Category: Blog

March 22, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Esq, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

Scotland’s taken a bold new step toward the destruction of the family, and Scottish Women’s Aid and The Guardian couldn’t be more thrilled (The Guardian, 2/1/18). They’re so excited that they call the new law the “gold standard” of domestic violence law. Unsurprisingly, this being the brainchild of Scottish Women’s Aid, the new law vastly expands the meaning of domestic violence and encourages the police to remember that, just because an accused person hasn’t behaved violently, doesn’t mean he hasn’t – you know – committed domestic violence.

Now, you probably noticed that I used the masculine pronoun in the previous sentence. I did that because everyone discussing the new law assumes that all abusers are men and all victims are women.

“Women have been telling us for years that it is emotional abuse that is most harmful. One of the unique things about this bill is that it privileges the experiences of women and children…

The offence also includes a “reasonable person test”. For example, would a reasonable person consider that limiting a woman’s access to her bank account or prescribing her meal times or moving her car while she was asleep – all cases that Scottish Women’s Aid have encountered – amounted to controlling behaviour?…

“The voices of women and children who have experienced domestic abuse are at the heart of this bill and that is why it is so important for these provisions to operate effectively. One of the critical things is that those in contact with women who could benefit from its provisions understand exactly what psychological abuse and coercive control is.”…

What matters now is what happens when the first calls come in under the new law. How will the police and the courts respond to that first caller who insists ‘violence wasn’t the worst part’. Will she be told: ‘Talk about the violence’, or what we hope she’ll hear: ‘Yes, I know what you mean.’” 

Yes, not a single word was spoken or written to suggest that men too are victims and women perpetrators of domestic violence. Doubtless the law is written in scrupulously gender-neutral language, but no one is fooled. Women’s Aid has never admitted the truth about domestic violence despite the fact that over four decades of research have revealed equal perpetration and victimization by men and women. Indeed, just eight years ago, Scotland itself produced data showing that 5% of men and 5% of women reported experiencing domestic violence at the hands of an intimate partner within the previous 12 months.

And then of course lesbian relationships are on average significantly more violent than any other kind. Recent data out of Statistics Canada showed lesbian relationships twice as likely to experience violence as heterosexual ones and three times as likely as gay male couples.

Now, about that broadened “definition” of the term:

A law setting a “gold standard” for domestic abuse legislation by incorporating both emotional and physical violence into the same offence is expected to be passed by the Scottish parliament.

The domestic abuse bill, which has cross-party backing, creates a specific offence of “abusive behaviour in relation to a partner or ex-partner”. This will cover not only physical abuse but other forms of psychological abuse and coercive and controlling behaviour that cannot easily be prosecuted using the existing criminal law.

The Guardian, Women’s Aid and everyone interviewed or quoted by the article never mention something else as well – women tend to be more coercive and controlling in intimate relationships than do men. That’s according to research done by Dr. Elizabeth Bates who’s done much honest work on domestic violence, debunking many myths (Telegraph, 6/26/14).

Women are more likely than men to be aggressive and controlling towards their partner, according to a study.

The research found that women showed controlling behaviour along with serious levels of threats, intimidation and physical violence when in a relationship more often than men.

Given that, the question arises whether, when a man calls his local DV hotline in Scotland to complain of coercive, controlling behavior by his female partner, “Will he be told: ‘Talk about the violence’, or what we hope he’ll hear: ‘Yes, I know what you mean.’” 

If Women’s Aid has anything to say about it, the answer he’ll receive is “You’re a man; you can’t be a victim. Good bye.”

Speaking of Women’s Aid, they’re taking the new law to the bank.

Holyrood’s justice secretary, Michael Matheson, also announced £165,000 of dedicated training funding for Scottish Women’s Aid.

If you’ve read The Guardian’s article, it won’t take too much imagination to figure out what that training will consist of.

Needless to say, the broader the definition of domestic violence, the more it can be used to separate men from women and fathers from children. And that, from almost the very inception of the DV movement, has been the point.

 

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National Parents Organization is a Shared Parenting Organization

National Parents Organization is a non-profit that educates the public, families, educators, and legislators about the importance of shared parenting and how it can reduce conflict in children, parents, and extended families. Along with Shared Parenting we advocate for fair Child Support and Alimony Legislation. Want to get involved?  Here’s how:

• Become an official member of the National Parents Organization team.
• Join our Facebook Page.

Together, we can drive home the family, child development, social and national benefits of shared parenting, and fair child support and alimony. Thank you for your activism.

#domesticviolence, #Scotland, #families, #Women’sAid

March 21, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Esq, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

This article is about three times as long as it needs to be, is poorly written and sometimes badly informed (Pop Matters, 1/31/18). But it reviews a film that may well be worth seeing. That film is Where’s Daddy, produced and directed by Rel Dowdell.

Where’s Daddy is about the child support system in the United States and how it tends to separate fathers from children. It’s also about the impact that has on the mothers of those children. The article’s writer, J.C. Macek III, writes a muddy prose that illuminates little, but apparently Where’s Daddy makes valuable points.

Dowdell’s Where’s Daddy? is not a film about deadbeat dads…

Instead, this is a documentary that asks a new question: "What if the dad in trouble is not a deadbeat?" What if that father never runs away from his responsibility and does everything he possibly can for his children but falls behind financially? What if falling behind financially means, as it often does, falling behind on child support?

That question may be new to Macek, but it’s not to anyone with much information about the child support system. Indeed, few men behind on child support are “deadbeats,” i.e. fathers who can pay, but refuse to. As the Office of Child Support Enforcement regularly reminds us, child support is often set at levels fathers (and sometimes mothers) can’t pay. Unsurprisingly they fall behind, see interest tacked on to the arrearage and end up in jail or having their occupational licenses suspended.

