Category: Blog

Below are some recent articles and items of interest from Fathers & Families’ latest News Digest.

Financial struggles lead to divorce court (KPNX12, 7/14/08)

Breaking up still hard to do (Newsday, 7/15/08)

Woman suspected of domestic violence (The Capital Journal, 7/15/08)

Helping men help their kids (Metro.us, 7/16/08)

Child support case tossed (San Jose Mercury News, 7/17/08)

Britney Spears, Kevin Federline reach custody agreement (LA Times, 7/18/08)

Give dad a chance (National Post, 7/18/08)

Businessman puts divorce details online to stop rumors (Guardian.co.uk, 7/18/08)

Broadway mogul wins divorce from angry wife who trashed him in (The Canadian Press, 7/21/08)

Michigan to start charging parents who collect child support (WWMT, 7/21/08)

Los Angeles, CA–Apparently the Britney Spears/Kevin Federline divorce/custody battle is over, at least for a while.  In the face of a trial that was scheduled to start in a month, Spears instead agreed to give Federline sole legal and physical custody of their two sons.

I have received many letters over the past several months saying that I should take up Britney Spears’ cause.  After all, I publicly advocate shared parenting, and should do so whether the noncustodial parent is a father, as is usually the case, or is a mother, as in this case. 

A few people have told me that I should convince Federline to offer Spears shared custody. (Side note: I sometimes find the way people in other parts of the country view Los Angeles to be rather amusing.  People seem to be saying, “Federline is in LA and so are you Glenn,” as if I could just call Kevin on up on his cell phone.)

As for backing Spears, sorry, but I’ll have to pass.  One of the ways that feminists and others who oppose shared parenting distort the issue is that they claim that I and other fatherhood advocates call for “mandatory joint custody,” or that we believe in joint custody in all cases. 

As I’ve said and written countless times, I believe in shared parenting for fit parents. If the father (or the mother) is physically abusive to either the spouse or the children, is a drug addict or a drunk, has mental issues or behaves erratically, or is not capable of providing a safe environment for the kids, I do not believe in shared parenting–I believe in sole custody for the fit parent. In this case, that would be Federline.

According to ABC News:

Spears pretty much accomplished the impossible. In 2006, when she filed for divorce, onlookers assumed the court would grant custody to the multimillionaire singer over the barely famous backup dancer. But as Spears’ life spiraled out of control, K-Fed’s stock rose.

“She snatched defeat from the jaws of victory,” said Paul Talbert, family law attorney at Chemtob Moss Forman & Talbert, a Manhattan matrimonial law firm. “K-Fed was the punch line to every joke when this all started, and now he’s basically the father of the year. It’s quite an accomplishment and a credit to his attorneys.”

The floundering pop star lost custody of her sons last year following a string of high-profile incidents of bizarre behavior, such as shaving her head bald, threatening paparazzi with an umbrella and checking into the hospital for a psychological evaluation. But lately, she’s cleaned up her act. This summer, she has been off the streets and in the recording studio. So why give up the good fight now?

“I think she looked at the cards and saw she had a losing hand and decided this was the smartest thing she could do at this point,” said Howard Bragman, chairman of Fifteen Minutes PR and author of the forthcoming “Where’s My Fifteen Minutes?” “Otherwise it would be a lot of money, a lot of heartache and a lot of labor for something her advisers said she probably wouldn’t win.”

Bragman added, “Her behavior since this all began has not been indicative of someone who thinks their most important priority is to keep their children. Nobody’s going to look at the past couple months in isolation. They’re going to look at the history since the separation began, and her history will bite her in the butt. You don’t have to be F. Lee Bailey to see that her case wouldn’t play well in court.”

Flashing the paparazzi, skipping court dates to go on shopping sprees, running into cars and speeding away. Months of immature displays painted such a poor picture of Spears there was no way Federline would not have won custody, lawyers said.

“The worst possible position a litigant in a child custody case can be in is when they can’t control their behavior during the case itself. It’s one thing to walk into court with a messy history [and] quite another when you can’t get yourself under control during the proceedings,” said family law attorney Marc Rapaport. “And that’s how she dug such a deep hole for herself in this custody dispute. At the end of the day, K-Fed, even though he wasn’t perfect either, was destined to get custody.”

