Over at Slate, the usually vapid/left-wing Dahlia Lithwick asks a surprisingly apt question: why is it that the court cases the fathers’ rights movement rallies around are almost entirely unsympathetic, weird guys?
I can’t speak from personal experience here, but knowing a few divorced dads (or in one case, a father who never was married to the mother), I can offer some insight.
The basic setup of the system - or at least the way it leans by judges - is to default to letting the woman keep the kids. There’s some presumption that men lack a form of parenting instinct, or that the men were “less involved” in the kids’ lives (especially if the woman wasn’t working as well), or something.
Starting with divorce proceedings (the most common way to get into this mess, though not the only way) the man is at a disadvantage. If he doesn’t get custody, a large portion of his income is going to wind up spent anyways, paying for the “privilege” of probably no more than alternate-weekend visitations. Lithwick points out the inherent problem here:
Even without abuse allegations, simple rules of physics (one child cannot be split into two and two cannot be split into four) make it likely that many good fathers will be downgraded from full-time dads to alternating-weekend-carpool dads. They will be asked to pay at least one-third of their salaries in child support for that privilege. Simple rules of modern life make it likely that an ex-wife will someday decide that a job or new husband demands a move to a faraway state. At which point the alternating-weekend-carpool dad is again demoted—to a Thanksgivings-if-you’re-lucky dad.
Adding to the problem is that the formulas used by most states assign child support based on the income of the non-custodial parent, and then subtract a “proportional” amount based on “percentage of time” - so if you get 20% custody, you’re paying less child support than someone who only has alternate holidays.
Another problem is the idea that in order for a man - even if he was the primary caregiver before - to get custody, he has to prove that the mother is somehow a ‘bad mother’. This puts men in a hell of a bind: if they want things to be reasonable, they have to be very careful about what they say in court lest they have the mother attacked/insulted and less likely to respect their visitation rights; the catch-22 is that the mother can take the very same court record and later use it as evidence to claim the father is “poisoning the children” against her during any visitations he gets.
And while there are a million ways in the court - wage garnishing, arrest warrants, etc - to “enforce” child support payments, there’s almost no mechanism for enforcement of visitation rights; far from it, in order to go through asserting his rights, the father has to go through yet another series of agonizing custody hearings and court proceedings.
Most family court lawyers advise the men to simply take whatever they can get, to stay in contact with their child by phone and email if nothing else and however they can, and wait for the kid to become a legal adult before asserting any back rights or suing for recompense for lost visitation, because the chance of that they’ll lose even more if they take it to court while the kid is still a legal minor is quite real. As long as the system is that tilted, I can’t blame them.
When I first read the Lithwick excerpt I was furious because I thought she was saying that this was just something that men should accept because it’s the natural course of things. I was relieved when I calmed down and understood what she meant. I thought that she made quite a good point.
It actually makes me think of my problem with death penalty opponents and the cases they choose to make examples out of. I think that there’s an attraction to extreme cases. Since in both cases the advocacy groups believe that the system is inherently unjust they believe that these vermin were simply put there by the system. The psychodads were provoked! The militant convict was railroaded! These people are just fighting back!!
It’s very counterproductive to their respective causes.
Comment by trumwill — August 12, 2008 @ 8:56 pm
I believe part of the issue (for at least some of the people who take up the causes of the bad examples) is that they can easily see themselves in that place, even “just for a moment” - for example, a dad who’s been screwed over, has limited visitation rights, and then screwed even further having to pay 30% or more of his salary just in hope of being able to call his kid or see them alternating holidays, definitely has enough reason to snap even when they don’t.
The difference, of course, is that most dads have lawyers telling them repeatedly not to do ANYTHING because the way the system is set up, all they can do is lose more and more of their parental rights. Gaining ground seems not to even be an option under most judges.
Comment by Webmaster — August 12, 2008 @ 9:17 pm
A father in the above situation does not have enough reason to do what the people they’re martyring did. I may be able to empathize with the impulse the same way that I can empathize with D-FENS in “Falling Down”, but at the end of the day you realize that there was a point at which he stopped being the hero and became the villain.
Comment by trumwill — August 12, 2008 @ 10:02 pm
I don’t disagree, Will - I’m merely pointing out that the fathers’ rights groups have plenty of empathy for the *frustration* aspect of these cases.
It’s also unfortunate but true that these are the only cases that make the news; when the lawyers are all telling them “don’t go to court, you can’t help yourself and you could lose it all”, the pickings on cases with which to demonstrate the inherent unfairness of the system are pretty slim.
Comment by Webmaster — August 13, 2008 @ 5:05 am
It actually makes me think of my problem with death penalty opponents and the cases they choose to make examples out of.
I think with them it’s more a matter of necessity. Sympathetic defendants rarely get sentenced to death.
Comment by Brandon Berg — August 13, 2008 @ 8:26 am
Well, maybe I should say less unsympathetic. Or more likely to not actually have done the crime for which they were committed. Instead, the death penalty opponents often rally around self-styled “revolutionaries” and, to be blunt, angry black men. People that seem almost chosen specifically for the sake of alienating mainstream America.
Comment by trumwill — August 13, 2008 @ 8:07 pm
The difference, of course, is that most dads have lawyers telling them repeatedly not to do ANYTHING because the way the system is set up, all they can do is lose more and more of their parental rights
That’s hogwash. Where are you getting this? Family lawyers fight for whoever’s paying them. They are just as obnoxious, aggressive, and manipulative in service of male clients as female. Men tend to have more money to pay lawyers, in my observation.