As I detailed in my two posts on the thoroughly awful Steven Fischer, child support debt now sits at about $116 billion. It increases every year. The OCSE did a study back in 2007 that estimated that it would take a decade to collect 40% of what was then owed. That estimate proved accurate. Some 63% of those behind on child support report earnings of under $10,000 per year. Law enforcement “sweeps” of child support debtors in New Jersey routinely collect 1% – 2% of what’s owed. The Texas Attorney General’s office collected about 6% of back child support in an entire year.

What all that means of course is that the great majority of child support arrears will never be collected. It’s a simple fact that’s reflected by the federal government’s offer to states to waive Title IV-D reimbursements. For three decades, child support levels were set too high, usurious interest rates were added and the unsurprising result is an enormous and unpayable debt. Somehow, no one figured that out ahead of time.

In short, those behind on child support overwhelmingly aren’t deadbeats; they’re just poor. To his credit, Dowdell’s many interviewees include no deadbeats. About that, he gets his subject (and his subjects) right. It’s not the only one.

Often a father who has fallen behind on his child support will face jail time. While behind bars paychecks cannot be earned as work cannot be attended. The meter does not stop running just because a father is in jail and owed money continues to accrue. Thus a father, even if he is lucky enough to keep his job once released, has less money to pay the outstanding child support. Thus, the father faces jail time again, may or may not keep his job, and most assuredly falls behind on child support payments even further. And the vicious cycle continues.

Right. Once an obligor falls behind, the system enthusiastically encourages failure.  Now some states have suspended additional child support if a parent is in jail, but that does little to solve the problem. Once a parent gets a job, he stands a good chance of being re-arrested for failure to pay off his debt. That in turn likely means he’ll lose that job, which in turn means his debt will increase.

That’s exactly what happened to Walter Scott in South Carolina. He’d finally gotten the best job of his life with a film company and was terrified of losing it due to yet another arrest for child support debt. So when a police officer stopped him for a minor traffic infraction, he ran and was shot and killed for his trouble. That’s your child support system in action.

Rarely are special circumstances taken into account by the courts. For example, the documentary shows us that if the father’s health prevents him from working, he must go to court to prove that fact. This requires court costs and lawyers and further money owed on child support — as again, the meter keeps running.

Right again. A parent owing child support is required to go to court if he wants a downward modification due to a change in his circumstances. But if that change is the loss of a job or an injury or illness that limits his ability to work and earn, where is he supposed to find the money to hire a lawyer? And with no lawyer, the chances of proving a change in circumstances are remote at best. Again, the system is designed for the non-custodial parent to fail. And when he does, arrears keep going up and up.

If the film explores the dynamic of fathers being denied access to children by custodial mothers and the impact that has on child support, Macek doesn’t mention it. It’s a major way in which fathers are excluded – and feel excluded – from their children’s lives and deserves a prominent place in any film about child support.

Still, even though Where’s Daddy looks like a film by someone who’s a bit too new to the subject to do it justice, it looks like an effort that’s worth viewing.

 

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National Parents Organization is a Shared Parenting Organization

National Parents Organization is a non-profit that educates the public, families, educators, and legislators about the importance of shared parenting and how it can reduce conflict in children, parents, and extended families. Along with Shared Parenting we advocate for fair Child Support and Alimony Legislation. Want to get involved?  Here’s how:

• Become an official member of the National Parents Organization team.
• Join our Facebook Page.

Together, we can drive home the family, child development, social and national benefits of shared parenting, and fair child support and alimony. Thank you for your activism.

March 19, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Esq, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

This article out of Canada rather breathlessly breaks the news that divorce can be costly (Hants Journal, 3/13/18). To that I can add my own breaking news: most people already know that. That’s the main reason why over 95% of divorce cases are agreed to by the separating spouses. They can’t afford and, in any case don’t need, lawyers. So they figure out acceptable post-divorce arrangements, write them up in the format desired by the particular court and hope the judge signs off. Most judges are all too happy to have an agreement in lieu of conflict.

In the overwhelming majority of cases, there’s simply no reason to spend more than a few hundred dollars to get divorced.

Still, some people do and that leads the linked-to article into its dark forest of a few not very interesting facts and other misleading ones.

So we find the pseudonymously identified Samantha Knowles bemoaning her fate as a divorced mother.

Even though Samantha Knowles has a good-paying job, she says she now avoids calls from bill collectors because it’s more than she can handle…

“I’m ready to be bankrupt,” said Knowles. “There are so many bills outstanding that I don’t answer any phone numbers I don’t know.

“I can only put food on the table and take care of my immediate bills and my kids.”

Although it’s been years already since her divorce, Knowles is still making monthly payments of hundreds of dollars in legal costs. The divorce itself initially cost her and her ex-husband about $4,500 each. Legal fees to regain shared custody of her children in proceedings since then have burdened her with another $7,000 of debt.

The total in legal costs for that divorce so far is roughly $16,000.

And then, there’s the child support. Since Knowles’ ex-husband is out of work and has shared custody of the children, she pays him almost $1,000 per month in child support.

Hmm, that raises certain questions, the principal one being “Why didn’t she and her ex simply agree on the shared parenting arrangement they now, after $16,000 in legal fees and court costs, have anyway?”

The article doesn’t let on about just who or why Knowles and her ex decided to fight. But the simple truth is that it’s a lot easier, less stressful and cheaper to sit down across from each other and come up with a deal. That looks particularly true in Knowles’ case. If $16k in bills plus $1,000 per month in child support are about to put her into bankruptcy, she’s obviously not terribly affluent. So why did she get into a divorce and custody fight she couldn’t afford?

Meanwhile, divorce cases can cost a lot more than Knowles is paying.

The Vancouver-based firm of Davidson Fraese Family Lawyers pegs the typical cost of a trial for divorce proceedings at well over $50,000 in legal fees and court costs.

