Place proved to be an emotional roller coaster for Wilkins.
Throu
gh
a
steel door in the lower portion of the building, Wilkins says staff
ran
magnetometers over his body, a police officer patted him down before
allowing him to sit in a 10-by-12-foot room with Camille for one hour.

Those visits, Wilkins says, were often observed by young volunteers
who
would author reports and submit them to the judge. And though he
treasured
those hours (among the final 19 he spent with his daughter), the
experience
proved to be too much for him to take anymore.

"Camille would cry and say, 'I miss my Daddy already.' It was
heartbreaking.
It was a happy moment when we'd see each other, and then
heart-wrenching
when she would leave because you'd have one or two minutes until the
clock
hits 12 and you're just watching the clock go away. You're thinking,
'My
God, I'm not going to be able to see her until next Tuesday. How
horrible
can this be?'"

Wilkins says Family Place staffers would then whisk his daughter out
of
the
room and the "three-day letdown" would commence. The cycle of the
letdown
after a visit and the buildup over the weekend to the next visit left
Wilkins drained.

"I couldn't work," he says. "I couldn't do anything but focus on
hatred
for
her mother, for the judicial system, for her family, for what they'd
done.
I
just had to let it go."

The last time he saw his daughter was during a court-ordered custody
evaluation. That evaluation, at a cost of $3,000 and several months,
turned
out favorably for Wilkins, and he's currently waiting for the judge to
decide how to weigh the report. That won't happen until his next
hearing
in
January.

The DVO has fallen off Wilkins's record, but he says more allegations
against him are forthcoming.

"They're using new things now - I'm a druggie. I'm a steroid user. I
have
manic-depression."

Wilkins says he's at least thankful his ex-girlfriend has recanted her
claim
of child sexual abuse against him. He's hopeful the class action
lawsuit
will help him "have a healthy relationship" with his daughter.

"I can't get back the time, but I don't want her to be 15, 16 or 17
years
old saying, 'Where were you, Daddy?' I want to be able to tell her, 'I
was
there fighting for you and I was waiting for you.'"

Unstacking the decks

Wes Collins is coordinating Kentucky's class-action lawsuit on behalf
of
non-custodial parents.

The stress of trying to literally build a home with his wife and two
children was too much. His wife took the children and left while he
was
at
work one day. The resulting legal mess and the alienation of his older
child
have left him jaded about the legal system.

Much of the systemic problems he sees in the court system dealing with
non-custodial parents deals with poor controls in how cases are
handled
and
too much judicial discretion. Add what he sees as a prevalent and
often
open
bias against men and he says that's a recipe for the violation of
parental
rights. He says tapes of his own pretrial hearing in his Fayette
County
divorce exist, but he's been unable to find them. Fayette is among
counties
that record pretrial conferences.

Just after the divorce, Collins's now ex-wife was awarded full custody
of
both children following a hearing in which Collins had no counsel.

A weekend visit from Collins's son ended with a terse phone call in
which
says his ex-wife's boyfriend threatened to "bust his f***ing head."

He didn't want to return his young child to a home he felt was
threatening
to him and his son, he told his ex he would call her back to make
final
arrangements. She did not answer the phone again.

Within days of calling police to report the threat, Collins says he
was
facing a claim from his wife of refusing to return their son as
schedule
d.

Collins's attorney asked to be dismissed, and Collins's request for a
continuance to get an attorney to represent him was denied in the
hearing.

Collins says he attempted to explain his call to police, but was
ordered
by
the judge to undergo a mental evaluation at a facility she chose.
After
the
evaluation, the social worker involved recommended Collins attend her
domestic violence class.

"Boy, I sure wish I could rule business in my favor," Collins says.
"It's
been a nightmare."

Collins hasn't seen his 5-year-old son in seven months, and is now
limited
to speaking with him by telephone. He says his ex-wife interferes with
the
scheduled calls.

Legal mumbo jumbo

The nationwide effort at organizing the class action on behalf of the
parents is organized by the Indiana Civil Rights Council
(indianacrc.org).
That group has been so swamped with requests for information, the
coordinator of the national class-action effort, Council president
Torm
L.
Howse, is now just sending out an informative e-mail to potential
plaintiffs.

The basic parameters for parents who want to be a part of the suit is
that
they be a legally designated non-custodial parent with a minor child
for
whom child support is still being paid. The parent must also have
never
been
convicted of any serious abuse or neglect of the child.