What state do you live in? In California, the presumption is in favor of joint custody. It’s like that in most states. There is no legal preference for either gender, although a parent who has stayed home with a child will have better standing for primary custody, at least with young children. Children 12 and over get a say in where they live. Mothers often complain the father bribes them with toys, money, and lax discipline.
The reason the parents with less custody pay more is because their expenses are lower when they don’t have the kid living with them. Ask a person raising a kid in his home how much of his paycheck goes toward supporting the kid. Probably more than a third.
When traditional households break up, it often makes sense for a stay-at-home parent to continue staying home and raising the kids. Many ex-husbands prefer to keep this arrangement, rather than taking on half-time single-dad responsibilities. The less money the man has, of course, the angrier he is likely to get about child support. His feelings are also likely to change if he has new kids to support with other women. If he remarries, he’ll face pressure from his current wife to reduce payments to his old family.
You seem to think only women remarry. Do you have any evidence men are any less likely to remarry and move on? Any less likely to move out of state?
Web, no offense, but it sounds as if you’re basing your opinion entirely on some very biased sources. I have been thrown into many a family law battle in my current job. The worst dependency cases are ones with underlying custody battles. The problem with custody battles is the parents themselves, not the laws.
Comment by Spungen — August 13, 2008 @ 11:45 pm
Many parents just can’t stomach the idea of having to give any money to their ex-spouse, even for the kids. A lot of custody fights are really about support. Unfortunately, many parents aren’t in a position to share 50-50 physical custody. Logistics are difficult unless the parents live within a few minutes of each other, in the same school district. So, one parent will have to be the alternate-weekend and split-holiday parent. That parent will have to pay some child support to the custodial parent. I can’t think of any better solution, can you?
You’re actually confusing two separate issues. One is whether fathers should get primary custody more often, with more mothers being the alternate-weekenders and support-payers. Perhaps. The other issue is whether there’s something wrong with how child support is calculated. Parents aren’t paying for the “privilege” of visitation (it’s not legal to condition visits on payments, by the way), they’re paying for the care of the child.
Comment by Spungen — August 14, 2008 @ 12:29 am
Do you have any evidence men are any less likely to remarry and move on? Any less likely to move out of state?
I think the issue here is that there is the perception that in the case of join custody a woman can take her weekday custody and turn it into full custody simply by moving away. A man moving away, on the other hand, is more likely to lose whatever custody he has and pay more in child support. In other words, she gets more for moving and he gets less.
This perception may historically have been true, but I’m not sure that it is anymore. At least universally so. My cousin’s ex-wife (who had weekday custody) was all set to move to another state with their child. The judge said that she would lose primary custody if she did it. The different reactions this story provokes in men and women is interesting.
Comment by trumwill — August 14, 2008 @ 9:18 pm
Spungen:
I’m basing it on what the people I know, in this situation, relate of what they’ve been told by their lawyers.
Basically, if they got weekend custody or something similar, the advice from the lawyer is going to be “Don’t Rock the Boat.”
It’s like that in most states. There is no legal preference for either gender,
The difference between a “legal preference”, and a preference exhibited by many sitting judges, is easy to demonstrate. Especially when you contradict yourself a moment later: a parent who has stayed home with a child will have better standing for primary custody, - which is entertaining, because you know perfectly well that the vast majority of stay-at-home parents are mothers.
Comment by Webmaster — August 19, 2008 @ 2:39 pm
Spungen does not contradict herself. Joint custody and primary custody are not mutually exclusive, depending on how the terms are used (physical custody vs. legal custody).
In any case, another way that we can look at it is “primary parent” and “secondary parent”. More often than not the former is going to be the mother and the latter the father. Much of the reason that women are naturally going to gain primary custody is that they are the former and fathers are the latter. And to be honest, more often than not a weekday/weekend custody arrangement is probably the best all around. So it’s one of those things where it’s not anti-male sentiment or even anti-father sentiment, but the most logical result.
The problems arise when and if the weekday/weekend arrangement falls apart. If she wants to move away, for instance, or if she simply defies the courts and refuses to let him see her. A lot of men think that the game is rigged in favor of women because visitation is not as enforceable as is child support. While that’s not untrue, another way to look at that is that the fault line does not fall strictly mother/woman vs father/man, but rather primary custodian and secondary custodian.
More often than not, of course, the two are one in the same thing. I do think that it’s important to note, however, that this is not always the case. Evangeline’s and Silke’s respective fathers got primary custody over there mothers after the divorce*. And as such, the fathers had the benefits of primary custody and the mothers had the burden of child support.
* - Upon finding this out, my first question was naturally “How did that work?” Particularly since in both cases the mother was stay-at-home or part-time worker. There were two reasons for it, again in both cases. First, the mothers were emotionally imbalanced, particularly at the time of the divorce. Second, the fathers left the mothers for a younger model and could offer a two-parent household that the mother couldn’t. So in a sense, the fathers were rewarded for their infidelity and that it threw their wives off-kilter. On the other hand, though, it actually was probably the best result for the kids.
Comment by trumwill — August 19, 2008 @ 9:07 pm
Oh, and one thing I’ve heard that lawyers try to convince men to do is try to get sole or primary custody even if they don’t want it so that they can leverage a better financial settlement.
Comment by trumwill — August 19, 2008 @ 9:38 pm