“Where large estates or difficult parenting issues are involved, legal fees and expert witnesses such as asset valuators or psychologists can be required, adding to the cost,” the firm’s website states.

The question is “why?” Yes, in the very rare cases involving not only large but complex estates, I can see that expert witnesses could make costs mount up. But those are, as I said, rare. The vast majority of couples, whether divorcing or not, don’t have that level of assets.

So what else is there to fight about? Child custody, of course. The article doesn’t mention that obvious fact. In divorce cases, there are two major bones of contention – the estate and the kids. And part of the child custody issue is child support. Beyond those, there are few issues to fight about or be decided and again, for most people, the first issue – a large estate – isn’t.

Nowhere does the article broach the obvious regarding child custody – that it’s the winner-take-all system that’s so problematical, that exacerbates conflict and drives up costs. A presumption of shared parenting would strongly tend to reduce those costs by ensuring that every fit parent would maintain a meaningful relationship with their child following divorce.

And no such article would be complete without some family lawyer cheerily assuring readers that family courts really are all about shared custody.

The often-touted claims made by men that women get preferential treatment in courts and men have a hard time getting custody is something she flatly dismisses.

“The courts have evolved so much in the past 25 years,” said [attorney Heidi] Foshay Kimball. “When I started, the predisposition was to give women custody. That has really changed. The default position is now towards shared parenting.”

Well, isn’t that special? Her claim would be even better if there were any evidence to back it up. But in 2009, Canadian economist Paul Millar actually looked at Canadian custody data, something Foshay Kimball clearly hasn’t done. In his book, The Best Interests of Children, Millar pointed out that for the first three decades of the 20th century, Canadian courts had a clear preference for maternal custody.

Moreover, there appears to be no evidence of a change in this gender preference since that time, and the comparatively recent change in legislation does not appear to have had an immediate impact on the gender imbalance in custody decisions.

By 2011, the Canadian government’s statistical agency, Statistics Canada, found the same.

In 2011, seven in ten separated or divorced parents indicated that the child lived primarily with his or her mother. Another 15% indicated that the child mainly lived with the father, while 9% reported equal living time between the two parents’ homes.

And since the linked-to article is quoting lawyers, I may as well too (Toronto Star, 10/2/09).

"Fundamentally, men get screwed in family court," says one veteran divorce lawyer on condition her name not be used. "Judges make sure that assets are split equally, but they don’t do that on custody and child-related issues."

Members of Parliament agree.

A decade after Ottawa’s Special Joint Committee on Child Custody and Access recommended an overhaul of Canada’s divorce system – and more equitable child-custody arrangements – fathers still face an uphill battle.

"It’s as bad or perhaps worse now," says retired MP Roger Gallaway, who co-chaired the committee and its landmark 1998 report, "For the Sake of the Children," and still gets calls from fathers shocked at their treatment in the family court system.

If someone wants to produce actual evidence of a change toward shared parenting decisions by Canada’s judges, I’ll be more than pleased to report it. Until then, I take the facts as given. Divorce lawyers should too, but I won’t hold my breath.

 

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National Parents Organization is a Shared Parenting Organization

National Parents Organization is a non-profit that educates the public, families, educators, and legislators about the importance of shared parenting and how it can reduce conflict in children, parents, and extended families. Along with Shared Parenting we advocate for fair Child Support and Alimony Legislation. Want to get involved?  Here’s how:

• Become an official member of the National Parents Organization team.
• Join our Facebook Page.

Together, we can drive home the family, child development, social and national benefits of shared parenting, and fair child support and alimony. Thank you for your activism.

#divorce, #childcustody, #attorneysfees, #sharedparenting, #solecustody

March 18, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Esq, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

Here are Brad Wilcox and Nicholas Zill, two long-time researchers into a wide variety of issues relating to families, parenting and children’s well-being (Institute for Family Studies, (2/27/18). Their new article is both news and not news. It provides updated information on children who are brought up – and those who aren’t – in intact families. That’s news. And it points out that kids brought up in intact homes have advantages in many different areas of life that other kids don’t.

Is growing up with married birth parents advantageous for a young person’s school success and later life chances? There is abundant evidence that it is. As shown in numerous analytic studies, students with stably-married parents are more likely to do well in school and less likely to cut classes, repeat grades, be suspended or expelled, or drop out.5 And significant advantages persist after controlling for related factors like parent education level, family income and poverty status, student race and ethnicity, parent involvement, and teacher or school quality. Rich or poor, this is a type of advantage which parents from all social classes can bestow upon their children: the privilege of a growing up in a stable, married two-parent family.

That’s not news.

So what are the data on kids in and out of intact families? The two researchers surveyed kids who’d reached 18 years of age about their family structures growing up. Here’s what they found:

So how many of today’s young people experience this stable family structure throughout childhood?

The answer is about one-in-two, according to our new analysis of survey data files recently released by the U.S. Department of Education.1This figure is based on the proportion of 17- and 18-year-old high school students who were reported to be living with both their married birth mothers and biological fathers in 2016…

As shown in Figure 1, another 15% of today’s high school seniors lived in a variety of non-traditional two-parent families in 2016: with cohabiting birth parents (2%); with one birth parent and a stepparent (11%); with a heterosexual adoptive couple (1%); or with a same-sex couple (1%). Nearly 30% of high school seniors lived in single-parent families, with either their birth mothers (23%) or biological fathers (6%).

The remaining 6% of students had experienced multiple disruptions in their family lives and resided with neither birth parent.

Therefore, we have 50% of kids living in intact birth families. We have another 30% living with single parents and another 11% living with one birth parent and a stepparent and 6% either in foster care or living with someone completely unrelated to them. Other arrangements are statistically negligible.

Whether children grow up with their birth parents or not depends to a great degree on the level of education their parents attained.

