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  • Frustration this week in England too !!

    The Times (Britain)
    13 February 2006
    Divorced from the realities
    By William Rees-Mogg
    Our laws on marriage break-up were framed for a completely different age.
    They must be changed
    There is a crisis in English divorce law. The truth is that it was framed in
    a different age, on different assumptions, by lawyers and politicians we might now regard as dinosaurs, and in entirely different social conditions.
    Our divorce laws fail to engage with many, if not most, of the realities of modern life. As a result, the break-up of a modern marriage has become a lottery that pays out injustice, suffering and personal damage to parents, children and in-laws alike.
    We read in our newspapers about celebrity divorce cases such as those of the Millers or the MacFarlanes, both of which have recently been heard in the House of Lords. In these cases wealthy couples are concerned, with disputed assets in the millions. And while the law lords may derive from them new guidelines on the division of assets for millionaires, that will do little for the hundreds of thousands of ordinary people who get divorced every year. The vast majority of them have few assets to divide. Divorce may well be a financial as well as a personal disaster.
    I started to note down the social realities that are not adequately addressed in our present doctrine of divorce. They do not link together in any convenient, logical order, but they do represent the reefs and shallows that have to be negotiated. I will simply copy out my notes, which certainly
    leave out as many issues as they include.
    "Costs of litigation. Rise in property values. Change in expectations. Change in matrimonial roles. The multicultural society. Religious differences. Employment and earnings of women. The mediation service. Choice of jurisdictions. Access of fathers to children. Pre-nuptial contracts. 'No fault' divorces. Civil partnerships. Long-term impact on children. Length of marriage. Length of previous partnership. Separation of partnerships, other than civil partnerships. Pension rights. Impact of rising longevity. The press freedom to report. Change in attitudes to extra-marital sex. Change in attitude to physical violence. Acceptance of promiscuity. The abuse of children. The 50-50 split. The share of future earnings. Tax treatment of marriage. Decline of the extended family. Grandmothers in full-time employment, unavailable as child-carers. Impact of care for the elderly. Impact of drink and drugs. Impact of modern working hours."
    That, at any rate, sets down 32 issues relating to marriage and divorce on
    which there is no social consensus. Any one of them could provide enough material for a substantial debate in Parliament. None will be resolved merely by minor adjustments to the existing law by the courts. All of them
    now have a different impact from the 20th-century norm.
    There is an almost complete mismatch between modern social reality and our inherited divorce system. Many of these impacts affect marriage itself and will also affect the new institution of civil partnerships. If my list is to be criticised, it will be for its omissions; I do not doubt that an experienced divorce lawyer would find many significant items to add to it.
    I will not attempt to argue the merits of different possible legal solutions
    to these undoubted problems. Many of them exist in other jurisdictions. English law has not solved the problems of proper access for fathers to their children, but nor has American law. This is a real problem, however
    disgraceful the conduct of Fathers For Justice may have been. "No fault"
    divorces produce some obviously unjust results, but so did divorces based on determining who was the " guilty party".
    The division of assets in the eventual divorce stage of civil partnerships
    will have to be worked out on its own. Pre-nuptial contracts might well be
    appropriate in those cases in which one member of the civil partnership is
    much wealthier than the other. Would the law allow for that? These are all
    difficult problems, and the happiness of many human beings, including many
    children, depends on their solutions. I know men and women among my contemporaries who still suffer from the trauma of badly handled divorces that occurred 60 or even 70 years ago.
    Perhaps we should look back to the practice of the 19th century. In 1800 England was still an unreformed society in respect of many of its institutions. We were not yet a democracy, we had a King with real power, an unreformed House of Commons, an unreformed House of Lords, a Civil Service run on patronage and sinecures, an Army in which promotion could be bought, a brutal criminal and prison system, no votes and few property rights for women, no national system of education or healthcare. Eighteenth-century England had great energies and great beauty but it needed almost universal reforms.
    Most of these English institutions were reformed in the 19th and early 20th
    centuries. The reforms were planned and carried out by parliamentary action
    after careful inquiries, sometimes by royal commissions. This process continued through the first half of the 20th century, but largely fell out of use in and after the 1960s. Such inquiries as continued lacked the authority of royal commissions and were often disregarded, or used by ministers as excuses for delay.
    There is no department, nor any single profession, that has the capacity to
    produce a divorce reform report. Parliament itself would need a basis of Acts and informed evidence. Reform would partly be a legal question, but it goes far wider than that. Reform should be based on social, financial, religious and moral judgments of the broadest kind. Yet our divorce system does need reform. Each year divorce brings suffering
    and separation to 130,000 families, which means about 500,000 people, half of them children. The system is neither modern nor fair, nor does it fit the realities of contemporary life. A good, broadly based Royal Commission on Divorce, followed by a Reform Bill, would be the best way to lay the foundations for reform.

