A Mother’s Day Thank You from Fathers and Families

Fathers and Families honors its women supporters on Mother”s Day. As mothers, stepmothers, sisters, grandmothers, and aunts, women have always played a key role in the battle for family court reform. Women see the harm family courts do to children when courts deem one parent the “real’ parent and the other a “visitor.” Women see the financial and due process abuses of a family court system which shakes down successful men and grinds up low-income dads. Women see how children suffer when a parent forces them to choose between parents, or when one parent alienates children from the other. Changing how America handles divorce and separation isn”t easy.
Legislatively, many powerful, well-funded opponents stand in the way of family court reform, including the divorce attorney lobby and some misguided feminist groups. In the courts, judges and related personnel still cling to old stereotypes about mothers and fathers and to old habits of awarding sole custody based on gender. In the media, a small percentage of “deadbeat dads’ make for great headlines while the vastly larger percentage of loving fathers who work hard to love and support their children go largely unmentioned. Despite these obstacles, we are making progress. We were instrumental in passing seven different family court reform bills last year and helped introduce bills in eight different states this year. One of our bills, SB 1283, just got signed into law by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer this week. Another, SB 112, is expected to be signed by the Governor of Georgia within the next week or two. Some of the legislative projects we”re working on include: spousal support reform; child custody reform; discouraging Parental Alienation; fighting confiscatory child support orders for high income earners; protecting minors in family court proceedings; eliminating paternity fraud; opening dependency court hearings to the public; protecting disabled veterans from family court financial abuses; halting child support enforcement abuses; and much more. But this fight isn”t easy, and we need the multitude of women in our ranks to step forward. We”re mobilizing our membership via our Citizen Lobbyist Program and women”s voices are key. We want your activism, we want your ideas, we want your support. Please sign up to be a part of our Citizen Lobbyist Program–simply click here and fill out our form, entering “Citizen Lobbyist’ in the “How I can help’ section. Effective advocacy and legislative work also requires funding–please consider giving by check or electronically via our secure site at www.fathersandfamilies.org/give. Thank you for being a part of our successful work and this important social movement. Together with you in the love of our children, Glenn Sacks, MA Executive Director and Ned Holstein, M.D., M.S. Founder and Chair of the Board