The more education a woman or man has, the more likely she or he is to get married and stay married when raising children. As shown in Figure 2 below, among high school seniors whose parents or guardians had a college education or more, 64% lived with married parents throughout childhood in 2016. An additional one percent lived with cohabiting birth parents. By contrast, among students whose parents or guardians had less than a high school education, only 29% lived with married parents from birth to the end of high school.

Just why that is, I can’t guess and the authors don’t say, but the facts are there for all to see.

The benefits to children of growing up in an intact family, i.e. with one’s biological parents, are undeniable. As Wilcox and Zill say, they reach across all the usual demographic categories we look to explain social phenomena. Given that, why is it that only half of children get to have that “privilege,” as the authors rightly call growing up with biological parents? Do parents not care what’s good for their kids?

No, but what I observe is that we as a society don’t much care what’s good for kids. I say that because, at every turn, public policy encourages anti-kid behavior on the part of adults. That begins with marriage that our laws, regulations and practices discourage while they encourage divorce.

I’ve said this many times. We tell mothers that, if they’ll just divorce the father of their children, they’ll lose little or no contact with the kids, but gain sometimes bountiful amounts of child support and alimony. Meanwhile, we’ve done away with the stigmas we used to place on divorce and single motherhood. As Vice President Quayle once pointed out, single parenthood has become “just another lifestyle choice.” Unsurprisingly, over 40% of children are born to unmarried mothers, almost half of all marriages end in divorce and 70% of divorce petitions are filed by women.

This is not a healthy situation. We can do better and we must. That means changing laws that incentivize divorce. And it means convincing policy-makers and the news media and popular culture the value of making sure that it’s biological parents who raise children.

 

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National Parents Organization is a Shared Parenting Organization

National Parents Organization is a non-profit that educates the public, families, educators, and legislators about the importance of shared parenting and how it can reduce conflict in children, parents, and extended families. Along with Shared Parenting we advocate for fair Child Support and Alimony Legislation. Want to get involved?  Here’s how:

• Become an official member of the National Parents Organization team.
• Join our Facebook Page.

Together, we can drive home the family, child development, social and national benefits of shared parenting, and fair child support and alimony. Thank you for your activism.

#Marriage, #divorce, #children’swell-being, #InstituteforFamilyStudies

March 16, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Esq, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

In Australia, journalist and activist Bettina Arndt has embarked on a new direction. Fortunately, it includes this video interview with law professor Augusto Zimmerman. In addition to his academic career, Zimmerman served on the Law Reform Commission for Western Australia and is a fairly influential voice in legal policy in the Land Down Under.

Zimmerman taught for 10 years at Murdoch University Law School, but moved to Sheridan College when he grew uncomfortable with the “social justice direction Murdoch was taking. His interview with Arndt focusses on the impacts that domestic violence laws have had on divorce and child custody proceedings.

In a nutshell, Zimmerman is concerned that the system of domestic violence in Australia is having an adverse impact on the rights of fathers and children. It does so in a number of ways.

First, there’s been a frank erosion of basic rights of due process of law. In practice, that means that, when a complaint of domestic violence is made, the police are taught to arrest someone without necessarily any objective evidence on which to base doing so. That happens immediately, but it usually takes about seven months to ascertain whether the claim was true or false. In the meantime, if there’s a child custody issue pending, the one who’s the subject of the complaint, usually the father, has no contact with his child.

That of course constitutes “facts on the ground that usually lead to sole maternal custody. Both the police and prosecutors are taught – and freely admit – to “erring on the side of believing the accuser. As a practical matter, that suspends the accused’s due process right to be presumed innocent.

Second, Zimmerman states that lawyers in Australia well know that the system of domestic violence there all but guarantees that many of the claims are false and are used entirely to gain an advantage in custody battles.  That is the case of course because those claims work, i.e. they succeed in marginalizing fathers in the lives of their children. And they do so whether the allegations are true or false. Again, the time it takes to prove them false is enough to establish de facto custody.

Third, what is domestic violence? Needless to say at this late date, it often has nothing to do with anything related to physical violence. It’s now not only emotional violence and financial violence that can get a man removed from his home and separated from his children, but the mere threat thereof. Yes, anyone who says s/he fears that some form of violence may occur in the future is entitled to an Apprehended Violence Order (AVO).

Therefore, the mere claim that one is concerned that one’s significant other may, at some time in the future, do something to cause one emotional upset or limit one’s spending power can, via the state power of the police and courts, have the other person removed from the home and that person’s contact with his children curtailed or prohibited altogether.

In this way, the government continues to destroy existing families while sending the clear message to those considering starting families that they’d be wise to think again.

Examples given by Zimmerman are of a man in his 70s whose wife had claimed he’d been verbally abusive to her. The police and courts threw him out of his house and he was living in his car based solely on one person’s naked accusation.

Another man had a child with an Australian woman. She decided she didn’t want him to see the child, so she claimed he’d been emotionally abusive toward her. In due course a judge issued an AVO against him. When he called the woman to find out what was going on, he violated the AVO and was jailed.

A survey of Australian family law magistrates finds widespread understanding that false allegations of DV are being made as a matter of course to gain an advantage in family law proceedings. But astonishingly, they overwhelmingly refuse to punish those who levy false allegations, virtually ensuring that the abuse of the system will continue.

I was recently reading a history of the late Roman Empire. In it, I ran across this about the Emperor Julian:

“He established the principle that an accused person should be accounted innocent till proved guilty. Numerius, a former governor of Gallia Narbonensis, was charged with embezzlement; he denied the charge, and could not be confuted at any point. The judge Delfidius, exasperated by lack of proofs, cried out: “Can anyone, most mighty Caesar, ever be found guilty if it be enough to deny the charge?” To which Julian replied: “Can anyone be proved innocent if it be enough to have accused him?”

That was around 350 AD. It’s a question that still (still!) needs to be asked in Australia today.

