Meet the MILLIONAIRE who doesn’t have to pay his ex-wife a dime in child support

by Clayton Craddock • June 14, 2013 • 2 Comments

The amount a parent has to pay to support their child should never be tied to the amount either parent earns. I feel It is irrelevant. Especially if there is a situation where there is shared custody. Why is the state forcing people to spend money when a parent does not have to. Did the state force the parent to spend the money while the parents were together? Why should it be done after they split up? Why should expenses rise when income rises?

We should be teaching children how to live modestly and not to obsess over material possessions. Instead it seems as if we are teaching each generation to live paycheck to paycheck. It is truly a tragic situation and needs to be changed immediately.

Court ordered child support and the guidelines are outdated and make no sense in a modern two earner economy.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A father who has custody of his child the majority of the year was not obligated to make support payments to the child’s mother, despite the vast disparity in their incomes, a divided New York state appeals court ruled Thursday.

The Appellate Division, First Department, found that the Child Support Standards Act of 1989 precluded mother Mara Rubin from receiving child support payments from Anthony Della Salla, the father of her 9-year-old son.

Rubin has no income other than $5,000 a month in pendente lite child support payments from Della Salla, and an additional $1,000 in child support payments from the father of her daughter, the ruling said. Della Salla has roughly $20 million in assets, the ruling said.

The Child Support Standards Act sets out a uniform formula for determining child support payments. The law says that “the court shall order the non-custodial parent to pay” his or her share of that amount.

Based on the “plain language of the Child Support Standards Act, its legislative history, and its interpretation by the Court of Appeals, a custodial parent who has the child a majority of the time cannot be directed to pay child support to a non-custodial parent,” Justice Rosalyn Richter wrote for the majority.

The ruling reversed a 2012 order from Supreme Court Justice Ellen Gesmer in Manhattan.

According to the First Department ruling, Rubin and Della Salla had a son in 2003, although they never married or lived together. When their relationship ended four years later, Rubin had primary custody of the child under an informal arrangement, the ruling said.

PARALLEL CUSTODY

In 2009, Rubin sought sole legal and residential custody, as well as child support payments. Della Salla also asked for primary custody. In 2011, the court granted Della Salla primary custody during the school year and Rubin primary custody during the summer, according to the ruling.

After the custody ruling, Della Salla moved for summary judgment on the child support claim, saying he was the custodial parent and, under the Child Support Standards Act, only non-custodial parents can be ordered to pay child support.

Rubin did not dispute the language of the law, but said that an order denying her child support payments would be “unjust and inappropriate” because of the disparity in income and the fact that she had custody for part of the year, the ruling said.

Gesmer denied Della Salla’s motion, and said the two had “parallel legal custody.” Given the difference in their financial situations, she said she had the discretion to order Della Salla to make support payments because Rubin needed the money to help pay her rent.

Della Salla appealed, and the First Department held that Gesmer had erred. The court pointed out that Della Salla had custody of the child approximately 56 percent of the time.

The panel cited a 1998 Court of Appeals case, Bast v. Rossoff, which found that support cases involving shared custody should be decided by applying the same legal factors as those in other cases that do not, including payment of support by the non-custodial parent.

“Even if we sympathize with the mother’s difficulties in covering the cost of housing in New York City, under the current CSSA, we cannot provide a remedy by giving her child support when she is not, in reality, the custodial parent,” Richter wrote.

Read more HERE

Fatherhood

Fathers disappear from households across America

by Clayton Craddock • June 13, 2013 • 5 Comments

In every state, the portion of families where children have two parents, rather than one, has dropped significantly over the past decade. Even as the country added 160,000 families with children, the number of two-parent households decreased by 1.2 million. Fifteen million U.S. children, or 1 in 3, live without a father, and nearly 5 million live without a mother. In 1960, just 11 percent of American children lived in homes without fathers.

America is awash in poverty, crime, drugs and other problems, but more than perhaps anything else, it all comes down to this, said Vincent DiCaro, vice president of the National Fatherhood Initiative: Deal with absent fathers, and the rest follows.

People “look at a child in need, in poverty or failing in school, and ask, ‘What can we do to help?’ But what we do is ask, ‘Why does that child need help in the first place?’ And the answer is often it’s because [the child lacks] a responsible and involved father,” he said.

Black Men Want Committed Relationships?

by Clayton Craddock • June 12, 2013 • 0 Comments

I found this at NPR:

So Single Black Men Want Commitment. Really?

by GENE DEMBY

June 08, 2013

We recently found that single black men were much more likely to say they were looking for a long-term relationship (43 percent) compared to single black women (25 percent).

Those numbers come from our big poll of African-Americans‘ views of their lives and communities (the poll was conducted by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health). Our findings about the dating lives of single folks — that is, respondents 18-49, widowed, divorced, or never married — have sparked the most conversation so far.