I don’t believe that Britney Spears is a bad person, but she has not been a fit parent and it is entirely appropriate that Federline, who is a fit parent, get sole custody.  Hopefully Spears will get her act together (she seems to be improving) and play an increasingly larger role in her children’s lives.  Hopefully someday they will share custody.  But at this point the children are safer and better off with Federline.

Others in the fatherhood movement have criticized Federline for receiving child support from Spears.  I do not agree with this criticism.  Spears earns far more money than Federline, and Federline is the children’s primary caregiver. He has also had to spend an enormous amount of time, money, and heartache over his custody case and dealing with Spears’ irrational, unpredictable, and detrimental behavior. He should receive child support to help him raise the children. 

I would also add that Federline is one of the most unfairly maligned people of our time.  For years he was crucified because he was not a career success, compared to Britney Spears.  I always wondered how many 25-year-olds made millions of dollars a year like Spears, and I couldn’t understand why Federline was a “loser” simply because he didn’t.

The one legitimate thing that Federline was criticized for was the breakup of his first marriage to actress Shar Jackson.  However, to his credit, he has helped raise his two children from that marriage. His ex-wife later said, “Federline is a great dad and if you said his name right now, Kori [his 5-year-old  daughter] would go crazy. That’s the love of her life.” Not bad.

Cyprus, Greece–Divorced father manages to win joint custody of his kids. Mom moves the kids, then “cuts off all communication, making it virtually impossible for him to contact his daughters.”

Mom subjects the kids to “horrific abuse and neglect.” Dad is desperately searching for them. The kids are saved only when concerned acquaintances come across the website dad set up to try to find his girls.

One would think that sole custody for the father would be a slam dunk at this point–it certainly would be for the mother were the situation reversed. Instead, Cyprus authorities are being very careful to protect the abusive mother’s “rights” to the kids she kidnapped and mistreated.
From Dutch police searching for mum who dumped kids in Cyprus (Cyprus Mail):

A MOTHER who abandoned her two young daughters with friends in Cyprus is believed to be in her homeland Holland.

Dutch police are now searching her previous addresses to serve her with a summons, after an arrest warrant was issued in Cyprus for serious child abuse and neglect.

The two girls, aged nine and 11, are now with their father, Gerard Roppeveel, and under the protection of the Cyprus Social Welfare Office.

According to Annita Koni, the Head of the Welfare Office”s Family and Child Service, “The Department has already taken the appropriate measures to protect the children and they are in a safe place under our supervision.’

The two children have been subjected to horrific abuse and neglect over the past four and a half years since they moved to Cyprus with their mother, following their parents” divorce.

Despite being awarded joint custody with Roppeveel, the mother cut off all communication, making it virtually impossible for him to contact his daughters – the eldest of whom was adopted.

It was only when concerned friends and acquaintances of the little girls came across a website, set up by Roppeveel in the hope of finding his daughters, that he was finally reunited with them.

The story came to light when a friend of the family – who frequently took the little girls in to feed, wash and clothe them – contacted the Cyprus Mail and recounted the girls” awful plight.

She was appalled that crippling bureaucracy procedures were preventing Roppeveel from taking his daughters back home, so they could live “a stable and secure life’.

Living in total squalor and being abandoned for weeks on end with friends, bullied at school because they smelled and even having to sleep in the same room with their mum as she had sex with strangers, were just a few of things she said the girls had had to endure in the past four and half years.

Courts in Cyprus are hesitant to allow Roppeveel to leave the island as the mother is not present. They are also having trouble trying to get the girls” passports as they disappeared with their mum, when she left Cyprus over a month ago, leaving her children with the family friend.

According to the Chairman of the House Legal Affairs Committee, Ionas Nicolaou of DISY, there are specific procedures that need to be followed for a father to be able to secure a court order for full custody in the absence of the mother.

“The father must prove that the mother has abandoned her children,’ he explained. “You can”t remove custody from a mother without following specific procedures. He must see a lawyer and start these proceedings.’

Nicolaou said the fact that a warrant had been issued for her arrest was in Roppeveel”s favour, but there are no quick fixes and procedures need to be followed.

His comments were echoed by Child Commissioner Leda Koursoumba. “There is a legal process that needs to be followed,’ she said last night. “One parent cannot just take the children without court approval first. If the Welfare Office knows about the case, then that is the best you can get. You need to be very careful with these things.’