 

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National Parents Organization is a Shared Parenting Organization

National Parents Organization is a non-profit that educates the public, families, educators, and legislators about the importance of shared parenting and how it can reduce conflict in children, parents, and extended families. Along with Shared Parenting we advocate for fair Child Support and Alimony Legislation. Want to get involved?  Here’s how:

• Become an official member of the National Parents Organization team.
• Join our Facebook Page.

Together, we can drive home the family, child development, social and national benefits of shared parenting, and fair child support and alimony. Thank you for your activism.

#domesticviolence, #dueprocessoflaw, #BettinaArndt, #Australia

March 15, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Esq, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

The excellent Warren Farrell has recently released his book, The Boy Crisis. Rachel Alexander reviewed it here (Town Hall, 3/6/18). As the name indicates, the book isn’t just about family courts and the damage they do to kids and dads alike. But needless to say, Farrell doesn’t ignore that part of the problem.

Unsurprisingly, the removal of fathers from children’s lives serves no one well.

[I]n all 63 of the largest developed nations, boys are falling behind girls in all academic subjects – especially the biggest predictors of success, reading and writing, in their mental health (depression, suicides), physical health (lower sperm counts), IQ, ability to create friends, and so on.

That’s bad for boys and the men they grow into of course, but it’s also bad for girls and women.

Farrell observes, “Whenever only one sex wins, both sexes lose.” For every girl who turns out well, she’ll have a boyfriend or son whose issues she must deal with. Even if you do not have children, you are paying for the boy crisis in taxes – boys on welfare, in prison, unemployed, joining ISIS, doing school shootings. As Farrell puts it, “Boys who hurt, hurt us.”

I’ve said it many times. The scourge of fatherlessness impacts many areas of life and society from crime to addiction to poor education to unemployment to suicide and beyond. And we all pay, literally with taxes, and figuratively with a fraying social fabric.

Farrell brings out some fascinating insights from studies that most people are unaware of. Not only do boys do better with fathers than mothers, but girls do better with fathers too. This is true at all ages, even when the dad has no advantage in income.

Right. Both boys and girls need both parents in their lives. The problem is that courts separate children from their fathers to keep them with mothers, sidelining Dad. And that problem arises among all demographics. Affluent kids suffer fatherlessness the same as do poorer ones. The problem of fatherlessness crosses all boundaries of race, class, income, religion and educational level. Courts produce fatherlessness without need and without justification. Adoption agencies, child support systems, the failure to enforce visitation, paternity fraud and the news media and popular culture all contribute to the marginalization of fathers in children’s lives.

Farrell, a former board member in NYC of the National Organization of Women, says the women’s movement did a great job expanding the options for women in the last half century, framing discrimination as women not being able to be equally involved in the workplace. But no one changed the public consciousness about the discrimination being faced by men desiring to enter the world of their children, the home place.

True enough, but dare I say that countless people and organizations have been trying to do that for many years? Warren Farrell of course has been one of them. By now there are dozens and dozens of organizations across the country devoting themselves to doing exactly that. I, for one, do it every day of the week. The issue is not the lack of effort, nor is it the lack of solid science backing up our position, nor is it the lack of a moral imperative. All those are present and accounted for. Our culture seems quite content for women to branch out from their traditional roles as wife, mother and keeper of the home into the world of paid work, politics and the like. But the resistance to fathers stepping out of their traditional role of resource provider is another story altogether. That resistance makes no sense and it is that very lack that gives it its salience. Why do we persist in such patently dysfunctional behavior, particularly when our public narrative trumpets the virtues of gender equality?

And no one confronted the 53 percent of women under 30 who have children without being married as to their denial of the rights of the children to have both parents.

Hmm. Actually, we did. At least as far back as when Dan Quayle was Vice President, the issue of single motherhood has been raised. Barbara Defoe Whitehead did so in a lengthy and powerful article in The Atlantic in 1993. Organizations like the Institute for Family Studies routinely promote the virtues of marriage and its benefits for children, fathers and mothers.

But, like the research on shared parenting, so far our culture has chosen to ignore the facts and follow a destructive path.

Warren Farrell is one of the many stalwarts who, like the biblical prophets, decry the wrongs done by a culture in decline.

 

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National Parents Organization is a Shared Parenting Organization

National Parents Organization is a non-profit that educates the public, families, educators, and legislators about the importance of shared parenting and how it can reduce conflict in children, parents, and extended families. Along with Shared Parenting we advocate for fair Child Support and Alimony Legislation. Want to get involved?  Here’s how:

• Become an official member of the National Parents Organization team.
• Join our Facebook Page.

Together, we can drive home the family, child development, social and national benefits of shared parenting, and fair child support and alimony. Thank you for your activism.

#boycrisis, #WarrenFarrell, #sharedparenting

March 14, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Esq, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

In this blog I’ve chronicled the many astonishing and utterly senseless efforts by Nebraska’s legislature, courts and various related entities to keep fathers out of children’s lives. The litany of those efforts is far too long to reprise here, but the most recent one is the state Supreme Court’s proposed rule to exempt the judiciary from disclosing to the public materials used to train them in the matters of child custody and parenting time.

Now, inquiring minds may want to know what could possibly be so threatening about a few written materials, power point presentations, etc. that do nothing more than acquaint judges with the science on those issues that could necessitate their being kept from the public. The Nebraska Open Records Act is quite broad, indicating the intention of the legislature that the public be generally informed about the doings of its government. So why should something as innocent as judicial training materials be an exception to the overarching rule of disclosure?

As I’ve written before, when those materials were finally made public, people who know something about the science on parenting time and children’s welfare were appalled. Much as we’d expected, the judges were intentionally being taught that which isn’t true. I say “intentionally” because the invitation to give a workshop issued to Professor Linda Nielsen, who would have taught the truth about the state of the science, was rescinded with the patently false claim that the state didn’t have the money to pay her plane fare and accommodations. Amazingly, it did have the money to pay the expenses of Dr. Robert Emery, longtime opponent of children having meaningful time with their fathers.

