Category: NPO in the media

June 18, 2010

Fathers and Families’ Board Chairman Ned Holstein, M.D. discussed HB 1400, F & F’s Massachusetts shared parenting bill, on Radio Boston on WBUR, Boston’s NPR affiliate, on June 18. To listen to the show, click here.  To comment on the show, click here.

Holstein debated Suffolk University Law School professor Charles P. Kindregan, a leading Massachusetts family law authority and a defender of the status quo.

WBUR’s story on the piece is Mass. Fathers Group Fights For Joint Custody Rights. There was an interesting call from a middle school teacher who, while raising some reasonable questions about shared parenting, noted that she sees kids who “long for time with the noncustodial parent.”

June 10, 2010

Fathers & Families” Ned Holstein, MD appeared on The Curtis Wright Show on several North Carolina radio stations on June 10. Wright brought up the issue of child support, explaining that his second child just graduated high school. A divorced father, Wright said he had to fight hard to be a real father, not just a visitor and a paycheck.

Holstein said that Fathers & Families believes that children need to be financially supported but that current court-ordered child support is often excessive. It can also provide an incentive for a parent to abandon the marriage and demand sole custody. Holstein said that sometimes the financial obligations force divorced fathers to work long hours so they can’t spend much time parenting, yet mothers rarely get orders that they must seek work or have large incomes imputed to them. Holstein added that people on both sides of the aisle politically should oppose the current divorce system, for various reasons. Conservatives, he explained, should oppose much of what family courts do because they are an unnecessary intrusion of government into the details of family life. Liberals should oppose what Holstein called “runaway gender bias” in family court.

Fathers & Families Executive Director Glenn Sacks was interviewed by NBC Louisiana affiliate KPLC on the subject of male victims of domestic violence on June 8. To watch the report, click here. To read KPLC’s Brandon Richards’ news article, see Men are victims of domestic violence too (6/8/10). According to the report::

When police respond to a domestic dispute between a man and a woman, chances are the woman is the victim. But that’s not always the case. “Research shows that about a third of all domestic violence injuries are sustained by men, so it is a significant problem,” says Fathers & Families Executive Director Glenn Sacks. “The research has been clear on this for 35 years, that women are at least as likely and to some degree more likely, to initiate domestic violence than men are.” Sacks said the legal system is no help to abused men either. He said men who experience abuse are not likely to report it because they fear they will be perceived as the abuser by police and arrested. He also said abused men who are fathers don’t want to risk losing or leaving their kids with an abusive mother. “Let’s say you’re a father, you’re married, have two kids and your wife is abusing you,” explains Sacks. “Well, if you take off and leave then you’re leaving your kids in the sole custody of an abusive, violent woman.” Sacks said the problems are only going to grow worse for men until victims speak out and demand change, much like women’s groups have done in recent decades. “There has to be a real public consciousness that domestic violence against men is a real issue,” said Sacks.

To learn more about domestic violence, see Glenn’s co-authored column No One Believed Me (MSN.com, (8/1/09).

Glenn discussed AB 2416 on Outside the Box with Mitch Henck on News/Talk AM 1310 WIBA in Madison, WI on April 20. To listen, click here—the interview begins at 24:30. Glenn also discussed AB 2416 on Madison the Black Eagle on AM 1450 in Washington DC and XM Radio 169 The Power on April 21. At Fathers & Families we receive many letters from divorced or separated military servicemembers with painful but preventable family law problems. California AB 2416 will help protect the loving bonds that mothers and fathers who serve share with their children. Fathers & Families has worked closely with Assemblyman Paul Cook, the American Retirees Association, and others on AB 2416, and earlier this month thousands of you responded to our Action Alert in support of the bill. We are pleased to announce that this week the bill passed the Assembly by unanimous consent. The bill will now go to the Senate. To learn more about the bill and to read Fathers & Families’ official support letter, see our AB 2416 Campaign page here.

March 1, 2010

Fathers and Families founder Ned Holstein, MD, MS and Fathers & Families members John Gagnon and Brian Ayers appeared on a Fox Boston report on Massachusetts’ new child support guidelines yesterday. In 2001, Fathers & Families won changes in Massachusetts law which lowered child support by 15%. Our victory saved noncustodial parents over $1 billion—$200 a million a year over five years. That”s $1 billion that non-custodial parents were able to spend on their children themselves. The opposition struck back by stacking a special committee with reliable votes for increasing the child support amounts, ignoring the data Holstein presented them showing that the proposed new child support orders were far too high for middle class people to pay. Holstein sat on this committee and prepared a Minority Report detailing the problems with the new Guidelines. Last year Fathers & Families filed a highly-publicized lawsuit against Massachusetts’ new child support guidelines. Fathers & Families” lawsuit has been covered by the Associated Press, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Newsweek, Psychology Today, and numerous other publications, as well as by CBS radio, NPR, WRKO, and many other radio stations. So far our legal actions against the guidelines have been unsuccessful, but we are still weighing other legal options. From Fox’s report Are child support rules unfair to fathers? (2/28/10):

“I went back to live at my parents, I had to, from a cost standpoint, until I could afford to live in a decent place, and then you feel kind of like a second class citizen because your kids are coming to a small place when you”re used to mom”s nice house,’ says John Gagnon, who has been paying alimony and writing out child support checks for eleven years.

