Call me paranoid, but I have a feeling many establishment feminists will frown upon this particular cause. Because in the tortured calculus of feminist identity politics, any gain for men is a corresponding loss for women —with innocents the collateral damage sacrificed on the altar of the greater ideological good.
Much like the Duke 3, come to think of it.
—Of course, maybe I’m just bitter over the upbraiding a counter girl at Dick’s Sports gave me after I complimented her on her truly stunning ass this weekend. So take my observations with a grain of salt.
It wasn’t the compliment, jeff, it was the grip…
I was gonna tell you not to pinch so hard…GMG beat me to it.
And better I might add
You mean kids have a right to their parents? Tell it to the “women’s lobby” in Denver, Mr. Goldstein.
Silly, anti-nannyist idealist.
tw: herself81
Did you see the story on Fox News today about the startling number of teens who come to school drunk or high?
The story said this could be attributed to parents not spending enough time with their kids.
Well, duh.
But I want to make one point about that. It’s not just that you should spend all this “fun” time with your kids either. It doesn’t mean you have to take them to Disney World every weekend.
I remember spending a lot of my time with my Dad doing chores and such. You can do things with your kids that involve them learning responsibility too. It seems to me that there is too much of two different kind of parenting going on. There are the ones who spend no time with their kids and give very little attention to them, and then there are the ones who overindulge, spoil, and make their whole lives about their kids. Both are wrong. We need a safe middle ground here.
From the feminist perspective, Fuck The Childrenâ„¢!
tw: exapmle97
Go to Bass Pro next time, they take compliments better.
Well, at least Stephen in the boat department does.
Did you compliment him on hi pole?
Things like this, specially once it’s referred to as the child’s right, really help to convince me that equal parenting is in a child’s best interest.
”…no shit, honey, you could bounce quarters offa that thing! Yow!…”
SB: outside18
hopefully
Here is a video that explanins why parents, of all genders, need to stop this now! It is a child’s right to EQUAL time with BOTH fit parents! This is why they are pedaling over 600 miles on a bicycle – VIDEO
The commentary done by Jeff Goldstein, to introduce this amazing story, was priceless!
Angela
I drove my kids everywhere, they drove me crazy…
Actually, it was the club sports. My son swam, my daughters did gymnastics. They weren’t at the same place – they weren’t even in the same direction. So, I’d go drop one off, then the other, and pick one up, then the other…
Global warming is all my fault. No need to worry, they’re grown, and I drive half as much as I used to.
Seriously, sports are pretty good, as long as the parents don’t get cut-throat about it. Or try to compete with the kids. The workouts kept the kids tired and out of trouble, and I got to watch their meets.
Feminists will never accept the fact the best way to teach morality to kids is to have one male and one female parent: the mother primarily teaches empathy (“how would you like it if someone did that to you?”) and the father primarily teaches self-restraint (“these are the limits  don’t cross them!”) Parents aren’t taught to assume these roles  that’s just how they relate to their kids because their brains are patterned differently (the parents’, not the kids’
.
Anyone who possesses one of these pillars of morality but not the other will be morally bankrupt: restraint without empathy is tyranny, whereas empathy without self-restraint breeds decadence.
Unfortunately, the empathy-dominated cultures, in their decadence, have a tendency to be conquered by the restraint-dominated tyrannies but not the other way around. If history is any guide.
Which it is.
TW: Yes, I’ve met96 people who lacked one parent and still managed to be moral; they had help from the outside. Too many don’t.
Um. Unwanted smiley there.
TW: I thought it only36 did that to you if you wanted it to.
All this time, Jeff’s been writing eloquently on the importance of framing an issue, and how controlling a narrative allows you to sway opinions and move society toward support of your goals. I’ve been open to the idea, but skeptical about the degree to which such influence could be achieved.
Then this happens:
And I realize that it takes very little framing at all to sway the weak-willed and simple-minded.
Color me convinced! Thank you, emma!
</cheek_tongue>
“Parents aren’t taught to assume these roles  that’s just how they relate to their kids because their brains are patterned differently”
SCIENCE!
“Anyone who possesses one of these pillars of morality but not the other will be morally bankrupt: restraint without empathy is tyranny, whereas empathy without self-restraint breeds decadence”
If a parent has both pillars, why cant they pass them both on the their kids? Is it because of… SCIENCE!