And the gender skew has elicited straight-out side-eyes.

A lot of people wondered just what was going on, because the prevailing story is that black women cannot find black men who are interested in a relationship. (And if we’re keeping it one hundred, these results sparked some arguments among the Code Switch team.)

So here are some additional ideas about what might explain this discrepancy. As our poll makes clear: it’s hardly that neat.

1. The Financial Stability Theory.

When we asked Robert Blendon, one of the poll’s co-directors, what might explain this gap, he pointed to research that has shown black folks care more about the economic cost-benefit analysis of partnering up.

“African-Americans were more concerned with financial security than whites or Hispanics when they considered marriage,” Blendon said.

So why might that matter? Blendon said that black women are outpacing black men in college attendance and completion, as well as as the attainment of postgraduate degrees. (Women in general are more likely to get degrees, but it’s even more pronounced among black folks: two-thirds of all bachelor’s degrees awarded to African-Americans in 2009-2010 went to women.) Assuming that our female respondents are looking for equally educated black men as partners, there may be real worry about the economic prospects of their pool of partners. (Only about four percent of respondents identified themselves as LGBT.)

But if we also think about the division of household labor, which in the United States means women bear a larger share of domestic responsibilities, then a long-term relationship might seem unappealing to many women. (A federal study from 2011 showed married women reporting to have much less leisure time on a daily basis than do men, doing a whole lot more housework, and doing the lion’s share of the child-rearing.)

It’s possible that our single women respondents are taking all of this into account and finding the prospect of a long-term relationship wanting. (Alas, we don’t have numbers for other racial groups, and no basis for comparison.)

2. The What-Do-You-Mean-By-Long-Term-Relationship Theory.

This is the theory we heard most often. Maybe people have very different definitions of “long-term relationship.” Put another way: men want relationships, not marriage.

That’s what Milton Appling, a single Brooklynite, told NPR’s Chris Johnson when asked for his thoughts on the findings. “If ‘long-term relationship’ means headed to marriage as a final step, as opposed to X years and we’ll see what happens, then that’s very different,” he said. “Men in general, when they hear that term, do not necessarily mean ‘marriage.’ Marriage is marriage.”

Danielle Belton, writing at Clutch, also wondered about the choice of words. “Commitment does not necessarily equal ‘marriage,’ which is what I know many of my friends, including myself, say they eventually want,” she wrote. “Sure, I have no doubt that there [is many a man] who thinks life would be easier if the rent could be split, if sex was easy and plentiful, if sandwiches were made and always abundant while still having that escape clause because nobody has any papers on each other.”

Family court lawyers and blood sucking barristers reap the benefits like flesh eating vultures hovering over a freshly slaughtered carcas of a once happy relationship picking the bones and filling their bank balances.

by Clayton Craddock • June 12, 2013 • 0 Comments

“Family court lawyers and blood sucking barristers reap the benefits, like flesh eating vultures hovering over a freshly slaughtered carcus of a once happy relationship and picking the bones and filling their bank balances with blood stained bank notes”

Fatherhood

Do you have FWS? Fatherless Woman Syndrome?

by Clayton Craddock • June 11, 2013 • 1 Comment

I ran across an amazing post online and needed to share some of it. You must read the entire post because the author breaks down so many of our culture’s issues rather nicely.

I feel this is a problem that needs immediate treatment. No drugs needed. Just love. Love between fathers and mothers…..and the slow demise of the family court system.

Fatherless Women Syndrome by Terrica Taylor (The Liberator Magazine 2.1 #4)
{image by Olukemi Kamson}

“Fatherless-ness” is an issue that needs to be discussed. Many times women don’t understand why they have the issues they do, but it’s only because they haven’t been able to put a name to their struggle. My philosophy is, “if you can name it you can change it.” The name is the Fatherless Women’s Syndrome; it’s a syndrome that affects many women….

….Within the Fatherless Women’s Syndrome, there are some very distinct symptoms that have an abnormal effect on our emotions. When a woman is left without her father, she has emptiness inside, she struggles with abandonment issues, and she may even feel unloved or unwanted. Some ladies without fathers in their lives may disagree with this diagnosis and may feel that their fathers’ absence has no affect or control over their lives but, even if it’s subconscious, it does have and affect and if we would be honest with ourselves, we would see that the syndrome shows its ugly head in all of our relationships….

…The question we should ask ourselves is why these relationships failed one after the other. Usually what happens with the woman who has Fatherless Women’s Syndrome is that she becomes either too clingy or too defensive and afraid of commitment….

…The woman who is too clingy holds on to a man for dear life in fear that he will reject her and leave her like the first man in her life—her dad. The man who she is clinging to perceives her as being too much of a responsibility, so he leaves….