  • #2
    Inconvenient Fathers for study

    DISENFRANCHISED FATHERS:
    In my experience working with more than 8000 divorced Fathers, and in some cases their second families, through the DA*DI network, I originally outlined what I then called the Defeated Father Syndrome. In listening to their personal experiences and emotional responses to the experience of divorce and the attendant loss of their child or children, these Fathers almost universally shared a symptom cluster that bridged those symptoms associated with both Depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

    Their depression derived from loss of positive reinforcers, a sense of helplessness, and a growing negative world view. Their PTSD derived from the battleground of the adversarial family court system in which they repeatedly found themselves on the losing end of a losing proposition - attempting to maintain their roles as Fathers. It is not hyperbole to associate this experience with the battleground. A 1995 headline in the Detroit News blared: "Declaring War on America's Deadbeat Dads". The war is real, as are its casualties - children and fathers, but the "deadbeat dad" is largely fictional.

    Recently, Dr. Sanford Braver published the results of his exhaustive 8-year study of divorce. And in that account, he not only "shatters" the many myths surrounding America's divorced dads, but he also explores the notion of the disenfranchised dad. In a glaring refutation of cultural perception, Dr. Braver found that "men have more trouble recovering emotionally" from divorce. He notes that "most often the man - feels utterly powerless because he can do nothing to prevent the breakup of the marriage." This is entirely consistent with my experience in dealing with the DA*DI dads. Hence, I attached the label Defeated. But this is an outcome-based label. It fails to encompass the whole of the divorced, battle weary father experience and what precipitates that sense of defeat.

    Dr. Braver more adequately captures the precipitating event in using the label Disenfranchised. He reports, "Fathers are often obsessed with what they perceive as the profound bias against them displayed by the courts and the legal system." And the fact is that such a bias does exist, including the presumption that all divorced dads are or will become deadbeat dads.

    Expanding on Dr. Braver's findings, Parke and Brott in Throwaway Dads takes us another step closer to understanding the degree to which the contemporary myth of the unfeeling, macho, uninvolved, "deadbeat", if not "dangerous" dad belies the frequent, tragic-reality of the post-divorce, disenfranchised, "visiting father." To their credit, Parke and Brott take note of the fact that "hammering men over the head" with their "wildly exaggerated ... shortcomings only fills them with feelings of shame that serve to drive them further from their families" ... and developing a sense of "being worthless and powerless."

    The definition of disenfranchised is "to deprive of political rights", "to enslave", "to deprive of a franchise, of a legal right, or of some privilege or immunity". Such is the process of becoming a divorced dad - a disenfranchised parent. These definitions are becoming even more relevant as the Child Support Enforcement statutes become more egregious - e.g., depriving Fathers of their licenses to drive or practice their professions.