Great—now I’m going have that Thomas Dolby song playing in my head all night.
Dick’s. Ass. Abraded. Bitter. Heh heh. Heh.
Bitter. Dick’s . Ass . Abraded . ….. fixed .
If a parent has both pillars, why can’t they pass them both on the their kids? Is it because of… SCIENCE!
Because women and men approach parenting differently. Even if you had both parents, you will approach parenting in a way that is similar to how your same-sex parent did. We’re programmed to see our same-sex parents as role models.
Look at the stats for what happens to fatherless children: their self-restraint is usually faulty. Girls end up pregnant and boys impregnate, join gangs, or end up in jail because they don’t know how to say no to their urges.
Yes, SCIENCE. Not idealism, not wishful thinking, not feminist ideology (overturn ALL of the assumptions, ALL!)  reality.
See, if you actually are reality-based, you don’t need to identify yourself as such. It’s like calling yourself humble  it deconstructs itself.
Is there something you’re trying to say, emmadine?
Jeff mentions a truly stunning ass and then the rest of you jerks start preaching about self-restraint. I’m never in the right place at the right time.
Maybe that (1) a zillion years of human evolution (remember that, SecProggs?) actually produced a functional system of birthing and rearing humans (remember that, SecProggs?) and (2) that, darn it, “we” just might have to give back the right to parent your kid.
Kinda like we grant the right to defend yourself with lethal force on a subjective and arbitrary basis these days. This being a democracy, what with all the bread flying around.
Constitution much, feminists?
Um, was it better than this? I don’t think so.
CraigC:
Don’t forget the <NSFW> tags!
I guess you and I have a different idea about what’s NSFW, dicentra.
emmadine,
emmadine,
Lysenko is calling you!
The ghosts of Lamarck and Michurin are calling you,
To do your duty!
emmadine,
emmadine,
It’s not enough to make your way!
You must deny the patriarchal assumptions,
Of SCIENCE!!!!!!
Because we all know that heredity has been debunked!
Because we all know there are no meaningful differences between men and women! Ask Larry Summers!
(Emmadine’s crazy!)
JHoward
I just finished reading all 32 pages of the pdf and I don’t find anything I disagree with. (ok…maybe I’d like to quibble with the 90% stat bounced around… I’m rather suspicious of policy by stat)
Now. How does “co-parenting” supposed to work?
In the real world.
…argh How IS “co-parenting†supposed to work?
do please excuse my grammar …
Cooperation, for starters.
It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you don’t have the option not to.
when you don’t have the option not to.
Excuse me a little of cynicism borne both of personal and professional experience
HOW do you “force” cooperation??
Certainly, co-parenting can take place when both parents ARE willing to focus on the kids (my husband and his ex are good examples of this)…but it takes just one of the two screw stuff up
You know that part where I paralleled family rights with the second amendment? The point being that bearing lethal arms does not render society instantly and perfectly safe but it’s far and away the best alternative for the safest and most self-accountable society.
Therefore its a primary right.
That’s how the 2nd Amendment works. Now you want me to tell you how co-parenting is supposed to work?
Why, exactly? I can’t tell you how any best option works in the face of the obviously insane alternatives if you can’t envision it or them beforehand. Because you only have those two alternatives: Self-reliance or moral anarchy.
How about I tell you how it obviously doesn’t work: A massively collectivized system that, as it turns out, preys primarily on men and children and does so out of a viscious combo of the right to litigate your family straight into hell for a relatively instant and assured money and power trip, plus the interesting union of profitable trial lawyers and profitable feminist groups nudging you on.
See, it’s not that the family is perfect, Darleen. It’s that it has rights and that those rights pretty darn well exceed the goddamnable alternative. Ask 200 years of Supreme Court precedent about how legalized kidnapping is illegal and not me how the family unit is supposed to work in this late hour.
Not sure if you’re being facetious or if you’re just not connecting the dots but you probably remember the part where federally-enabled collectivist special interest and political correctness are always doomed to an ugly failure.
Putting that brew in charge of arbitrarily allocating kids and property by way of a feminazied unilateral tyrant sitting on the family bench winking and nodding back and forth with a feminazied legislature and the money-grubbing divorce industry is pretty well guaranteed to fail.
Sound rhetorical, conspiratorial? So what do you think about all the other government programs that create nonstop misery?