But, I now learn, it’s worse than that. Various Nebraska organizations and others have written to oppose the proposed new rule that would make secret judicial training materials. My previous blogs excoriating the judges’ bid to hide the truth from the public were, as it turns out, far too kind.

It turns out that Dr. Emery, in his presentation to Nebraska’s judges frankly misrepresented the research on parenting time. So, for example, Emery cited one study for the proposition that contact with fathers made “zero” difference to children’s psychological well-being, but that “father quality matters.” But one of the authors of that study explicitly disavowed Emery’s description saying,

“Nowhere did we suggest or find that fathers should not be spending time with their children or argue against joint custody in any way and it is a gross misrepresentation of the findings of the last 5 decades of research to say so.”

Scientists in academia essentially never use such blunt language, particularly about the behavior of their peers. Meanwhile, the author of another study cited by Emery echoed something I’ve said many times:

Contact without a good quality relationship is unlikely to be beneficial… But contact is a necessary condition for a high-quality relationship to develop and be maintained.

It’s one of the anti-dad crowd’s favorite claims that limiting parenting time to 20% or so for fathers is acceptable because “it’s not the quantity but the quality that’s important.” As the researcher points out, it’s all but impossible to establish or maintain a high-quality relationship with one’s child when seeing him/her every other weekend. Indeed, the science on the matter indicates that parenting time that’s so limited tends to degrade to nothing over time.

But Emery wasn’t through misrepresenting the science on shared parenting. Most of it he simply ignored. As one of the organizations opposing the proposed rule said,

Prof. Emery failed to disclose any of the extensive research, consisting of more than 40 studies that contradict his principle thesis. The vast majority of the mental health literature disagrees with his thesis…

This is the man who was specifically sought out to teach Nebraska’s judges about custody and parenting time. Stated simply, he’s not honest about the research and he conveys a starkly misleading image of it to the judiciary. There are many researchers the state could have chosen; Emery’s who they came up with.

He, and the mysterious process that substituted him for Prof. Nielsen, are precisely the reason why the public needs to know what judges are being taught about the all-important issue of child custody and parenting time.

 

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National Parents Organization is a Shared Parenting Organization

National Parents Organization is a non-profit that educates the public, families, educators, and legislators about the importance of shared parenting and how it can reduce conflict in children, parents, and extended families. Along with Shared Parenting we advocate for fair Child Support and Alimony Legislation. Want to get involved?  Here’s how:

• Become an official member of the National Parents Organization team.
• Join our Facebook Page.

Together, we can drive home the family, child development, social and national benefits of shared parenting, and fair child support and alimony. Thank you for your activism.

#judicialtraining, #child’sbestinterests, #RobertEmery, #Nebraska

March 12, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Esq, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

The Alabama Senate has approved a shared parenting bill that, while it could be better, would be a step forward on the path toward children’s best interests. Here’s an article (Decatur Daily, 3/9/18). And here’s the bill.

Senate Bill 211, sponsored by Senator Larry Stutts, would establish a rebuttable presumption in favor of joint custody. Now, when I first saw that term, I got nervous. “Joint custody” of course can mean virtually anything. It can mean joint legal custody with one parent getting virtually no contact with the child. Or it can mean joint physical custody but with one parent again seeing the child only rarely.

The good news is that, in SB 211, “joint custody” is defined this way:

 JOINT CUSTODY. Joint legal custody and joint physical custody.

So there’s no trap. There’s no way for a judge to simply give Dad equal legal custody while denying him meaningful contact with the child.

How does the bill define legal and physical custody? Legal custody is pretty much what we’d expect:

Both parents have equal rights and responsibilities for major decisions concerning the child, including, but not limited to, the education of the child, health care, and religious training, and the responsibility to discuss those decisions and consider the wishes and concerns of each parent and the child. The court may designate one parent to have sole power to make certain decisions while both parents retain equal rights and responsibilities for other decisions; however, that designation does not negate the responsibility of that parent to discuss those decisions with the other parent and to consider the other parent’s wishes and concerns.

The devil of course is in the definition of joint physical custody.

Physical custody is shared by the parents in a way that assures the child frequent and substantial contact with each parent. Frequent and substantial contact means that the child has as much time as practical with both parents.

Therefore the child will see each of its parents as much as possible, given the unique circumstances of the family. So far, so good.

The rebuttable presumption is that joint custody is in the child’s best interests, as in reality, it usually is.

There shall be a rebuttable presumption that joint custody is in the best interest of the child. This rebuttable presumption may be overcome only by clear and convincing evidence, set forth in written findings of fact, that joint custody is not in the best interest of the child.

From there, the bill lists the usual factors Alabama courts use in determining custody. But instead of using those factors to balance one parent against the other and declare a winner who gets sole or primary custody, under SB 211, a judge would have to find that one parent is so deficient as to rebut the presumption by clear and convincing evidence. Then he/she would have to make written findings of fact explaining why joint custody wasn’t ordered, something judges are loath to do.

And of course the bill encourages parents to fashion their own parenting plan.

Sen. Larry Stutts says too many Alabama judges deciding custody disputes automatically give mothers primary custody of children.

“The data supports that shared custody helps kids,” Stutts, R-Tuscumbia, said Thursday. “The more involved both parents are, the better.”

Just so, but of course there are those who disagree and as usual, the issues they raise are phantasms.

Opponents of the bill said it wasn’t needed and took away judges’ ability to make decisions that are best for children.

No, judges are free to issue any orders they wish. SB 211 simply requires them to have reasons other than a pro-maternal bias for denying children adequate time with their fathers. And if they do, they have to explain why.