    The following stressors are common in Fathers who have been exposed to divorce and the deeply painful loss of marital attachment and daily involvement in their child(ren)'s life:
    • the psychological shock of discovering that one's spouse has filed for divorce.
    • the initial exposure to the prospect of divorce, and the attendant losses including financial and lifestyle stability.
    • the extreme trauma of being compelled to psychologically separate from the marital relationship while simultaneously maintaining the parenting role.
    • the perceptual transition of the object of one's affection to one's adversary.
    • the perception of betrayal.
    • the emotional trauma of establishing a new home and alternate lifestyle.
    • the added economic hardship of legal proceedings and separate domicile.
    • the associated and unrelenting punitive experience of the family court system when attempting to maintain some form of parental involvement in an adversarial divorce.
    • the shame and indignation surrounding false allegations of abuse.
    • the immediate separation from their children.
    • the extended separation from their children.
    • repeated defeats in legal actions.
    • repeated accusations and investigations of alleged abuse.
    • repeated denial of court-ordered parenting time.
    • sabotage of the Father-child nurturance relationship by the custodial mother.
    • the perceived or real ineffectiveness of legal representation.
    • the increasing perception of distance in shared emotional and life experiences with one's child(ren) - a growing sense of separateness.
    • an increasingly punitive association between the attachment to their child(ren) and the hostility or indifference of an adversarial spouse.
    • emotional and physical exhaustion from frustrated attempts to sustain a Father role.
    • the increasing realization that a Father has no legal rights in the family court system.
    Most Fathers who become non-custodial parents struggle on valiantly for several years after the epoch event, attempting to maintain some kind of normalcy in their relationship with their offspring. But they gradually, and realistically, come to realize that what is lost is greater than what is preserved. They increasingly feel helpless to have a prominent influence in their child(ren)'s lives. Consequently, in many cases the motivation for career success is significantly diminished.

    To the degree that the non-custodial Father was involved in his child(ren)'s daily activities, and played an active and nurturant parenting role, the levels of stress will be concommitantly exacerbated.

    Almost immediately, however, the stressors listed above begin to form symptom clusters that are most often associated with the following clinical syndromes. Because of the singular and shared association with the trauma of divorce and the loss of the Fatherhood role, as well as the frequency of occurrence, a separate diagnostic entity is warranted - the Disenfranchised Father Syndrome:

    Comment


    • #3
      Lisa Scott---reformist pointing out the obvious Part 1

      CONFESSIONS OF A FAMILY LAW REFORM ACTIVIST OR, HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE PARENTING ACT When I graduated from law school in 1987, the Parenting Act had just been passed by the Washington State Legislature. I began practicing family law shortly thereafter, under the new law. The Parenting Act introduced a comprehensive new way to address disputes between divorcing parents over their children. It replaced the terms "custody" and "visitation" with a detailed "parenting plan" addressing residential time, decision-making and dispute resolution. The Parenting Act was supposed to be the end of custody battles between parents. They were supposed to work things out, for the best interests of their children.

      Well, apparently, a whole lot of divorcing parents didn't get the memo. Within a few years of beginning practice, I had been involved in numerous custody battles. Not just disagreements between spouses, but knock-down, drag-out custody wars with all the trappings: allegations of child abuse, neglect, drug abuse, alcoholism, mental problems, and that 800-pound gorilla of them all: domestic violence.

      Virtually every time I represented a father in a parenting case, he was accused of abuse. I began to anticipate the dreaded "crimes list," that litany of alleged wrongs committed by my client against the wife and children, beginning with "he kicked me in the stomach while I was pregnant" (15 years ago) culminating with "his abuse is escalating," "I'm fearful for my safety," and of course, "he's inappropriately touching the children." It's as though these allegations were produced by the same scriptwriter, since so many of the buzzwords were repeated over and over.

      As I would learn later, they often were produced by the same writers, the "battered women's advocates," who appeared to be taking a few extreme cases of domestic violence and applying them across the board. Men who physically battered their wives started by verbally battering them, so in their twisted logic, every man who verbally "abused" his spouse necessarily must be physically battering her too. Women who wanted an easy way of out a marriage, and to assure custody of the children, eagerly signed up for "victim's benefits." All the woman had to do was say she was abused, and the domestic violence advocates eagerly welcomed a new customer. Never mind that the wife was playing fast and loose with the real facts: she was routinely abusing the husband and children, had mental or substance abuse issues, and/or was having affairs with everyone from the milkman to the soccer coach.