Collins says the claims against the courts are fairly broad in
attempting
to
bring abuses to light: the violation of rights of both parents and
children
and the willful mismanagement of government. The violation of rights,
the
plaintiffs say, is as simple as freedom of association and equal
protections
under the First and 14th Amendments.

The Indiana Civil Rights Council estimates - the group calls it a
conservative estimate - more than 16 million non-custodial parents
could
sign onto the suit, which they estimate will seek an estimated $48
trillion.


--
"The most terrifying words in the English language a
I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
--- Ronald Reagan

Well that's a good point but I'd describe the SL problem as another nail in
the coffin and not necessarily the coffin.

Regarding prenups and the like, as I've mentioned, Canadian case supports
overturning prenup so no hope there either.



"Kenneth S." wrote in message
news
The current situation in the U.S. is not merely the result of
COURT
action. God knows, the courts are corrupt enough and judges are
grotesquely
prejudiced against fathers. However, the current situation is primarily
the
result of the actions of STATE LEGISLATURES. You get married in one
state,
and under one set of conditions. Then, years later, when you live in some
other jurisdiction, and when all kinds of changes to divorce law have been
adopted during the time you were married, your wife decides she wants a
divorce. What rules apply? Only those currently in force in the state in
which you now live. Does it do you any good to argue that these are not
the
rules under which you got married, and that you would never have married
the
woman if you had thought that these would be the rules for divorce? Of
course not.

Can you think of any other legal arrangement that is retroactively
amended by state legislatures in the same way as marriage?

My own feeling is that the long-term solution is for marriage to
be
completely privatized. There's no reason for having the most personal of
relationships regulated by politicians -- endlessly subject to retroactive
amendment under pressure from various kinds of pressure groups, notably
feminists. It would be far better to have only one rule governing
marriage -- that everybody getting married have a comprehensive prenuptial
contract that would cover all important matters, including child custody.

Meantime, let's have the "Truth in Marriage Act."

"Meldon" wrote in message
...
Brilliant idea. Sadly it's necessary only because of the court's failure
to
provide protections to all parties involved. It's not an absence of
protections since they are already there, but the legal interpretation
and
resolutions which seem to cause most of the damage.

In my case it was only necessary to show that we disagreed. There was
only
an allegation of domestic violence. These two combined were enough to
create
an interim order which gave the mother full-custody. Some months later
and
at a cost, we had a lawyers meeting and haggled out joint-custody. In
the
bargain I released goodies such as birthdays and Christmas in return for
the
joint-custody arrangement. In essence, there was no real change. I had
no
better access to information nor time with my child. There seemed to be
less
arguments than without joint-custody.

A few years later after numerous requests for some minimal increase in
time
and being consistently refused, I filed an unrepresented motion to court
asking for more time, and a reduction in child-support. Both were
refused,
joint-custody was removed as were my Tuesday evenings. Oh, I paid for
her
lawyer since the mother asked for court costs.

Fast forward through what seems like 7 years from the Twilight Zone,
I've
been somehow able to maintain some level of sanity until recently when
after
a number of days trying to negotiate summer holidays with the mother. In
the
final order I'm to submit dates for summer holidays to the mother before
May
1 but since she can simply reject my dates arbitrarily, I've just asked
her
which dates she wants to give me. This seems to work out a bit better
and
all I have to do is be available for any two weeks during the summer and
be
willing to have very little advance notice. In other words, I never say
no.
I suspect she thinks that if she asks me to pick up the kid on my hands
and
knees, I will likely refuse, but I don't. Gets her real ****ed too.

Back to the point, after the days of negotiating, and trust me, she was
seeking legal ammunition, I uttered a threat (in a calm manner I might
add,
not that it matters). Some 4 weeks later, she filed charges.

My case pending in a few weeks.

There are other details of course with which I will not bore the reader.

I hope this post will assist others in similar situations.




"Kenneth S." wrote in message
...
The situations outlined below are so common. Yet I think very,
very
few
young men contemplating marriage and having a family have any idea
about
how
common they are -- or how (in the U.S. at least) there is a 50 percent
chance that this is the fate awaiting them.

I live in a small group of about 15 houses. During the 14 years I
have
lived here, in that small area I have seen four of these marital
breakdown
situations playing themselves out, three of them involving young
children.
Then there's me and my next-door neighbor, both long-time divorced men
who
are not remarried. Admittedly, it's a microcosm, but it pretty much
reflects
the overall statistics in the U.S.