In all but the rarest of cases, joint parenting, as it’s defined in the bill, is in children’s best interests. That’s what the science on the matter teaches us. Sadly, there are always some who are unwilling to learn.

Sen. Dick Brewbaker, R-Montgomery, was one of eight senators to vote against the bill.

“We’re getting away from a standard of what’s in the best interest of the child and moving to a standard of what’s more fair for the parents,” Brewbaker said.

Nope. This is not about parents. It’s about kids. Yes, parents too will benefit, but if shared parenting were bad for children, there’d be no movement promoting it. That parents get something from shared parenting is a collateral benefit. Brewbaker needs that education I just referred to.

SB 211 passed the Senate and now goes to the Alabama House of Representatives.

 

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National Parents Organization is a Shared Parenting Organization

National Parents Organization is a non-profit that educates the public, families, educators, and legislators about the importance of shared parenting and how it can reduce conflict in children, parents, and extended families. Along with Shared Parenting we advocate for fair Child Support and Alimony Legislation. Want to get involved?  Here’s how:

• Become an official member of the National Parents Organization team.
• Join our Facebook Page.

Together, we can drive home the family, child development, social and national benefits of shared parenting, and fair child support and alimony. Thank you for your activism.

#sharedparenting, #child’sbestinterests, #Alabama, #SB211

March 11, 2018 by Linda Reutzel, Chair, Executive Committee, National Parents Organization of Missouri

Politics is not for the faint of heart. I have heard this comment for many years
and since I’ve been actively involved with changing MO custody statutes, I can
vouch for that statement.

Shared Parenting advocates only want to let kids have equal access to their fit and
willing parents. And research overwhelmingly agrees with this. Our most vocal
opponents have been Bar Associations and Domestic Violence groups. Lawyers
and judges like the current adversarial system, for obvious reasons, and they are
just stuck in the status quo.

Domestic violence groups are a little bit trickier. Missouri Coalition Against
Domestic Violence (MCADV) has sent their lobbyist to every hearing we have had
since 2015. Shared Parenting advocates do not want anyone who has a history of
domestic violence to have equal access to their children and MO has statutes to
keep that from happening. In fact, in the custody statute (452), domestic violence
is mentioned several times. And in trying to negotiate an acceptable bill, we even
changed our level of evidence. Instead of clear and convincing, which other
States are using, we agreed to preponderance of the evidence. So in this way,
House Bill 1667 passed the Judiciary Committee and is headed to the House floor
for debate.

But when our Senate Bill 645 went to committee, this same MCADV lobbyist was
there with a vengeance. Now she wants a rebuttable presumption on top of our
rebuttable presumption that it is not in the best interests of the child to award
joint legal custody, joint physical custody, sole custody, or unsupervised visitation
to an abusive parent. And that this presumption may be overcome by
successfully completing an appropriate treatment program, such as department
of corrections-credentialed batterer’s intervention program or a drug or alcohol
treatment program. Also if the court finds that a pattern of domestic violence
exists for both parents, the court shall determine the primary physical aggressor,
as defined in some section somewhere, and the court shall award custody to the
parent who is less likely to continue a pattern of domestic violence. So I guess for
this Domestic Violence group, some abuse is ok if by the woman but absolutely
not even a raised voice by a father. In another addition, it says, if the court

restricts a parent’s visitation rights or when a court orders supervised visitation
because of allegations of abuse or domestic violence, a showing of proof of
treatment and rehabilitation in accordance with the provisions of subsection
something must be done before unsupervised visitation may be ordered. So just
an allegation can put a parent into supervised visitation AND in some treatment
for rehabilitation. Where is the due process?

Then MCADV added more language that is rather hard to prove or disprove. They
added that it is detrimental to the child to grant custody or unsupervised
visitation to an abusive parent. Who decides that the parent is abusive? Oh, I
forgot, just an allegation. Language was also added that the abusive parent pose
no danger to the child’s physical health OR impairment of his or her emotional
development. Men, they got you there, if physical abuse cannot be alleged, then
go for the emotional.

I must say that after I read the new amendments to our SIMPLE bill, the confusion
of it all was making me a bit dizzy. I also thought that this new language would
actually encourage more false allegations in custody disputes. And why not? As
soon as the allegation is proffered, the father is taken out of the child’s life, forced
into supervised visitation and forced into some rehabilitation program. I’ve heard
from many fathers who have been forced into supervised visitation and it is very
costly to get out of. By the time you go back to court the damage has already
been done…..to the father and of course to the children.

Why we need any more safeguards concerning domestic violence is beyond me.
If it is alleged currently, the alleged abuser is automatically given supervised
visitation, which takes much time and money to correct. If the allegation is found
to be false, no punishment is given to the person responsible for the lie. MCADV
is concerned that a judge would have to give an abusive parent 50/50. Give me a
break. Fathers get equal custody is less than 20% of cases. So is this lobbyist
implying that a judge would not use their discretion when abuse is involved?
What hogwash!