Carson City, Nevada–First the story, then a few comments.  From the Associated Press’ Child support case tossed (7/17/08):

The Nevada Supreme Court has rejected a child support case involving an American Indian on the grounds the state can’t interfere in a tribal legal matter.

Norman Thomas, an Indian who lives on a reservation in Elko County, appealed to the court after a district judge refused to dismiss a child support case against him.

A non-Indian, Heather Lawrence, had sued him for child support. Their child was born and lives on the Duck Valley reservation, as do the parents.

Elko County prosecutors filed the child support case against him. But the Supreme Court said the Shoshone-Paiute Tribe reserves jurisdiction over child support matters.

I don’t know anything more about this case than what is contained in this short article, but there are a couple of interesting elements here.  I’m sure the average AP reader thinks that the father used his American Indian background as a way to scam his way out of a child support.  That is possible, but I think it is more likely that a combination of the following is what is happening:

1) The father may be using his Indian heritage as a way to get out of the raw deal that modern family courts give to men.  I have mixed emotions about no-fault divorce, but one of the downsides of it is that a mother can divorce her husband for any reason (or lack of reason) and be sure of getting sole or primary custody of the children as well as financial considerations.  I have no idea how the various American Indian tribes and courts adjudicate these divorces, but it’s possible that at least some of them may require grounds for divorce. 

2) I also wonder why in this case there is child support at all.  Unlike many in the father’s rights movement, I do believe that child support is appropriate in certain cases.  However, assuming both parents here are fit, they should be sharing custody of the child.  Both parents live on the same Indian Reservation, so distance should not be an issue.  If the father does earn considerably more money than the mother, I can see a justification for child support, even if they are sharing custody equally.  However, I suspect that what really happened is that the mother won sole or primary custody and child support simply because she is the mother. 

If anybody knows any details that would contradict this — such as the possibility that the father was not fit — please let me know.

Japan–“One Japanese newspaper says ‘some Japanese women see their husbands as an obstacle to enjoying their sunset years. With few hobbies or friends to turn to, many Japanese retirees, often nicknamed ‘wet leaves” for their tendency to cling to their wives, spend their time at home.’ These ‘wet leaves’ are increasingly being swept aside by their newly independent wives…

“Japanese women–who enjoy one of the longest life expectancies in the world–are apparently ungrateful. Is it so surprising and contemptible that after four decades of work, work, work, retired Japanese men don”t know what to do with themselves? They”ve never known the freedoms and unsupervised days that their homemaker wives have enjoyed.”

I recently commented on the Washington Post story Japan’s Killer Work Ethic–Toyota Engineer’s Family Awarded Compensation (7/13/08). It discusses the work pressures put on Japanese men and how in Japan “Death from too much work is so commonplace in Japan that there is a word for it — karoshi.”

At the same time, there is a sharp rise in divorce in Japan amongst senior citizens, and you can guess which gender is bearing the blame for it. I think this is tremendously unfair. In my co-authored column The Rise in ‘Gray Divorce’: It’s Always Hubby’s Fault (Houston Chronicle, 2/19/06) I wrote:

In both the United States and Japan, divorce among older couples is on the rise. The American Association of Retired Persons detailed the phenomenon among American seniors in a study last year, and Japan”s wave of gray divorce is expected to swell into a deluge, since Japanese women will soon be legally able to claim half of their husbands’ retirement pensions.

There are various explanations for the trend but media commentators agree on one thing–when the husband divorces his wife, it”s hubby”s fault. When the wife divorces her husband, well, it”s hubby”s fault too.

In a recent New York Times article Terry Martin Hekker, whose husband of 40 years divorced her, criticizes what she and others in the media are calling a trend: selfish older men dumping their wives for younger women. In Japan, a popular book is Why Are Retired Husbands Such a Nuisance?, and one of Japan”s most-watched television dramas is Jukunen Rikon (“Mature Divorce’).

One Japanese newspaper says “some Japanese women see their husbands as an obstacle to enjoying their sunset years. With few hobbies or friends to turn to, many Japanese retirees, often nicknamed ‘wet leaves” for their tendency to cling to their wives, spend their time at home.’ These “wet leaves’ are increasingly being swept aside by their newly independent wives.