It's very unlikely that this situation will change until some way
is
found of communicating IN ADVANCE to men in the U.S. what often
happens
after marriage. This is more proof of the need for my little
proposal,
the
"Truth in Marriage Act," under which all couples contemplating
marriage
would have to sign a statement saying that they had been told about
the
brutal realities of divorce, child custody, and "child support."
After
all, when you take out a loan in the U.S., there is the Truth in
Lending
Act, which requires that you be told all the terms of the loan. And
getting
married is of far more significance than taking out a loan.

"Dusty" wrote in message
...
http://louisville.snitch.com/louisvi...117parents.htm

Parent trap
Caleb O. Brown
Staff Writer
Nov. 17, 2004



Custody battles, charges of bias spark nationwide class-action suit

Any child of divorced parents knows the drill. The weekend is over
and
it's
time for Dad to say his goodbyes and send his progeny back to Mom's
house.
The parents meet up for the handoff at a restaurant, rest stop or
any
other
large concrete structure with a parking lot, provided it's about
halfway.

The handoff - awkward, quick and joyless - means moving luggage and
a
child
from one car to another. The kid wants none of the stilted
discussion,
avoiding the sight of the two most important people in her life
exchanging
mirthless pleasantries just long enough for Dad to give his goodbye
kiss
and
then pull away.

The marriage wasn't perfect, the breakup wasn't clean, and no one is
happy
with the result. Still, for many splintered families, the above
handoff
would be a dream. Some fathers and mothers are trapped in legal
battles
without end, fighting not for scheduled visitations, but for any
visitations. Spending significant time away from their young
children
has
left these non-custodial parents depressed, worried their own young
children
may begin to forget them. In some cases, the custodial parent
realizes
the
power of wielding a child as an emotional, legal and financial
weapon
to
injure a former spouse.

In an adversarial court system, there are always two sides. In child
custody
cases, one side - the non-custodial parent - seems to lose more than
the
other. Sensing a pattern, hundreds of thousands of non-custodial
parents
are
signing on to a nationwide class-action lawsuit that seeks a redress
of
what
they feel are serious, consistent problems and biases in court
systems
across the country. The end result of those problems, the parents
claim,
is
a consistent violation of the constitutional rights of parents to be
parents.

The following Kentucky fathers represent one side of this
contentious
battle.

The first thing she took was our lawyer

Michael Peters got divorced in 1995. His two kids (neither the
ex-wife
nor
the children will be named here) were 4 and 6 at the time.

Peters won't say precisely that he hates his ex-wife, but he'll say
this:
"I
despise what she does."

Those actions, he says, include: absconding with the children to
another
state when they were supposed to be with him for the Christmas
holiday;
telling the kids it's their father's fault she has to go to court;
three
contempt of court orders for interference with court-ordered
visitations;
and - the winner by a comfortable margin - moving to another state
without
notifying him or the court.

Peters says his "personal struggle" has been made worse by a slow
family
court system that, nearly 10 years later and in spite of regular
illegal
interference from his wife, has not granted him anywhere near half
his
children's time.

"It's not equal time, not equal financial support. It's very much
stacked.
My ex-wife gets the lion's share of my children's time. I've done my
part.
I've followed the court rules. I've never had a negative issue in my
own
personal case. The only ground that I feel like I can maintain is
when
I
petition the court. But that's time and money, and there's only a
finite
amount of that. There's not much incentive to do anything different.
You
fight so long, and years go by, and it goes on and on."

And fight he has. Peters says he's had to develop several means to
get
his
wife to comply with his court-ordered child visitations.

"With my case, that has been the only way that I can really see my
kids,"
he
says. "If I were to do nothing, I would not get to see my kids, even
with
a
court order. There's a well-documented history of visitation
interference.
I
go to pick up my kids and they're not available."

When his ex-wife remarried within a year of their divorce, it was to
a
man
in the military. When he was moved, she went with him, taking the
kids
and
not informing the court, or her ex-husband, that she was doing so.

"She just left, packed up in the middle of the night," he says. "The
kids
didn't know they were going. So it was this big secret. Three months
later,
I finally get a call from the kids, but they don't know where they
live."

The children were 5 and 7 at the time. It took Peters another three
months
to learn the location of his children and get a court order to see
them.
They met in Oklahoma City, spending a few days with each other in a
hotel
room, but he says it took a year and a half in court to get a
physical
address for his children.

