Divorce

Why the American Family-Court System is Broken

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“To get divorced, you can’t just simply fill out a form that says ‘I’m divorced.’ You have to go to court and a judge has to approve the divorce,” says Divorce Corp’s Joe Sorge. “Breaking up is traumatic on its own, nevermind having to go to court and appear before a judge.”

Sorge argues that because the legal code to get a divorce is so complex, nearly all respective parties have to hire expensive lawyers and pay legal fees that make the average non-contested divorce cost between $10,000 and $20,000. A contested divorce can run well over $50,000.

“It’s the fourth most common cause of bankruptcy in the United States,” says Sorge.

Sorge sat down with Reason TV’s Tracy Oppenheimer to outline some of these institutional problems and possible resolutions that he addresses in his documentary and accompanying book, both titled Divorce Corp.

About 8 minutes.

Produced by Tracy Oppenheimer. Camera by Zach Weissmueller and Alexis Garcia.

Go to http://reason.com/reasontv/2014/04/23… for downloadable versions and subscribe to Reason TV’s YouTube Channel for notifications when new material goes live.

Society

Ignoring an Inequality Culprit: Single-Parent Families

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Intellectuals fretting about income disparity are oddly silent regarding the decline of the two-parent family.

An excerpt from this article: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303603904579493612156024266

Suppose a scientific conference on cancer prevention never addressed smoking, on the grounds that in a free society you can’t change private behavior, and anyway, maybe the statistical relationships between smoking and cancer are really caused by some other third variable. Wouldn’t some suspect that the scientists who raised these claims were driven by something—ideology, tobacco money—other than science?

Yet in the current discussions about increased inequality, few researchers, fewer reporters, and no one in the executive branch of government directly addresses what seems to be the strongest statistical correlate of inequality in the United States: the rise of single-parent families during the past half century.

The two-parent family has declined rapidly in recent decades. In 1960, more than 76% of African-Americans and nearly 97% of whites were born to married couples. Today the percentage is 30% for blacks and 70% for whites. The out-of-wedlock birthrate for Hispanics surpassed 50% in 2006. This trend, coupled with high divorce rates, means that roughly 25% of American children now live in single-parent homes, twice the percentage in Europe (12%). Roughly a third of American children live apart from their fathers.

Does it matter? Yes, it does. From economist Susan Mayer’s 1997 book “What Money Can’t Buy” to Charles Murray’s “Coming Apart” in 2012, clear-eyed studies of the modern family affirm the conventional wisdom that two parents work better than one.

“Americans have always thought that growing up with only one parent is bad for children,” Ms. Mayer wrote. “The rapid spread of single-parent families over the past generation does not seem to have altered this consensus much.”

In an essay for the Institute for Family Studies last December, called “Even for Rich Kids, Marriage Matters,” University of Virginia sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox reported that children in high-income households who experienced family breakups don’t fare as well emotionally, psychologically, educationally or, in the end, economically as their two-parent-family peers.

Abuse, behavioral problems and psychological issues of all kinds, such as developmental behavior problems or concentration issues, are less common for children of married couples than for cohabiting or single parents, according to a 2003 Centers for Disease Control study of children’s health. The causal pathways are about as clear as those from smoking to cancer.

More than 20% of children in single-parent families live in poverty long-term, compared with 2% of those raised in two-parent families, according to education-policy analyst Mitch Pearlstein’s 2011 book “From Family Collapse to America’s Decline.” The poverty rate would be 25% lower if today’s family structure resembled that of 1970, according to the 2009 report “Creating an Opportunity Society” from Brookings Institution analysts Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill. A 2006 article in the journal Demography by Penn State sociologist Molly Martin estimates that 41% of the economic inequality created between 1976-2000 was the result of changed family structure.

Earlier this year, a team of researchers led by Harvard economist Raj Chetty reported that communities with a high percentage of single-parent families are less likely to experience upward mobility. The researchers’ report—”Where Is the Land of Opportunity?”—received considerable media attention. Yet mainstream news outlets tended to ignore the study’s message about family structure, focusing instead on variables with far less statistical impact, such as residential segregation.