I would like to share some statistics that MCADV never seem to share with our
legislators:

1. The largest domestic violence research done to date says that women
perpetuate physical and emotional abuse, as well as engage in control behaviors,
at comparable rates to men. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/5/prweb10741752.htm#.V8B16psxP6I.email

2. The CDC released data from its National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence
Survey and found that more men had been victims than women. This report
shows a decline of the number of women reporting and an increase of men
reporting abuse. https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/the-number-of-male-domestic-1284479771263030.html

3. Each year, 1.5 million restraining orders are issued in the United States that are
based on false domestic violence accusations. Each year, tax payers spend a
staggering 20 billion dollars on welfare and public benefit services that arise from
false allegations of domestic violence which consequently force children into
single-parent households. http://www.saveservices.org/camp/faam-2011/false-accusations-of- domestic-violence- by-the-
numbers/

4. 71% of children killed by one parent are killed by their mother, and 60% of
victims are boys. The DHHS data also shows that of children abused by one parent
between 2001 and 2006, 70.6% were abused by their mothers, whereas only
29.4% were abused by their fathers. http://www.breakingthescience.org/SimplifiedDataFromDHHS.php

5. Domestic Violence groups bring in loads of Federal and State funding. They are
lobbying with taxpayer funds. They should be non biased and must be truthful. https://www.mocadsv.org//FileStream.aspx?FileID=675

These statistics are not mentioned by our Domestic Violence lobbyist. This lobby
is obviously very powerful in Jefferson City. Legislators listen and assume that she
is telling the truth, the whole truth. Legislators are wrong to put their faith in a
group that lobbies for one gender. Just like the BAR Association lobbies for its

members, so too, do DV groups. They really don’t want to solve the issue of DV,
they want to exacerbate it and then manage it. And in this way, keep those
taxpayer dollars coming into their coffers.
With our rebuttable presumption language we are trying to make both parents
equal when it comes to parenting time. Children deserve that. They need great
relationships with both parents. MCADV’s rebuttable presumption language
seems to put guilt before adjudication, and that doesn’t seem constitutional.

 

Donate

 

National Parents Organization is a Shared Parenting Organization

National Parents Organization is a non-profit that educates the public, families, educators, and legislators about the importance of shared parenting and how it can reduce conflict in children, parents, and extended families. Along with Shared Parenting we advocate for fair Child Support and Alimony Legislation. Want to get involved?  Here’s how:

• Become an official member of the National Parents Organization team.
• Join our Facebook Page.

Together, we can drive home the family, child development, social and national benefits of shared parenting, and fair child support and alimony. Thank you for your activism.

March 9, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Esq, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

I’ve written numerous pieces recently about the few hardy souls who seek to deny, and convince others to deny, the existence of parental alienation. To them, PA is a scam by fathers to wrest custody from “protective mothers.” They have essentially nothing on which to base their claims. PA is all too real as a large and growing body of research shows. And the fact that it’s mostly fathers claiming to have been alienated reflects only the fact that, in the great majority of cases, it’s Mom who has custody and is therefore better positioned to alienate.

All that makes this article a breath of fresh air (Psychology Today, 2/27/18). It’s by psychologist Susan Heitler and her purpose in writing is to let potential targets of alienation know how to get help.

In my recent blogpost entitled Parental Alienation: What Is It? Who Does It? I mentioned that in my clinical practice I have been had (sic) a run on cases of parental alienation syndrome. A common theme has emerged. That theme is the lack of support or justice that they receive from family courts.

You’d never guess such a thing from articles by the likes of Laurie Udesky, Cara Tabachnick and Marissa Endicott. To them and the rest of the “protective” mother movement, all a father has to do is waltz into court, say the magic words “parental alienation” and off go the kids with him. Oh and, by the way, he’s a child abuser too. According to the “protective mother” movement, that’s just how courts roll when faced with paternal abusers. They’re powerless to resist those magic words, don’t you know.

The reality is that both fathers and mothers can be alienators and courts are poorly equipped to make sense of the evidence of alienation put before them.

Forensic psychologists appointed by courts, parenting coordinators, family law attorneys and judges however tend to be insufficiently informed, and often even misinformed, about parent alienation. Unfortunately, when professionals who are dealing with these issues in the courts and social services do not understand the situation, they add to the harm being done by the alienating parent.

But one person has taken the bit in her teeth. She’s providing services to parents who believe they’re on the receiving end of alienating behavior.

One woman, Elaine Cobb, got the ball rolling. Herself a victim first of parental and then grandparent alienation situations, Elaine initially launched a small program within her state of North Carolina. Her goal: to make information about how to deal with an alienating situation more broadly available.

That program grew, and continues to grow. Family Access – Fighting for Children’s Rightsnow is nationwide and even international. 

Just this past week Elaine launched a new website filled with vital information and links to more. Elaine would love your help if you can add to the resources she offers there.

In addition, Elaine reaches out to alienated parents and grandparents in need of support by hosting a free monthly educational telephone conference-call. She is joined this month in this project by two psychologists, Drs. Michael Bone and Robert Evans, co-founders of the National Association of Parental Alienation Specialists (NAOPAS). This organization focuses on educating attorneys, judges, parenting coordinators, and mental healthprofessionals. Their hope is that with better understanding of parental alienation, psychological and legal professionals will become more able to assist parents who want to regain a healthy parental relationship with their alienated children.

If anyone reading this needs those services, by all means seek them out. And if anyone can help either Cobb’s organization or the NAOPAS, please do. Both organizations are obviously doing good and needed work.

This Sunday, Cobb’s organization will host a free conference call for anyone interested in PA or suffering its effects.

On Sunday, March 11th at 8 PM EST, Elaine Cobb’s organization is hosting its next free informational telephone conference.

Dr. Michael Bone and Dr. Robert Evans will be the guest speakers. They plan to focus this month specifically on educating courtroom professionals about parental alienation syndrome. The title of the conference call says it all: "When They Say You Can’t Prove It: The Robust Research About Parental Alienation"

“Robust research about parental alienation.” That’s a phrase you don’t see often from the “protective mother” crowd.

 

Donate

 

National Parents Organization is a Shared Parenting Organization

National Parents Organization is a non-profit that educates the public, families, educators, and legislators about the importance of shared parenting and how it can reduce conflict in children, parents, and extended families. Along with Shared Parenting we advocate for fair Child Support and Alimony Legislation. Want to get involved?  Here’s how:

• Become an official member of the National Parents Organization team.
• Join our Facebook Page.

Together, we can drive home the family, child development, social and national benefits of shared parenting, and fair child support and alimony. Thank you for your activism.

#parental, #alienation