To deal with other violations that he says are ongoing, Peters sends
registered mail to document communication with his ex-wife. With
child
support checks, he encloses the court-ordered terms of upcoming
visitations.
Shelling out a few bucks for registered mail is far cheaper than
hours
of
attorney time, which he says has consumed about $30,000 over the
past
nine
years. At $125 an hour, Peters says access to his children
definitely
carries a pricetag.

"I'd just get angry if I kept a tab on it," he says.

Other expenses have included having off-duty police officers come
with
him
to collect his children, even if it's only to prove the children
weren't
available when his ex-wife said they would be, and to have a
credible
witness to testify to that fact.

"We have a colossal case history," Peters says. "They say we have
eight
volumes and over a thousand pages of case history. It is quite
literally
a
foot-thick court record of all the actions that have passed through
there."
It would be even thicker, he says, if he'd learned right away to use
the
tactics he's using now to see his kids.

With registered mail setting the tone for his relationship with his
ex-wife
and a series of fines and court orders keeping his children visiting
regularly, Peters says he shouldn't have to fight so hard in a
situation
that's already slanted heavily against him.

He also says he loves being a dad and wonders why the court system
continues
to "just put a Band-Aid on the problem" of bias.

The court seems capable only of dealing with his wife's violations
with
contempt of court orders and fines or awarding him make-up time for
missed
visits, he says.

"Make-up time is fine, but it doesn't fix the problem," he says,
adding
"the
court system is so biased in favor of women in general," that it's
hard
to
see how his situation could change.

"I want to see my kids. I want to be an important part of their
lives,"
he
says. "It's a frustrating road as an individual, and that's where
this
class
action is very appealing. There is strength in numbers. I'm not the
only
person. Together we have a louder voice, and maybe we can make a
difference.
For me, personally, this likely won't impact my situation with my
children,
but it might help somebody else."

Judgment days

Robert Wilkins has joint custody with his ex-girlfriend, Amanda, of
their
daughter, Camille. In the last two years - since Oct. 6, 2002, by
Wilkins's
recollection - he has spent 19 hours with his daughter.

Wilkins knows he's not the best example of a non-custodial parent,
but
says
that doesn't change his right to be one. He says he owns his
mistakes.

A few months into dating Amanda, a woman he admits he "had no
business
with," she became pregnant. He was 30. She was 21. Feeling the
obligation
he'd helped create for himself, Wilkins and she moved in together.
He
worked
as she stayed home with their daughter. As the relationship began to
crumble
atop its poor foundation, the pair agreed to separate.

It was all going well until they had to get down to the nuts and
bolts
of
custody of their daughter.

In August 2001, as Wilkins was emerging from a shower, he says,
Amanda
had
taken a sleeping Camille from her bed and was ready to leave the
house
once
and for all. It ended in a Domestic Violence Order against Wilkins.

"We were in a confronation. She wanted to take my daughter who was
asleep
upstairs." Wilkins says he pulled Amanda's hair in an attempt to
keep
her
from taking Camille from him, but says that was the extent of any
physical
confrontation.

"I made a dumb mistake," he says. "I've paid for it for three
years."

That DVO, he says, was used as a club against him in court as he's
tried
to
fight for some arrangement for regular time with his daughter.

"It took five and a half months for me to even get visitation with
my
daughter," he says, and that came only after the case was, perhaps
mistakenly, bumped into another courtroom, that of Juda Hellman.

"Once I got into Judge Hellman's courtroom, I started seeing my
daughter
every other weekend and every Wednesday," he says. "Thank God for
her."

This went on for seven or eight weekends in a row. Over the same
time,
his
ex-girlfriend's attorney somehow got the case bumped back in front
of
his
original judge, Joan L. Byer.

"Ever since then, I haven't seen my daughter but 19 hours," he says.

The DVO, combined with ongoing allegations of abuse and drug use
from
his
ex-girlfriend, meant Wilkins is stuck without his daughter. All of
the
allegations, Wilkins says, were thrown out. All except the guilty
plea
on
a
DVO, a "nightmare" for Wilkins to overcome.

"Since then, I'd been able to see her through supervised visits, one
hour
a
week at Family Place."

Family Place proved to be an emotional roller coaster for Wilkins.
Throu
gh
a
steel door in the lower portion of the building, Wilkins says staff
ran
magnetometers over his body, a police officer patted him down before
allowing him to sit in a 10-by-12-foot room with Camille for one
hour.

Those visits, Wilkins says, were often observed by young volunteers
who
would author reports and submit them to the judge. And though he
treasured
those hours (among the final 19 he spent with his daughter), the
experience
proved to be too much for him to take anymore.