The system preys on men and children. The ratio of custodial parents favors women to men by 85:15. 90% of divorce is initiated unilaterally and by the same rough ratio of women to men. Setting up the soon to be ex pays so handsomely there’s and entire industry that advises it. Children from single parenting lead every juvenile dysfunction ever logged as a statistic. Trial lawyers and feminists and their local, state, and federal cronies make it all work—dig a little to see just how universal and prevalent that truth is.
American family law amounts to legal kidnapping and extortion. Ask a victim.
So how is co-parenting supposed to work? Not the way it obviously isn’t.
Amazing. Good enough to father, not good enough to parent, eh? Why exactly would you force behavior, Darleen? From there we can ask how, meaning we never get to ask how because why is already out of bounds. Life’s just hard.
You can force your brand of excellence no more than you can force society to wash its hands before lunch.
Recall the adage about safety and freedom. Please.
Exactly what will it take to make the point that you don’t get to make those kinds of value judgements about other people or their kids.
“Maybe that (1) a zillion years of human evolution (remember that, SecProggs?) actually produced a functional system of birthing and rearing humans (remember that, SecProggs?) and (2) that, darn it, “we†just might have to give back the right to parent your kid.”
Evolution privileges one system over another based on what is most likely to reproduce and survive, and its also path dependent. It’s hard to say that the status quo is optimal because it has evolved to be so. We do tend to, for example, avoid limiting ourselves to what has evolved, and go ahead and intelligently design buildings and cars and internets. Or, in short, SCIENCE!
“Look at the stats for what happens to fatherless children: their self-restraint is usually faulty. Girls end up pregnant and boys impregnate, join gangs, or end up in jail because they don’t know how to say no to their urges.”
I don’t think evolution and genetics is at work here.
“Amazing. Good enough to father, not good enough to parent, eh? “
You sound like somoene easy to get along and cooperate with.
Hmmm, a female attorney told a friend that line and I liked it so much I kept it.
As in, good enough to sire the kid for the purpose of getting a house and the dole, but not good enough to be his daddy—seemed pretty straight-forward to me but I’m sorta slow.
Because he’ll be just fine on the street, I mean.
I’m a bit of a handful with a gun jammed in my patriarchal ribs, if that’s what you’re getting at, dearie.
So what exactly is your problem, emmadine? What stuff looks like got you all tied up in emotional little knots because you can’t handle what stuff is?
JHoward
I didn’t make any hostile remarks, so I see no need for you to be hostile with me.
I do not expect nor demand perfection and I certainly see problems with the way some things are currently done.
YES, I think the default position of the court should be shared legal/physical custody. But you know that so-called 90% stat bounced around to somehow show that American Justice is geared against men? It’s bunk. Most divorcing couples come to court and STIPULATE to custody arrangements … in a lot of jurisdictions (like CA) couples have to go through mediation BEFORE a judge will even see them.
I realize there at a lot of jurisdictions with different rules and default positions AND in a lot of them men are getting a raw deal. It isn’t justified, but it can be partially explained as the pendulum has swung way too far in the opposite direction from a time where a woman divorced had NO standing in court. Children were the “property” of the father. She lost everything but the clothes on her back.
Then we had “fault” divorce, where the aggrieved party held a certain amount of power to negotiate a way out of a marriage contract.
THEN we had “no-fault” divorce in response to the humilitation of airing dirty laundry in public (the Gov. Reagan believed it would make divorce more civilized)…but no-fault has left in its wake both men and women as victims of serial monogamy practioners.
If I could wave a magic wand I would of course make divorcing couples act like adults … if they want to “hate” each other FINE but they cannot use their children as pawns in gotcha moves.
I do NOT attribute nefarious motivations to those that are working in the trenches of Family Law. Their’s has truly been a Sisyphean challenge, attempting fixes in one direction finding it causes problems in another. No fault in CA was supposed to “civilize” divorce but it just impoverished women and children when [some] men just walked away.
It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that young women are urged to delay marriage and make sure their careers are never put on hiatus to have kids.
I find that appalling. Why shouldn’t couples feel that a marriage contract should be held to just as strict standards of responsibility by the state as a business partnership?
By ordering shared parenting, and then enforcing that the way you would child support.
And if that one is a “custodial” parent, then what?