      It became clear to me that the Parenting Act had been hijacked by the domestic violence industry. The good intentions of the Act's progenitors had been overcome by single-issue extremists. Every factor determining the children's residential time with each parent could be trumped by one nearly irrefutable claim: domestic violence. And even if domestic violence were not determinative, fathers were still losing. The Parenting Act, although written in gender-neutral terms, was usually being interpreted to favor mothers receiving primary residential care, even when both parents were substantially equally involved in parenting.

      After several years of custody battles and beat-dead dads as clients, I decided I had to do something. In 1998, I co-founded a reform group called TABS: Taking Action against Bias in the System. TABS' goals were to eliminate gender bias in the family law and domestic violence system, promote shared parenting rights and responsibilities, and reduce the incidence of ugly divorce and custody battles.

      Over the past few years, we have supported shared parenting and friendly parenting bills in the state legislature. Shared parenting provided that each parent was presumptively entitled to at least one-third of the residential time with the children. In the eyes of the reformists, this would avoid many of the battles over residential time by ensuring a substantial amount of time was afforded to the "non-primary residential" parent.

      Friendly parent would add a factor in determining residential placement of the children. So long as limiting factors (such as child abuse, neglect, mental illness, substance abuse or domestic violence) were not determinative of the schedule, the court was required to also consider "which parent is more likely to allow and encourage the child frequent and continuing contact with the other parent."

      Essentially, the concept is that all other factors being equal, placing the children with the parent most likely to foster the children's relationship with the other parent ensures that the children benefit from healthy post-divorce relationships with both parents. The 1999 Washington State Parenting Act Study, by Dr. Diane Lye, concluded that no particular post-divorce residential schedule was best for children, but that high parental conflict was the number one detriment. Friendly parent was promoted to encourage parental cooperation and cut down on the custody wars so often fought by divorcing parents, replete with false allegations of abuse, game-playing and dirty tricks.

      Several friendly parent bills have been introduced, and different versions have passed almost unanimously by both the House and Senate. But despite being a reasonable bipartisan reform, politics has prevented it from passing both houses in the same legislative session. Some opponents of the bill portrayed it as the coming of the apocalypse. They claimed it was a stealth weapon to be used against, you guessed it, domestic violence victims, who would be forced to share parenting time with their abusers. Thanks to a few brave legislators who stood up against the domestic violence perpetrator lobby, the Parenting Act was saved from defilement.

      Other opponents claimed friendly parent would actually increase conflict between divorcing parents, resulting in parental one-upmanship, to see who could be the "friendliest" parent. With as much conflict as the system has already, why it would be bad for parents to compete over who could be the nicest, I could never figure out. One famous anecdote used against friendly parent was a mother who was judged to be "unfriendly" because she would not let her child go see the father immediately after the child had heart surgery. If the mother had a statement from the child's doctor recommending he not go anywhere, I can't understand how she could have been faulted.

      Over the last six years, I have spent hundreds of hours working on family law reform issues, meeting with legislators, testifying at committee hearings, writing letters and articles, organizing events, talking to and assisting people, many on a pro bono basis. Both on a system and individual level, we have had some successes. But looking back at our efforts over the past few years, I now realize that I was naive, misdirected, and even manipulated, by the so-called family law reform movement that I so eagerly embraced. "Family Law Reform" is just a thinly-disguised front for the Father's Rights Movement. I was duped into supporting this radical agenda by greedy, controlling fathers who just wanted out of child support payments, and to further abuse their victims. I now see the error of my ways. I now see the fraud that is friendly parent. It's not about the best interests of the children, it's about selfishness and greed. If passed into law, it will require thousands of mothers of children with heart defects to be forced to send their deathly ill children to visit their insensitive fathers. Not to mention their no-good, child-abusing, domestic violence-perpetrating, non-support paying deadbeat sorry-excuse for a parent.