In both countries this “Pin the Blame on the Husband’ is unfair. For one, the stereotype of the husband trading in his wife for a younger model is by and large a myth. The women in the AARP study were 60% more likely to claim that they ended their marriages than the men were, and men were almost twice as likely as women to say that they never saw their divorces coming. In contrast to the Porsche and trophy wife stereotype, the AARP study found that these divorced men had many serious concerns, high among them their fear of losing touch with their children after their divorces.

Many of these men would see their fears in Hekker”s description of her divorce. Hekker likens her anger to that of the jilted bride Miss Haversham in Dickens’s Great Expectations who “spent decades…consumed with plotting revenge.’ She says that at a family baby shower recently, her niece said “I don’t want to end up like Aunt Terry.”

In other words, Hekker plays the victim and the family has been instructed to feel pity for her and outrage at her ex-husband, who now is apparently persona non grata among his relatives. What a nice reward for the 40 years he worked to provide his wife and children with a comfortable standard of living.

Japanese women–who enjoy one of the longest life expectancies in the world–are apparently similarly ungrateful. Is it so surprising and contemptible that after four decades of work, work, work, retired Japanese men don”t know what to do with themselves? They”ve never known the freedoms and unsupervised days that their homemaker wives have enjoyed.

This is not to say that there”s no validity to women”s complaints. Radio host Howard Stern recently interviewed television commentator Geraldo Rivera, who in 2003 married a woman less than half his age. Stern was only half-joking when he asked “aren”t you worried about your future? Think of it–when you”re 75, you”re going to be stuck married to a 45-year-old woman.’

In this area biology dictates much–if men found 60-year-old women as attractive as they found 30 year-olds, the human race would have died out a long time ago. Yet marriages break up for a variety of reasons, most of them having little to do with male perfidy. There”s a big distinction between dumping your wife for a younger woman, and pursuing a relationship with a younger woman after your marriage has ended.

Though nobody says it, “dumped for a younger woman’ is sometimes just a woman”s cop-out for not taking responsibility for her own contribution to the marital breakdown. Hekker says her ex-husband spent 16 pages of his divorce papers “meticulously detailing my faults and flaws.’ Yet the New York Times” editors didn”t ask her to devote a single one of her 1,600+ words towards giving the reader a clue as to what her ex-husband”s feelings and complaints might be.

Given the way the media is portraying gray divorce on both sides of the Pacific, this is no surprise.

Sydney, Australia–“This would be, without doubt, the worst case of flagrant and provable injustice that I can remember. It is clear-cut that he is innocent…The people involved should be absolutely ashamed of themselves.”–Australian federal MP Bob Katter

An absolutely horrendous injustice–a father convicted and imprisoned on false sex crime charges.

Notice how there’s no discussion of any punishment for the man’s ex-wife, who apparently orchestrated the frame up. I bet there won’t be–hell, she probably won’t even lose custody of the children. Be sure to let me know if it turns out I’m wrong.

From Sex offender had an alibi: family (Sydney Morning Herald, 7/13/08):

AN AUSTRALIAN pilot jailed for a sex crime in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea was actually flying an aircraft 1000 kilometres away at the time, fresh evidence unearthed by his family shows.

Fred Martens, 59, was convicted of having sex with a 14-year-old village girl in PNG and jailed for 5 years by the Queensland Supreme Court in October 2006.

Martens protested his innocence, arguing the Australian Federal Police investigation had relied on evidence given by his Papuan ex-wife at a time when there was a custody dispute over their children.

A second sex-tourism case against him was thrown out of the Supreme Court in Cairns this year when the girl involved confessed she had made up the allegations.

Martens’s brother, Peter Wheatley, has now gathered fresh evidence from the Papua New Guinean Civil Aviation Authority.

Certified documents from the authority confirm details in Martens’s pilot’s logbook and flight plans that placed him near the West Papua border at the time of the alleged incident in 2001.

“This is a gross travesty of justice,” said Mr Wheatley, who is now caring for his brother’s seven children at his Queensland farm.

“The evidence we uncovered was not a secret. It was available to the AFP and should have been found as part of a proper investigation.”

Mr Wheatley has applied to federal Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus, asking that the case be transferred to the appeals court. Mr Wheatley made a separate application for a free and absolute pardon.

“The horrendous stigma of this terrible crime of pedophilia will live with my brother for years to come, even if he is given an absolute pardon,” Mr Wheatley said.

Read the full article here.