Oh for heaven’s sake, JH … in CA that house is going to get SOLD unless either party can buy out the other…and if the marriage is less than 10 years old, there is not going to be ANY alimony. Even marriages of 10 years plus is going to have a judge admonish the woman from the bench she has no more than 2-4 years to “rehabilitate” herself and get a job because “alimony is not forever”.
Or to riff on your theme (not mine), good enough to have a household servant, concubine and uterus to bear the fruit of your loins, but when its over, all previous contracts are null and void.
Pablo
If the custodial parent is actively interferring with the other parent, then it is the province of the court to rectify it. I have little patience with divorce games… whether it’s the custodial parent interferring with visitation or the non-custodial parent quitting a job to get out of paying child support.
Been there done that, had my kids’ lives uprooted and thrashed because of it.
I did that in CA, and came to an arrangement that I didn’t love, but was willing to live with, upon the advice of my attorney that I really didn’t want the judge to sort things out.
And then the agreement went out the window, as my ex decided that she had other plans which included moving my daughter to Hawaii, and the court said “Okey dokey, have a nice trip and don’t forget to to write, but if you do we won’t do anything about it.”
That’s one of the agreements in that statistic you refer to.
Yup.
Find a divorcing couple with a sizable estate, and you’ll often find a pair of lawyers wondering how much they can soak them for. The adversarial system breeds such behavior, which is simply human nature. If the money is there for the taking, they will take it. The more a client wants to litigate, the more money there is to be had. And in such emotional proceedings, once blows have been thrown, you get a pot boiling over and often people who want to act out of vengence instead of their own, and their children’s, best interests.
That said, I can’t imagine how
…lawyers who work the broke end of divorce manage to get up and go to work every day. But by and large, they do so by doing their best to dispose of the cases as quickly as possible.
Yes, it is. So when they don’t do it…?
When was the last time you saw a mother jailed for denying ordered visitation? And the last time you saw a father jailed for failing to pay ordered support?
Pablo
I don’t work Family Law, but criminal.
We DO have a “child abduction” unit and it has prosecuted women (and some men) for running off with the kids rather than let the other parent have access.
I’m kind of surprised that your ex got to move. I know many judges demand some kind of extraordinary circumstance to allow a move “outside of the seven southern counties” of CA.
Let me ask…how would you craft a piece of legislation that would disallow litigation and still pass Constitutional muster?
Start with a rebuttable presumption of equal custody, and mandate penalty for any parent who is found to be frustrating the other parent’s rights.
You’d start things out with equality and you’d attach a price to creating conflict.
The first question in any custody proceeding should be “Do either of you intend to prove that the other is an unfit parent?” If the answer is no, then the whole thing should take about 10 minutes.
BTW,
She married a guy in the Navy, and he got orders.
Ouch. Well, crap, the court couldn’t stop her from moving in that circumstance.
But I would hope it would mandate your daughter coming back say for all of the summer?
My stepson has always lived out-of-state, so husband calls him every two days and he comes for most of the summer.
Compare that to MY ex who refused to see his daughters for almost six years (you wouldn’t believe the games he engaged in to “get me” no matter how much it hurt them)
But it could have prevented her from taking my child with her. It was her lifestyle choice, after all.
She was only two when this happened, and the court ordered “10 days at least twice per year, and up to four times if arrangements can be made” I’ll give you 3 guesses how many times “arrangements could be made” and where the problems with making such arrangements existed.
When she turned 6, I went back and got the month of July.
“As in, good enough to sire the kid for the purpose of getting a house and the dole, but not good enough to be his daddyâ€â€seemed pretty straight-forward to me but I’m sorta slow.”
They are quite different activities. Sex and parenting. Don’t mix them up.
“Start with a rebuttable presumption of equal custody, and mandate penalty for any parent who is found to be frustrating the other parent’s rights.”
That sounds totally in the best interests of the child.
Okay. Now could you maybe explain what you do think is at work and expand on it a bit? Because frankly, I am having a hard time getting my mind around evolution and genetics not being involved in reproduction.
Haven’t heard a WHOOOOSH! like that since actus left.
Yes, it does. Thanks for your support.
Fair enough. I admit to being impatient—for example, idiots like emmadine threadcrapping and then you bordering on regurgitating a vague grasp of family law when your politics (and experiences on this forum) should warrant condemning it at every opportunity. But fair enough.