      "Shared parenting" is really just a code-word for no child support. Fathers demand more time with the children only to get residential time credits, plummeting their child support payments from $800.00 per month to $49.95. Then they palm off the children, and all the costs, on the mother. Fathers complain that the child support table does not credit them for any direct financial contribution towards the children even when they have 25 per cent of the time. However, this argument lacks any factual basis in most cases. Since when does it cost anything to live in a van down by the river?

      Numerous studies, interviewing both men and women, have concluded that men still don't equally share household and childcare duties. Toilet-plunging, gutter-cleaning, and spider-killing and carcass disposal, while essential household tasks, are not listed parenting functions under the Parenting Act. Oh, men may do a few things here and there, but generally they're just useful idiots, waiting for step-by-step instructions from their wives on how to do the most basic things. They're barely able to follow their wife's grocery list. Dads may take the kids to daycare, but it is the mom who researches, chooses and monitors the provider. If it weren't for mom's meticulous attention to every detail, dad would have the kids babysat by the registered sex offender down the street.

      Ask a dad who the kids' doctor or dentist is, and most likely he won't know. He might be able to point in the vague direction of the children's school. But ask dad for the win/loss ratio of every team in the NFL, and he'll be able to recite it flawlessly.

      Moms plan and prepare nutritious, balanced meals. Dads zap hot dogs in the microwave and pop open a can of cola. They don't know fabric softener from cough syrup. If you don't believe me, check out most TV commercials for household products, showing the husbands as big dummies when it comes to even the simplest task. The true nature of men: they wouldn't be able to punch themselves out of a Ziploc bag to save their lives.

      Comment


      • #4
        Lisa Scott.......Reformist Part2

        Dads may buy the kids clothing occasionally, but they'll let a 9-year old girl wear fishnet stockings and lipstick to Sunday school. Moms never make inappropriate wardrobe or grooming decisions, if you don't count nose, eyebrow, tongue, or body-piercing. Besides, Dads who don't let their kids jump on the bandwagon of every new fad are abusive, controlling and punitive.

        The family law reform movement, i.e. father's rights, has tried to make the Parenting Act more "fair" and less "biased." But the only ones ever complaining were men, who because of the gender-neutral language of the Parenting Act, thought they had an equal shot at getting custody of their children. But the Parenting Act, with all its good intentions, can't change the basic nature of men and women. The Parenting Act recognized parenting functions as important and even anticipated that men might be able to do them once in a while. It's clear to me now, fathers just aren't qualified to parent their children without intense supervision by the mothers, or some fundamental change in the nature of men that would qualify them to be custodial parents.

        So, rather than continue a losing battle to reform the Parenting Act to make it more (father) friendly, I've decided that the only way to make any progress is to change the way fathers function, both before and during divorce. Everything they need to get custody of their children is right there in the Parenting Act. It's been there all along, and women have used it to the hilt for years. It's time for men to stop whining about reform, step up to the plate and show that they are just as capable of being the best parent. There's no bias in the system, just laziness and incompetence.

        Fathers, how can you use the existing Parenting Act to get custody of your children? Make the Parenting Act work for you. Millions of women have been happy to accept the benefits of the culture of victimization. It's almost intoxicating, being exalted, praised, and getting all the attention, but none of the blame. Men can get these same benefits too. First, find your inner victim. Start seeing a counselor who can help you recover memories of being abused. Dig deep down into your psyche. You were abused by your parents, siblings, grandparents, teachers, coaches, family dog, cat, ferret, and now, by your spouse. Wallow in your life-long suffering. Courts love to give custody to damaged people.

        Discover the efficacy of pre-divorce tactics. Call 911 whenever you feel "afraid" of your spouse. Cry rape whenever she demands sex. Call your friends and family constantly and report her unrelenting abuse. You'll need their declarations in court later. Get in her face and provoke her into punching you (or just say she did; remember no evidence is required when you're the victim). Have her arrested and removed from the family home, then go get a domestic violence protection order to keep her away.