Chicago, IL–Here’s another idiotic aspect of the child support system–demanding that incarcerated obligors continue to make child support payments even though we know they have no income and no ability to pay. Then, when they’re released, they’re several thousand dollars behind on child support (with interest on overdue payments added), and are subject to arrest or driven underground.

This problem has now been recognized by the Justice Department and Hillary Clinton actually addressed it during her campaign–to learn more, see my co-authored column New Justice Department Report”s Recommendations Could Reduce Prisoner Recidivism (Chicago Sun-Times, 10/26/07).

Usually the above scenario applies to low-income minority men incarcerated as part of the asinine War on Drugs. In the case below, the charges are far more serious–murder.

Nonetheless, it is still stupid and unfair to continue the man’s child support obligation. If he’s convicted, he’ll be in jail the rest of his life, so the obligation is irrelevant–it’ll never be paid. If he’s acquitted, then he’ll be behind on child support when he’s released, with all the concomitant problems, even though he is legally blameless.

From Murder Suspect Ordered To Continue Paying Child Support From Jail (Southern Maryland Online, 7/13/08):

A Lexington Park man accused of murdering his estranged wife”s boyfriend and attempting to kill her in the process must continue paying child support for their three children.

A ruling by Circuit Court Master F. Michael Harris last week determined that Koummane Virasith must still make the child support payments to Melissa Virasith despite being detained in the St. Mary”s County Detention Center.

The double shooting that took the life of Thomas John Saunders, 38, and seriously injured Melissa Virasith, 40, occurred April 10.

Before the shooting occurred, Melissa Virasith had filed two domestic violence complaints against her husband for alleged abusive behavior. The couple separated in 2006, court documents stated, with Koummane Virasith made to pay $400 a month in child support.

Melissa Virasith wrote to the court in late June stating that child support was now vital to her keeping her family going while she was recovering from the shooting.

“I have no income and will not have any income for some time to come,’ Melissa Virasith wrote. “I feel that he is still responsible for the support of our three sons and I do not want to modify our support agreement.’

Melissa Virasith stated in her letter that she was currently a paraplegic as a result of the shooting and was undergoing therapy at a hospital in Baltimore.

In a letter to the court written little more than a week after Koummane Virasith allegedly shot the two victims, he stated that he had always paid his child support on time every month while gainfully employed.

His incarceration in the detention center now made that impossible, he wrote in the letter.

Read the full article here.

Los Angeles, CA–To watch the ad, click here.

To see more anti-male domestic violence industry ads, see below. Since women are as likely to commit domestic violence as men are, a significant portion of the domestic violence PSAs should feature male victims and female abusers. I’m sure they exist, but I’ve never seen one–if anybody has, please email it to me.

I also question their “325,000 injuries a year” number–anybody familiar with DV statistics in the UK know if the number is reliable? I wonder if they’re conflating “incidents” with “injuries.”

How the Domestic Violence Industry Portrays Men–Part I (Video)

How the Domestic Violence Industry Portrays Men–Part II (Video)

How the Domestic Violence Industry Portrays Men–Part III (Video)

Los Angeles, CA–What I found interesting about the story An American life worth less today (Associated Press, 7/10/08) was this:

The EPA figure is not based on people’s earning capacity, or their potential contributions to society, or how much they are loved and needed by their friends and family — some of the factors used in insurance claims and wrongful-death lawsuits.

Instead, economists calculate the value based on what people are willing to pay to avoid certain risks, and on how much extra employers pay their workers to take on additional risks. Most of the data is drawn from payroll statistics; some comes from opinion surveys.

Get it?  They determine this largely based upon how much extra employers pay to workers who do hazardous jobs.  As men’s activists have been saying for a long time, this is one of the reasons for the wage gap between men and women — it is men, and almost exclusively men, who do the dangerous jobs, and employers pay them more in order to get them to do it.

The sacrifices that working-class men make and the risks they take in order to support their families is a subject rarely discussed in the United States, for various reasons.

One is that white middle-class culture doesn’t find it particularly convenient to discuss the hardships borne by the often underpaid and unappreciated men upon whom our society depends. 

Another reason is that in modern feminist, politically correct culture, it is not acceptable to point to the special sacrifices that men make.  Even a simple factual statement like “It is usually men, not women, who do dangerous jobs” can be controversial. We simply are not accustomed to acknowledging the sacrifices that men make, as opposed to the sacrifices that women make.

The full story can be read here.