All of which occur in the private sector. The public sector is horribly corrupted (meant literally) when it comes to the divorcing family and that corruption absolutely extends up and through Washington. The one may not be ruined by the other, at least not and remain constitutional, but it is and it is as a matter of profit.
Ah, it’s not Darleen. Because,
…pre-divorce wrangling produces it. The statistic, I mean. Folks tend to avoid wars they know they cannot win, which is where I get a little impatient because that conventional wisdom is rock-sure, meaning that attempts to fisk it are themselves bunk.
OK, so which is it then? Put statistical meat on those bones. I have and I invite you to correct, refute, or accept them.
Sure thing, Amanda. I can recall back around 1920 when 50%+ of all marriage ended in divorce and the streets were littered with starving mothers. Wasn’t that the start of suffrage? Hell, it wasn’t until 1995 that Gloria brought about that other stat where American women own hundreds of billions more personal property than men.
Hello? We have fault divorce today, Darleen, just not by definition. Allege fault, get it all. It’s that visible strategy I referred to and it therefore forms one of the pillars of divorce reform. Yep, it’s that bad.
“Serial monogamy practicioners”?! How about victim-by-unilateral-allegation and juvenile-deliquent-by-unilateral-divorce.
Fortunately you don’t get that option, Darleen, and neither do I, or the rest of society– oh wait, except for the trial lawyers and feminists. Surely they know best because they’re writing all the divorce and custody bills.
Wonder why? Or how? How is it, Darleen, that that bunch makes divorce policy and chronically opposes reform?
Feel? How about this: Shouldn’t lawabiding voters be free from the unappealable loss of a half dozen of their basic rights?
Think that’s rhetoric or that it can be brushed aside?
In what other segment of society can one lose the presumption of innocence, suffer legalized kidnapping and extortion, be denied due process, be jailed in debtor’s prison, be denied a jury trial, lose property, and be discriminated against because of gender? Any place you can think of?
You’re in law. Do you think these are trivial matters?
Darleen, how does having four or ten of your constitutional rights torn up and burned up in your face by a hostile public servant stand the constitutionality test?
See, start with that and then worry about how to allow still allow (or force) ruin-by-process because it’s somehow utterly and sacredly constitutional.
Cart? Horse.
JHoward, you ominously refer to “hostile public servants” and a feminist agenda, among other things. Do you truly believe there is collusion within the system that victimizes men? You seem awfully bitter about this subject.
Are you questioning my ethics by your read of my tone, cynn? Because you can imagine what kind of person would do such a thing.
Sorry to rock your boat but I’ve seen the divorce racket instituted in my legislature by, yes, a collusion between our portion of the multi-billion dollar divorce industry, judges, and that very legislature, thereby violating of the state constitution.
I also know how VAWA works, how it’s federal proponents are funded, and how they crush voter initiatives, again in violation of all principles for separation of powers.
Read back a few posts—you’d probably be bitter if a half dozen of your most precious rights were destroyed in an afternoon, as happens to hundreds of thousands of your fellows each year.
And a hot place it is.
I am not questioning your ethics at all. I have no personal experience with this “racket” and really don’t have standing to analyze it one way or another. I will say that VAWA and its various sister initiatives seem suffused with notions about social engineering, as well as assumptions about gender and victimhood that have become somehow sacred and unquestionable.
These issues are huge, and are bound to get tangled up between the judicial, legislative, and executive (law enforcement?) parts of government. I don’t see anything sinister there, but if people of good faith are crushed by the results of this convergence, then it’s not good law.
What rights of yours were destroyed in this process? Just curious; if too personal, just ignore me.
Mine weren’t destroyed, Cynn, although I’ve seen the firsthand effects of the divorce/custody industry I mentioned.
That said, the family law/court is a travesty and should be abolished. It’s simply not justice; it’s a zoo and it’s being run by special interest. It’s not remotely constitutionally legal; it’s not even procedurally legal. It’s the height of nannyism and it’s a victim of political climate and political correctness.
How so? The co-mingling of bench and bar with the latter utterly wrapped up in legislating what the feminist lobby wants. All for the money.
I don’t know; I have always dismissed your ragings before; maybe I should take a closer look.
Yes there is! The radical feminists have always oppossed a child’s right to EQUAL time with BOTH fit parents – even when it does not interfere with a child’s school schedule.