In the past four years, our two academic professional organizations—the American Political Science Association and the American Educational Research Association—have each dedicated annual meetings to inequality, with numerous papers and speeches denouncing free markets, the decline of unions, and “neoliberalism” generally as exacerbating economic inequality. Yet our searches of the groups’ conference websites fail to turn up a single paper or panel addressing the effects of family change on inequality.

Why isn’t this matter at the center of policy discussions?

 

Read the rest HERE

Child Support, Divorce, Fatherhood

Father’s suicide becomes rallying cry for fairness in court

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An excerpt from a Glenn Sacks post but is no longer available. Here is more info:

http://www.canadiancrc.com/Newspaper_Articles/National_Post-Darrin_White-Fathers_suicide_becomes_rallying_cry_for_fairness_in_court_01APR2000.aspx

Thirty-five years ago today, Lillian White gave birth to her youngest son. Yesterday, she knelt down and kissed his coffin at his graveside.

Darrin White committed suicide two weeks ago in Prince George, B.C., after a judge ordered him to pay his estranged wife twice his take-home pay in child support and alimony each month.

In death he has become a poignant symbol of family courts gone awry, of a divorce system run by people with closed minds, hard hearts and deaf ears.

Across the country last evening, activists held candlelight vigils in memory of men such as Darrin. During his funeral Mass, Father Leo Fernandes of St. Augustine’s Roman Catholic Church urged Darrin’s friends to continue the struggle to which he succumbed.

Like those who completed Puccini’s last opera after his death, Father Fernandes said people close to Darrin should ask themselves: “What are you going to do about it? Hopefully, there is more. It is up to you, his friends, to accomplish what he was unable to. If his dream was to challenge the scales of justice in our country, then so be it. Do it for his sake.”

Darrin wasn’t a complicated man. He liked taking nature walks and enjoyed cycling. He read books about the outdoors and loved animals. He was a certified locomotive engineer who earned his living driving trains first for Canadian National, then the British Columbia railway.

When his marriage fell apart in January, Darrin found himself in a situation shared by many men. While he had worked long hours doing what society told him a father was supposed to do — bringing home the bacon — his devotion became a strike against him.

In a country that still treats children as prizes to be “won” in divorce court rather than as human beings entitled to close contact with both of their parents, the fact that Darrin had not spent as much time with his children as his homemaker wife was deemed sufficient reason to award her sole custody.

Suddenly alone, compelled to leave his home with less than 48 hours’ notice, expected to come up with rent money as well as lawyers’ retainers, and missing shifts at work due to court dates, Darrin found himself criticized for not paying his estranged wife (who, unlike him, was eligible for social assistance) child support during this chaotic period.

Perhaps, during these weeks, it began to dawn on Darrin how vulnerable his relationships with his children, aged five , nine and 10 had now become (his oldest child, aged 14, from a previous relationship lives with her mother in Saskatchewan). Perhaps other divorced dads told Darrin of former wives brainwashing their kids against them, frustrating court-ordered child access while suffering no legal consequences, and behaving as though the kids should call every new boyfriend “dad.”

All divorced mothers don’t behave this way, of course, but enough do to make such fears reasonable. Yet society provides no services to help loving, responsible, traumatized dads deal with such stresses.

Researchers have known for decades that divorce is much harder on men than it is on women. We know that men who undergo marital breakdown experience significantly higher rates of suicide, mental illness, physical health problems and accidents than do women. Yet we remain indifferent to their anguish.

The original was here: http://www.glennsacks.com/darrin_whites_story.htm

Fatherhood, Parenting, Society

Barbara Kay: Yet more family law gender injustice

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A year ago 19-year old Preston King was a light-hearted young Southern California man in love with his high school sweetheart. Her pregnancy changed their lives dramatically. But, even though the couple’s relationship deteriorated and they chose to live apart, King accepted approaching fatherhood with admirable commitment and indeed pleasure.

As the birth date approached, though, King was shocked to learn that the mother planned to give the baby up for adoption, whether or not he agreed to it. The adoptive couple had already been selected by the mother, and King was invited by an adoption agency – via text message – to meet them. King immediately petitioned the Orange County courthouse for paternity testing, and in the weeks leading to the birth, went to court several times to claim his paternal rights.