        Before you and your spouse separate, quit your job and go on unemployment for as long as possible. Cite job stress, nebulous medical problems, or the need to "find yourself." Then you can claim you are the "primary caretaker," assuring you can win custody over your two-job-holding wife.

        Get in touch with your feminine side. Stay home all day and watch Oprah and Martha Stewart. Start talking about potpourri and decoupage. For that extra touch, start cross-dressing. Just don't take your wife's clothes. Go buy your own. No one will criticize your alternative lifestyle. Have your children start calling you "mommy." No matter what ideas your wife comes up with, or how well she does things, constantly criticize and demean her for her incompetence. Complain about how she doesn't make enough money. By the time the divorce starts, she'll be too depressed and dejected to go for custody.

        Overdraw the checking account by thousands of dollars, then claim your wife is abusive and controlling when she never lets you touch the checkbook again. If you're having an affair and get caught, immediately accuse your wife of domestic violence. Get her arrested and tossed out of the house. Then move your girlfriend in. Be sure your girlfriend uses your wife's treasured personal things and redecorates immediately. Encourage your children to start calling your live-in "mom." Go to their school and take their mother off the contact card. Tell them she is an abuser and not to let her near the children.

        Go to court and get child support from your wife, based on when she was working two jobs to get the family out of the mountain of debt you helped run up. Continue to avoid employment at all costs, and spend the child support check on booze, gambling and internet auctions of collectible cabbage-patch dolls.

        If your true nature does come out during this process (i.e. your intrinsic domestic violence tendencies), all is not lost. If you slap, scratch, bite, or knee your wife in the groin, use one of these sure-fire excuses to evade any consequences:

        "I was only defending myself from HER abuse; I'M the real victim here"
        "She taunted me into hitting her"
        "It didn't hurt her anyway"
        "Lee Press-On Nails are not weapons"

        Once you have obtained a protection/no-contact order against your wife, call her constantly, then report her to the police for violating the order. When you can't get red wine stains from your alcoholic binges out of the upholstery, call your wife and sweetly ask her to come over and help. After she has successfully gotten the spots out, get into an argument loud enough for the neighbors to hear, so they'll call 911 and get her arrested. When she protests that you invited her over, insist that she constantly pressures you to let her come back. Remember, you are the victim of domestic violence and can do no wrong.

        And don't worry about that pesky Rule 11 or signing declarations under penalty of perjury. Blatant lying is rampant in the family courts, and never punished. Why else is it referred to as Liar's Court or the Perjury Calendar?

        If, after you have successfully thrown your wife out of the family home, gotten her on trumped-up domestic violence charges, and messed with her mind, she still might try to go for shared parenting. Not to worry. Ensure that shared parenting will never be allowed by sabotaging cooperation and constantly creating conflict. Oh, and be sure to blame her for it. Even though you've spent most of the years of your marriage saying "Yes Dear" to your wife, now your stock response is No, No, No. No matter what she does, says, or wants, it's wrong. She wants more time with the children? NO. She wants to participate in their school and extracurricular activities? NO. She wants to talk to them on the telephone? NO!

        Be assured that accountability of the custodial parent is not part of this process. When the children end up on drugs, pregnant or in jail by the age of 15, you still get to blame the non-custodial parent. Just repeat the mantra that if it weren't for her years of child abuse and domestic violence, the children wouldn't have turned out that way. If things get really bad, agree to sign custody over to her, but on condition that you don't have to pay child support.

        So, there you have it. There's absolutely nothing whatsoever wrong with the Parenting Act as it exists today. You can get anything you want. You just have to know how to use it to your advantage. Reform anyone?

        Comment


        • #5
          interesting article.

          Comment


          • #6
            That has to be one of the best articles on divorce I've ever read. So true in too many cases, although I'm sure most will say this never happens. Think not??? Think again. I will admit I don't belive it's typical, at least I hope not.

            Comment

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