Title IV-D Welfare – “The federal incentives drive the system. The more divorces, and the higher the child-support guidelines are set and enforced (no matter how unreasonable), the more money the state bureaucracy collects from the feds. Follow the money. The less time that non-custodial parents (usually fathers) are permitted to be with their children, the more child support they must pay into the state fund, and the higher the federal bonus to the states for collecting the money. “ – Phyllis Schlafly
Please also see the following video on You Tube
To learn even more about a system that makes tax payers pay for the inclusion of the middle-class and affluent into a welfare program (Title IV-D) please also see Title IV-D
If you luck out and find a copy of the book “Friend of the Court Enemy of the Family” by Carol Rhodes you will understand from a FEMALE (previous employee of the FOC)how there is collusion within the system that victimizes men but most of all the children.
Angels
With all do respect … bullshit
and quoting Phyllis Schlafly of all people doesn’t exactly inspire … you know… credibility in the MRA claim of Great Matriarchal Conspiracy.
Like maybe, who benefits when women, especially full-time homemakers, from “middle-class and affluent” families suddenly find they have no legal means to enforce child support orders?
Yeah. Follow the money, honey.
See before I moved to criminal, I worked in the child support division of the District Attorney’s office… every week we’d have meetings where the local Radical Feminazis would come in and we’d plan our next forays into the community to Break Up Families and Steal From Men.
I seem to remember lots of chanting and manical cackling.
feh.
While you’re sensible on other issues, Darleen, on this one you routinely deny outright fact and expect to get a pass.
You of all people should know that nobody gets off on their “child support” orders, including going to jail for them in this our debtor prison-free society. It’s called contempt and it’s backed by Bradley. The fact you can’t comprehend it is no cause to carjack an honest advocate for rights and fairness.
You follow the money, honey (and hopefully for the last time): Assistant DA’s working the child support racket are absolutely incentived by title IV-D to institute as large a support order as humanly possible on every divorce that passes through the system. It’s their job.
Meanwhile, as I’d already posted in this very forum, Title IV-D was clearly designed to “help” poverty-level recipients as part of welfare reform—the thinking was that this would make that level of the welfare system be more self-sufficient. Drive-by fathering would carry financial repercussions. For example, ask Mikey “Parental Alienation For Pizza” Cox about Detroit’s lovely living standards for minority kids with, if they’re lucky, one parent.
Today Title IV-D is the federal standard used to lay and collect under penalty of imprisonment in 100% of divorce cases where parties have not stipulated otherwise and where those stipulations pass the state’s otherwise damn onorous minimum pay standards. Those standards, yes, being yet another means to collect that liberal federal cash.
In other words, federal kickbacks tied to “successful” support cases are big, big business.
Tie this phenomenon to divorce and custody stats, and also to the simple fact that it is a matter of record that trial lawyers and feminists lobby universally lobby against reforming the welfare / support / custody engine so as, evidently, to keep dad in the cold and mom in financial clover. Look it the hell up.
Darleen, your ignorance of this issue, perhaps uncomfortably bashing around in your libertarian-with-state-job brainpan looking for a resolution, makes you offensive to the folks paying the price and doing the work. You owe Angela an apology for that shiv in the ribs.
I agree and thank you “JHoward” for writing such an eloquent response to Darleen.
Carol Rhodes has not made a dime on her book and actually worked as an enforcement officer. She had no axe to grind or reseaon for writing her book other than exposing the truth. This system destroys families (and children even more) for the sake of state profits through the federal incentives. Not as eloquent as JHoward but I attempted to add more to the debate.
Another great resource to read is by Lary Holland and Jason Bottomley titled, “How federal welfare funding drives judicial discretion in child-custody determinations and domestic relations matters”
I haven’t read all of the posts in this discussion, and quite frankly I am not even going to waste my time… No matter what side of the argument you are on when it comes to the nation’s child support enforcement program (Title IV-D), the bottom line is this:
Congress is using taxpayer money from Social Security to fund a welfare program (Title IV-D) that pays states to enforce child support orders. States only receive IV-D funding when support orders are enforced. It shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you only get paid for producing a particular result – you will try to produce that result as many times as possible in order to get paid.