…The woman who is afraid of commitment is very defensive and guards her heart—she doesn’t let herself get too close. This woman usually calls herself the “independent woman.” The title is something she believes will shield her from dealing with a greater reality, the reality of having the “syndrome.” She may believe that being in a relationship with a man is a sign of weakness—not realizing that it can be a sign of strength, because that mate is there to compliment the person she is. Men want nothing more then to feel wanted by their woman. It makes a man feel good to be our “knights in shining armor,” so if he feels unappreciated he will eventually get tired of it, and leave….

…In both instances, it leaves a woman in precisely the predicament she fears—alone….

…There is something about the father daughter relationship that is so special and unique; it’s where a woman recognizes her role and where she learns about a man’s role. This is why when a woman is left fatherless, something is lost; she doesn’t truly understand who she is as woman or the right things to look for when choosing a mate….

Read the entire post HERE

Fatherhood

Fatherhood 101

by Clayton Craddock • June 10, 2013 • 0 Comments

Marquette Williams kept his promise. Just like a responsible father should.

For the past year, the Los Angeles filmmaker has been in and out of Cleveland working on a documentary, “Fatherhood 101,” that celebrates fatherhood and informs men about programs that can help them. Several programs offered by the Cuyahoga County Fatherhood Initiative are highlighted in it.

Williams, 40, a married father of three who grew up in Twinsburg, vowed the documentary would come out in time for Fathers Day 2013 and that he would premiere it in Cleveland.

Proudly, he has met those goals. “Fatherhood 101” screens five times this weekend at Tower City Cinemas in downtown Cleveland: 7 p.m. Thursday; 2 and 4 p.m. Saturday, and 2 and 4 p.m. on June 16, Father’s Day.

His hope is that you’ll take your dad to see it rather than buying him a tie or a drill.

Use the film to drill down into the importance of the father-child relationship in your own family. That’s a rare conversation, Williams now knows, after watching men take a seat on a stool to be interviewed, and one after another, begin to cry in front of the cameras.

That’s when he realized how unusual it is for men to be asked to talk about fatherhood.

“We don’t talk about how much we love our children. That’s not considered manly . . . and it’s definitely not considered cool,” says Williams, who grew up without his own biological father.

The strong, silent dad image has given rise to the perception that many men don’t care about their children.

But that’s not the case, Williams is convinced after interviewing more than 150 fathers. “They may not be in the home, for a myriad of reasons. In the movie, we try to talk about some. But all creatures love their offspring. That is an instinctual thing.”

It’s easy to understand how today’s young people are arriving at the maternity ward with zero context on the importance of fatherhood. One in three kids in the U.S. lives apart from dad, and two-thirds of all African-American children do.

But something needs to be done to stop the epidemic’s spread.

I applaud Williams for doing his part, with “Fatherhood 101.” A big part of his mission is “making fatherhood cool,” because he believes that is what’s missing.

“The proudest moments are going to come from your children,” insists Williams. “The Browns winning the Super Bowl can never compare to a parent getting their child potty-trained. Say what you want — but the day you stop wiping butts, that’s a great day.”

Williams has to be one of the funniest interviews I’ve conducted lately, especially when he described how much he learned when he attended a Cooking with Dad class in Cleveland. Apparently there were some moms in the room when he questioned why the instructor was rinsing off canned vegetables before cooking them. “The salt!” the women told him in outraged voices.

Nobody tells fathers these things, he laughs. “That’s a great class for a dad to take. I learned a lot. I’m sitting there filming it and I’m learning.”

It’s programs like these, which boost a father’s confidence and ability to raise his kids, that in the long run can save taxpayers millions, Williams is convinced. Studies show that when involved fathers are present, children are less likely to be incarcerated, live in poverty, drop out of school or become teen parents.

Although Williams did have “a really great stepfather,” he says it was still tough teaching himself the Xs and Os of fatherhood.

For example, “I never played baseball because that’s a father-son sport,” he says. But determined not to repeat his father’s mistakes, Williams bravely signed up his kids for T-ball when the time came.

“They laugh at me when I throw the ball,” he says, admitting he looks goofy at 6-foot-4 awkwardly fielding errant balls. “I know it doesn’t look that great. And I can’t say I look that cool doing it.

“But I am cool, because I’m doing it,” he says.

Williams interviews famous fathers like Grant Hill and Alan Thicke, but he also introduces us to some invisible men, the kind who handle their business but never get the spotlight.

You meet John Carter of Twinsburg, the must-see story of the film. After becoming a teen father, he gave up his football scholarship, came home from college and got a job — which he has kept for 20 years. He is a steady role model to his children, who have graduated from high school and college.

His film isn’t all upbeat and positive. Williams is disturbed at how the child support system, and increasingly mothers themselves, see dads as a source of money and no more.