He now says he pays $2,700 a month for his teenaged daughter. He says she stays with him nearly half the time and his 19-year-old son lived with him full time before going off to college this fall. He feels the guidelines don”t take into account how much time he spends with his kids. “It really didn”t matter from a child support guideline standpoint if they had stayed one night a month, or zero nights. I would have paid the same as having them 13 nights,’ Gagnon says… “We want kids to be well supported. We want kids to have enough support, but we don”t want to create this huge windfall prize that creates conflict between the parents,’ says Dr. Ned Holstein, the founder of the father”s rights group “Fathers & Families’. He sat on the task force and says the system is still unfair. For instance, he says some states pro-rate support according to parenting time spent with the child. He also says judges in Massachusetts may order both child support and college expenses until age 23. “We have a long way to go, but the worst thing is the pervasive gender bias in family court. Men are still looked at a breadwinners, and women are still looked at as nurturers of children,’ Dr. Holstein says.

To read the full article and watch the video, click here. To join in the vigorous debate in the comments section, click here and scroll to the bottom of the page. A few comments on the Fox piece: 1) Fox misidentifies Fathers & Families as a “fathers’ rights group.” We are, in fact, a family court reform organization. As Holstein is fond of saying, F & F isn’t asking for anything for fathers that we don’t also want to ensure for mothers: protection for the parent-child bond; both parents sharing roughly equal physical time with their children; both parents treated fairly financially; the abused protected from abuse and the innocent protected from false allegations of abuse; and similar principles. When mothers are mistreated by the system, wherever it be military moms like Vanessa Benson, lesbian noncustodial moms like Michele Hobbs and Janet Jenkins, or moms like Joyce Murphy who were legitimately acting to protect their children from the fathers’ abuse, we sympathize and defend them. We are named “Fathers & Families” because it is usually fathers who are pushed to the margins of their children’s lives after a divorce or separation, but we resolutely defend all fit parents’ loving bonds with their children. 2) Ayers’ child support is stiff but not necessarily outrageous–the real problem is that he’s a good, loving father who is being prevented from exercising equal parenting time with the infant son who adores him. I don’t know what the child’s mother earns, but when both parents earn roughly the same income, are fit, and are equally willing to care for the children, parenting time should be split roughly equally and child support is largely unnecessary. [Update: Ayers claims that his total available weekly income, after taxes and child support are considered, is $776.97, while his ex’s is $1,271.16–a $25,697.88 per year difference favoring the mother. His ex disputes these figures.] 3) Gagnon’s case is really unfair–he pays a stiff amount in child support for children who have spent as much time with him as with their mother. 4) Fox reports on the case of Crystal Arnhold, a “single mom who relies on her child support checks.” According to Fox:

She says she receives just under $250 a week to raise her 2-year-old son, and 5-year-old daughter with Down”s Syndrome. “I work what I can and still just barely make it. Like this month, I have $29 to get food for the next two weeks,’ Arnhold says. She works part-time at night while her mom watches the kids, but money is tight. She says under the new guidelines, she stands to lose more because she”s trying to work. “I”m not greedy by any means, I just want to try to get for my kids what they need,’ Arnhold says.

Fox portrays her sympathetically, and as a whole she probably deserves that sympathy. Still, we certainly don’t know that she’s being treated unfairly. She receives about $1,000 a month, which isn’t a lot for two small children, particularly when one has Down’s Syndrome. But we don’t know what her ex makes–he may well only make $2,000 or $3,000 a month before taxes, in which case the child support he’s paying is quite a strain on him financially. Also, we”re not told whether, as is often the case, the father wants to care for the children himself half the time, and the mom won”t allow it. But if Crystal Arnhold’s ex makes a good income and isn”t willing to share parenting time with the kids equally, I agree that she”s not being treated fairly. 5) Family law attorney Marilynne Ryan, who sat on the child support task force with Holstein and others, disputed Holstein’s assertion of anti-father family court gender bias. She said:

Nothing could be further from the truth. We have 24 female judges on the probate court and 24 male judges on the probate court. To suggest that everyone has grouped together and is biased against the fathers, it simply doesn”t happen.

This is hardly a reasonable response–Holstein never asserted that anti-father gender bias was caused specifically by female judges–if anything, we sometimes find that female judges treat men more fairly than traditional, chivalrous male judges do.

February 10, 2010

I discussed the Mullen-Hobbs lesbian custody battle on the Bill Cunningham Show on 700 WLW in Cincinnati–to listen to the audio, click here. To learn more about the case, see the Cincinnati Enquirer’s article here. To learn more about the gay divorce issue, see our co-authored column MSN.com column With Gay Marriage Comes Gay Divorce: The Rise of Lesbian Custody Battles (10/15/09).

January 17, 2010

John Tesh,  longtime host of the television program Entertainment Tonight, and host of the John Tesh Radio Show syndicated on 360 stations, discussed Fathers & Families‘ Board Chairman Dr. Ned Holstein’s views on “Sudden Divorce Syndrome” on his show last Thursday. According to one poll, 25% of divorced men say they were completely broadsided by their partner”s request for a divorce.

Holstein, MD, a Harvard-trained public health specialist, explains that there is a physical toll from divorce, brought on by excess stress. He notes:

The Top 5 causes of human stress are: 1) the death of a child 2) the loss of a spouse 3) the loss of a home 4) serious financial woes and 5) losing a relationship with a child….four of these five are involved when someone goes through a divorce…

According to a study done by the American Journal of Psychiatry, blood pressure and cholesterol levels rise and the risk of heart disease and coronary failure increases sharply. Other problems associated with Sudden Divorce Syndrome include diabetes and cirrhosis of the liver, in part because distraught people may turn to unhealthy behaviors, like drinking, after a break up. Divorced men are nine times more likely to commit suicide than divorced women.