It’s like a rat that receives a shock when it eats from one feeder, but receives food from the other… Which feeder will the rat consistently go back to? Duh…
The consistent and necessary outcome in the case of Title IV-D is the _child support order_ – because states only receive IV-D funding from the feds when these orders are created and enforced…
Again, like a rat in a cage, the states are simply doing what makes the most money: During times of family crisis (divorce, custody battles, etc…), the states’ family court judges have been given the ultimate discretion in choosing whether to help families, or further split them apart.
Now, when splitting a family apart is the only way that an order for child support can be created – and when enforcement of that order also brings in federal funding necessary to keep these family courts operatational – these judges don’t really have any choice to make at all, now do they?
If they want to keep the funding flowing into the state, and to keep their jobs per-se – then the only choice is to create that child support order in as many cases as possible… regardless of the individual circumstance; regardless of the fitness of either parent; regardless of the willingness of either parent to actually WANT to be a part of the lives of their children… The end result must consistently be the creation of a court-ordered, child support-paying, noncustodial parent.
I know it’s hard for most people to connect the dots when it comes to this particular matter, because the money trail is so deep, but no matter what side you are on – facts are facts: As long as the states continue to receive federal funding for enforcing child support orders while also having ultimate control over the creation of these orders – then the states will continue to do whatever it takes to create as many support orders as possible in order to maximize IV-D revenue.
Otherwise, the massive child support bureaucracies that have been created over the last few decades would have to shrink, which would meant that child support workers would lose their government jobs and be forced into the same unemployment lines as the deadbeats that they helped to create.
This is why every state’s custody legislation is written the way it is: To maximize federal revenue. This is why the states all focused lobbyist efforts on getting Congress to change the federal legislation that has been since misinterpreted to include ANYONE into the child support program (despite the program’s intent of being reserved for WELFARE recipients only).
No matter how blinded people become by their own personal cases – when one looks outside of the fishbowl, it becomes pretty easy to connect the dots: The Feds are paying the states to destroy families instead of helping them when they turn to the states’ family courts for help.
JH
You know, I don’t give a flying fuck about the Conspiracy rantings… I AM NOT A DDA so you can stick that insinuation that “I” profit from cs support collection…well, you know.
I AM FUCKING TIRED of the waving of Patriarchal/Matriarchal conpiracy ravings! Fuck the Feminists. Fuck the MRA’s. I do NOT KNOW (and I’ve said as much every friggin time) how other states handle their cs orders… I know only about CA.
You know why the feds ever got involved in CS in the first place? Certainly NOT some Feminazi conspiracy but because the unintended fallout from no-fault divorce was people unilaterally walking away from marriages and thumbing their nose at cs orders.
AGAIN, if you TAKE AWAY any means by which middleclass/affluent families can enforce CS then …. I don’t know what to say, I’m so angry. Women in CLOVER?? Where? I have no ‘ffing idea what you’re talking about. Is that kinda like the urban myth of the welfare queen riding around in pink Mercedes?
It is exceedingly RARE in CA for child support scofflaws to get criminally charged. Kinda like drug addicts they are given chances over and over and over again (I can give you chapter and verse on THAT one, too)
I keep hearing the mantra of “helping families”… nice rhetoric, but if the mandatory mediation as in CA can’t get people “back together” what do you want to do? Come on now. Give me some exact proposals.
So where does all this lovely fed money to the states go, eh? Gold leafed desks for the clerks? Extra paid vacations to exotic locales as prizes for “breaking up families?”
Hey, clue bat. By the time the state is involved in enforcing a court order, the family is ALL READY BROKE.
The CS division (and in CA it is handled by the state now, not individual county DA offices) is overworked, overburdened, and case loads rival social workers. Certainly the criminal division of the DA office I work at is always playing catchup. Opening a cs case means MONTHS before the staff will get to you if you’ve never had a cs order.
The government follows the culture in this regard. When a person in a marriage wants to “trade up” to the next model in a spouse, they want NOT to be tied in anyway with last year’s model. AND even the middleclass homemaker will shortly find his/herself in poverty if s/he doesn’t have any legal means to collect cs.
Actual adults who DO have civilized divorces and visitation/cs is not a matter of contention? Good for them. They are NOT in the state system. I wish I knew how to encourage more of ‘em (I marvel at my husband and his ex’s working divorce)
But too often you get the sh*t of serial sperm donors and women wondering who is the baby daddy OR the wife/husband of ten years with little ones and the spouse is “no longer in love” and wants to suddenly be 20 something and unfettered again.