In spite of his best efforts, though, King was not allowed to sign a declaration affirming his fatherhood and was denied the right to paternal mention on the birth certificate. After King spent a mere 15 minutes alone with his baby, born September 7, the infant went home with his adoptive parents.

King continues to press for DNA testing and the right to parent his child.

According to a Facebook page created to tell his side of the story – the mother claims King was not an engaged father-to-be or supportive of her needs – Mr. King was both engaged and supportive. He maintains he attended medical appointments, bought maternity clothes, pampered his ex with spa treatments and excursions, and bought baby furniture, a layette and decorative accessories for the nursery.

Response to the story has been unequivocally sympathetic to King and highly critical of the state’s dismissive attitude to fathers his case represents. An online petition has been set up to push for a change in California’s laws to prevent more such “unethical” adoptions.

Observers of the family law system in Canada will be reminded of the quite similar 2007 case of Hendricks vs Swan in Saskatchewan. Saskatoon dad Adam Hendricks was in the same position as King. He was a willing father, whose girlfriend unilaterally adopted their baby out to well-off strangers. The judge decided that blood ties are only one factor in awarding custody, and could not trump others. Kinship was “a pivotal point” 50 years ago, the judge explained, but today the “best interests” of the child must be the paramount consideration.

What do these two cases tell us about the prevailing culture as filtered through the family law system? That mothers count in a child’s life and fathers don’t.

And even if King could prove paternity, he might still lose the child if the court decided it was in the child’s best interest to live with biological strangers offering a pony

When a mother – who might be poor, shiftless, unemployed, or otherwise disadvantaged – chooses to keep her child, the state does not intervene, and in fact will support her, if the child’s father (biological or presumed) cannot be run to ground. In the case of mothers’ rights, biology always trumps all other considerations. And yet, if the mother doesn’t want the child, suddenly the “best interests” of the child pivot from kinship – i.e. a willing, loving father’s natural rights – to the seductions of a detached home, a big back yard and a pony for Christmas.

So, in King’s case, if the mother had wanted to keep the child, the court would have ordered him to pay child support without any proof that the child was his biologically. On the other hand, even though she doesn’t want to keep the child, he has no right to custody unless he can prove paternity – which he cannot do unless the adoptive parents consent to a DNA sample being taken. And even if he could prove it, he might still lose the child if the court decided it was in the child’s best interest to live with biological strangers offering a pony.

 

Read the rest HERE

Fatherhood

How apprenticeships can empower fathers and strengthen marriages

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This is an excerpt from the fourth article in a four-part series, written in partnership with TheAtlantic.com, examining the role of fathers in American families.

Young men are more likely to drop out of high school and are less likely to aspire to college than their female peers. Young men who are poor, live in a city and are black or Latino are at even higher risk of unemployment and unplanned teen fatherhood than their peers in other demographics. As men’s earnings have stagnated, marriage has declined. It’s a vicious cycle: Being unmarried weakens men’s commitment to the workforce, but stagnation in earnings is contributing to the decline in marriage.

Robert Lerman — an economist at American University and fellow at the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan economic and social policy research center in Washington, D.C. — has a solution. He believes bringing apprentice-based learning to America’s schools would both raise earnings and give young men the skills they need to be good husbands and fathers. Put boys in a real-world situation outside the classroom with skilled adults as mentors, Lerman says, and students have a chance to engage in on-the-job training in a wide range of fields from baking to boat-building, farming to architecture, public health to civil engineering.

This is learning in context, and it’s what young men (and women) crave: It feels immediate and real. It is not isolated or abstract; it is refreshingly relevant, and it is taking place in real time, in real space, and among adults who take young people seriously. Youth apprenticeship has an immediacy that engages students who have trouble paying attention in class by giving them the time and the means to develop genuine mastery in a given field. At the same time, they are cultivating skills — such as how to communicate effectively, problem-solve, work in teams and maintain a positive attitude — that help them become reliable partners to their future spouses and present, stable fathers to their future children.

“If we teach everything entirely in a classroom context, we’re not going to be as effective — even when it comes to academics,” Lerman says. “The reality is that people learn best — whether it’s cognitive or technical skills or even how to get along with others — in context.”