"Camille would cry and say, 'I miss my Daddy already.' It was
heartbreaking.
It was a happy moment when we'd see each other, and then
heart-wrenching
when she would leave because you'd have one or two minutes until the
clock
hits 12 and you're just watching the clock go away. You're thinking,
'My
God, I'm not going to be able to see her until next Tuesday. How
horrible
can this be?'"

Wilkins says Family Place staffers would then whisk his daughter out
of
the
room and the "three-day letdown" would commence. The cycle of the
letdown
after a visit and the buildup over the weekend to the next visit
left
Wilkins drained.

"I couldn't work," he says. "I couldn't do anything but focus on
hatred
for
her mother, for the judicial system, for her family, for what they'd
done.
I
just had to let it go."

The last time he saw his daughter was during a court-ordered custody
evaluation. That evaluation, at a cost of $3,000 and several months,
turned
out favorably for Wilkins, and he's currently waiting for the judge
to
decide how to weigh the report. That won't happen until his next
hearing
in
January.

The DVO has fallen off Wilkins's record, but he says more
allegations
against him are forthcoming.

"They're using new things now - I'm a druggie. I'm a steroid user. I
have
manic-depression."

Wilkins says he's at least thankful his ex-girlfriend has recanted
her
claim
of child sexual abuse against him. He's hopeful the class action
lawsuit
will help him "have a healthy relationship" with his daughter.

"I can't get back the time, but I don't want her to be 15, 16 or 17
years
old saying, 'Where were you, Daddy?' I want to be able to tell her,
'I
was
there fighting for you and I was waiting for you.'"

Unstacking the decks

Wes Collins is coordinating Kentucky's class-action lawsuit on
behalf
of
non-custodial parents.

The stress of trying to literally build a home with his wife and two
children was too much. His wife took the children and left while he
was
at
work one day. The resulting legal mess and the alienation of his
older
child
have left him jaded about the legal system.

Much of the systemic problems he sees in the court system dealing
with
non-custodial parents deals with poor controls in how cases are
handled
and
too much judicial discretion. Add what he sees as a prevalent and
often
open
bias against men and he says that's a recipe for the violation of
parental
rights. He says tapes of his own pretrial hearing in his Fayette
County
divorce exist, but he's been unable to find them. Fayette is among
counties
that record pretrial conferences.

Just after the divorce, Collins's now ex-wife was awarded full
custody
of
both children following a hearing in which Collins had no counsel.

A weekend visit from Collins's son ended with a terse phone call in
which
says his ex-wife's boyfriend threatened to "bust his f***ing head."

He didn't want to return his young child to a home he felt was
threatening
to him and his son, he told his ex he would call her back to make
final
arrangements. She did not answer the phone again.

Within days of calling police to report the threat, Collins says he
was
facing a claim from his wife of refusing to return their son as
schedule
d.

Collins's attorney asked to be dismissed, and Collins's request for
a
continuance to get an attorney to represent him was denied in the
hearing.

Collins says he attempted to explain his call to police, but was
ordered
by
the judge to undergo a mental evaluation at a facility she chose.
After
the
evaluation, the social worker involved recommended Collins attend
her
domestic violence class.

"Boy, I sure wish I could rule business in my favor," Collins says.
"It's
been a nightmare."

Collins hasn't seen his 5-year-old son in seven months, and is now
limited
to speaking with him by telephone. He says his ex-wife interferes
with
the
scheduled calls.

Legal mumbo jumbo

The nationwide effort at organizing the class action on behalf of
the
parents is organized by the Indiana Civil Rights Council
(indianacrc.org).
That group has been so swamped with requests for information, the
coordinator of the national class-action effort, Council president
Torm
L.
Howse, is now just sending out an informative e-mail to potential
plaintiffs.

The basic parameters for parents who want to be a part of the suit
is
that
they be a legally designated non-custodial parent with a minor child
for
whom child support is still being paid. The parent must also have
never
been
convicted of any serious abuse or neglect of the child.

Collins says the claims against the courts are fairly broad in
attempting
to
bring abuses to light: the violation of rights of both parents and
children
and the willful mismanagement of government. The violation of
rights,
the
plaintiffs say, is as simple as freedom of association and equal
protections
under the First and 14th Amendments.

The Indiana Civil Rights Council estimates - the group calls it a
conservative estimate - more than 16 million non-custodial parents
could
sign onto the suit, which they estimate will seek an estimated $48
trillion.


--
"The most terrifying words in the English language a
I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
--- Ronald Reagan