The problem is NOT with the government, it is with the people themselves.
People generally bargain in the shadows of the law. The law should generally encourage divorcing couples to not use children as a pawn in a game of divorce chess. People can find something else to argue about other than the children.
It goes towards a relaxing union protected job with high wages. In the state of Michigan this is how the money trickles back to the “neutral” child custody evaluators – MI Money Flow
Unhinged much, Darleen?
I said you profited?
Your point?
Rubbish: Welfare, TANF, “welfare reform”, Title IV-D, VAWA, DDA’s, et al.
85:15 women:men primary:secondary custody. Deal with it.
The Bradley Amendment.
Not your or my responsibility. Rather, get government out of profiteering on gender discrimination and divorce. Read much?
Could it possibly matter?
Now it’s you conflating the DA with the DDA/CSA engine? Come on Darleen, start making sense—you’re touching your own nerve.
So which is it?
Heh. Spoken like a true collectivist.
Ask Reagan how he phrased it, Darleen.
Darlene,
Very good, the problem is with people, but when you add the government involving themselves in personal/private matters, making easier to continue and promote the problems between individuals, it gets to the scale that is has become now.
Basically personal, private, aggressive battles need to be waged with private funds not my tax dollars.
Currently the state-run child support enforcement services have little to no focus on lower-income families due to difficulty in actually collecting from under- or unemployed program participants.
State provided child support enforcement services focus on higher-income families, which gives the appearance of program success through the use of use of income withholding orders to facilitate collections.
Because there is a significant level of overparticipation from wealthier families that should not be receiving benefits the lack of collections for lower-income family are going unnoticed while the program is being labeled a success.
Taxpayers should not be required to foot the bill for collection services for individuals that would not otherwise qualify for welfare services when those participants can afford to provide services for their own domestic relations disputes.
There are an ample number of private collection and law firms that provide services to both lower-income and higher-income families to make up for any alleged reduction in state collections as a result of reduced funding. The private collection and law firms are notably more successful in their outcomes as they focus on their clients, not on maintaining caseloads for state budgeting purposes.
Darlene,
You may be right about the issue is with the people, but when government steps into personal “people” fights, they waste taxpayer money and fail to address true problems. Government then becomes part of the original problem. This isn’t gender bias, its too broad of governmental authority that continues to expand.
Currently the state-run child support enforcement services have little to no focus on lower-income families due to difficulty in actually collecting from under- or unemployed program participants.
State provided child support enforcement services focus on higher-income families, which gives the appearance of program success through the use of use of income withholding orders to facilitate collections.
Because there is a significant level of overparticipation from wealthier families that should not be receiving benefits the lack of collections for lower-income family are going unnoticed while the program is being labeled a success.
Taxpayers should not be required to foot the bill for collection services for individuals that would not otherwise qualify for welfare services when those participants can afford to provide services for their own domestic relations disputes.
There are an ample number of private collection and law firms that provide services to both lower-income and higher-income families to make up for any alleged reduction in state collections as a result of reduced funding. The private collection and law firms are notably more successful in their outcomes as they focus on their clients, not on maintaining caseloads for state budgeting purposes.
It’s out of the scope of Title IV-D research, Lary, but be assured that the NOW is all over maintaining the family law status quo—they and theirs are the most prevalent and effective lobby supporting using government to seek what ends up being that 85:15 ratio of women to men as primary custodians—seen any men’s abuse offices operating in the family court lately?
Meanwhile the ratio of female-initiated divorce is some 90:10, at least according to Shere Hite and others.
Naturally, non-equal post-divorce situations are where child support funds come from: Typically a fixed quarter or so of the obligor’s pre-tax income, those obligors being mostly male.
So we have both cause and effect. Whether or not the so-called women’s lobby intends by prior motive to keep women in the catbird seat wrt “winning” the great majority of child support “awards” is unknown. But the causes and effects are.
“Fifty-eight percent of men delayed their divorce because of concerns about their children. Far fewer women had this worry. … ‘Not believing in divorce’ was the next most important reason men cited. … The idea of an older man leaving his wife for a younger woman is ingrained in the American psyche  and that has created a misconception about divorce. … But…as this survey makes abundantly clear, women are more than willing to chart a new life for themselves if they’re in an unfulfilling marriage.”
-Elizabeth Enright, “A House Divided,” AARP The Magazine, July-August 2004,