Skill-based learning has fallen out of favor in the past few decades. Once popular, career-oriented courses have been phased out since the 1980s in favor of academic courses aimed at preparing students for the knowledge economy. For instance, shop classes — once a mainstay in most American high schools — are being eliminated in California schools in favor of courses that prepare students for university. A good education is increasingly defined as a college education: thinkPresident Obama’s national goals for college to be affordable, accessible and attainable for all, and for America to have the “highest number of college graduates in the world” by 2020.

Though well intentioned, the shift away from skill-based learning has not served all students well, especially those most at risk of dropping out of high school:poor, urban, minority boys who have a history of not thriving in school and consequently self-identify as poor learners. Although our high-school graduation rate used to rank number one among OECD nations, it’s now among the lowest.

The idea of college for all, Lerman says, is the reason it’s uncommon today for schools to offer specific career-oriented courses comprehensive enough to allow students to attain full competence. And a college-preparation-focused curriculum that doesn’t incorporate innovative learning strategies is misguided, leading disaffected youths to become bored with seemingly irrelevant coursework in high school. In one survey by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, almost half of high school dropouts surveyed say they left school because their classes felt boring and irrelevant.

Read the rest here: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865597426/How-apprenticeships-empower-fathers-and-strengthen-marriages.html

Fatherhood

Should welfare programs pay more attention to dads?

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This is an excerpt from the third article in a four-part series, written in partnership with TheAtlantic.com, examining the role of fathers in American families.

The 10-month-old twins call Frandy “Da Da.” He changes their diapers, mixes up their formula and helps shoulder the burden of providing food, clothing and medical care.

But the girls aren’t his children; Frandy’s girlfriend Cassie was pregnant when they started dating. When, a few months later, the two decided to move in together, “I knew raising the kids was part of the package,” said Frandy, a 23-year-old from inner-city Boston.

His own 6-year-old daughter lives across town with her mother and her mother’s boyfriend. Frandy sends a check every month.

Such complex family arrangements are becoming increasingly common — particularly among the poor, like Frandy and Cassie. Nearly 40 percent of unwed parents with low education levels share child-rearing responsibilities with a co-residential boyfriend or girlfriend, according to a 2013 report from the United States Census Bureau. Oftentimes these couples share at least one biological child, but in 27 percent of relationships, moms or dads are stepping in to raise children they didn’t conceive.

U.S. government programs designed to help such families, however, haven’t evolved with the population. Based on decades-old stereotypes that single mothers are raising children alone and single dads are “deadbeats,” the majority of U.S. anti-poverty programs almost exclusively serve women and children, said Jacquelyn Boggess, co-director of the Center for Family Policy and Practice, a Wisconsin-based think tank that focuses on supporting low-income parents.

The welfare system, as a result, can become a muddled mess of rearranging rather than relieving poverty. Single, non-custodial fathers bear the brunt. But dads don’t suffer alone. Because the poor pull together to support one another, everyone absorbs the pinch.

“It’s like seven people in bed together, sharing a very small blanket,” Boggess said. “If you move the blanket over to cover up one person who’s chilly, someone else is going to get cold.”

……

The biggest flaw in current anti-poverty policies is that they don’t take into account the increasing role that fathers play in children’s lives, Berger said. As mothers go to work at higher rates, fathers are taking on more child-rearing responsibilities. Even if parents are splitting the financial burden, though, only one parent can benefit from anti-poverty programs like SNAP or the earned-income tax credit. So, while mom gets help paying the bills, dad, who is oftentimes just as poor, is held responsible for his share of the costs.

“Helping women and not men creates huge gender asymmetry, which makes it harder for couples to stay together,” said Harvard sociologist Kathryn Edin, author of “Doing the Best I Can: Fatherhood in the Inner City.” “Men can’t earn enough money to earn a place in the family. They become dispensable.”

Expanding the earned-income tax credit to include non-custodial parents could go a long ways in addressing poverty, Edin said. Not precisely welfare, the EITC is a tax subsidy for low-income workers that increases as wages go up. The idea, she said, is to make good on the promise that “if you work, you won’t be poor.”

Read the rest here: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865597337/Should-welfare-programs-pay-more-attention-to-dads.html