Musings and Sometimes Rants about the non-equal status of Fathers in Family Law and Parenting. Additionally periodic comparisons to the treatment of men compared to women in other areas including health care.
Dave Flook is taking his website www.notalldadsaredeadbeats.comto a new level thanks to social networking over the Internet.
The Chatham resident said he is re-launching the website on Sunday as an online magazine, which will feature guest columnists and submissions from prominent figures in the equal parenting movement, as well as a parent of the week feature.
The website will also retain such features as user forums and social networking, he added.
Flook is also introducing an online live support system, which includes him and four other people
"If people have any immediate questions, they will be able to click on the live support and talk to a live support agent," he said.
Flook cautioned that they are not lawyers, so they can't give legal advice.
But he noted they can help with answering questions and providing emotional support and directing them to resources.
Flook credits the expansion of the website to social networking online.
"I got on Facebook and started promoting it very heavily and now we have members from Australia, we have members from the (United) States," he said, adding people from the United Kingdom have also signed up.
Flook said it is exciting to see how the website has grown to the point people are contacting him from other countries who want to start chapters.
Plans are in the works to set up new chapters in Australia, the United Kingdom, and across the border in Minnesota and Pittsburgh in the next month or so, he said.
Flook said Not All Dads are Deadbeats has more than 4,500 Facebook members, which is growing by about a few hundred members daily.
Most of the members on the website are guests, so the real number can't be determined, he said, adding the website hits are growing.
"Our make up of our organization is over 50 per cent women," he said, noting the group also deals with grandparent issues. "So we're not just talking about single dads."
Flook said he hasn't seen a single website that is free, which caters to divorce and equal parenting with a live support group.
"We're starting something that is pretty unprecedented," he said.
In explaining the growth of his website, Flook said, "I think at the end of the day people need to know that they're not alone."
The issue is not as taboo as it once was and people can talk about issues that are affecting their lives, he said.
"We're talking about proud parents who just want to have that relationship with their children and not have it compromised," Flook said.
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100 and if they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.)
So, that's what they decided to do.
The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. "Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20." So drinks for the ten now cost just $80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?' They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.
And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
"I only got a dollar out of the $20,"declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man," but he got $10!"
"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than I!"
"That's true!!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!"
"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!"
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, ladies and gentlemen, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.
For those who understand, no explanation is needed.
For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.
In Ireland, as in most Western Democracies, misandry mixed with an insatiable desire by judges, politicians and many lawyers to use a misguided and hateful manner of chivalry, passing ownership of children to the mom, and marginalizing the dad to visitor status or worse. It will be seen in hindsight this manner of child division is not in their best interests at all but does extreme damage for a cornucopia of reasons I have stated elsewhere in this blog. note this quote in the article "There is “no deliberate bias” against men in the family law courts, believes Anne Egan". A common definition of bias is as follows:
A preference or an inclination, especially one that inhibits impartial judgment.
An unfair act or policy stemming from prejudice.
The article then states immediately following moms have 88% of sole physical custody in Ireland. Some how I think this is on the low side. One can never believe some researchers no matter what they see with their own eyes. They are either perceptually blind or ideologues. MJM
What happens to dads after a split?
Tue, Oct 05, 2010
Recent research shows that when a marriage ends, most fathers are left without the family home or primary care of the children. Men who feel they were mistreated by the system tell their stories to KATE HOLMQUIST
EVERY NIGHT before he goes to sleep, Joe, a separated father, looks at a picture of his children on his computer screen and tells them he loves them.
When Tom’s marriage broke up, he slept in his car near the family home because he wanted to be close by in case something happened to the children.
Cathal weeps when he speaks of how he came home from hospital after being stabbed by his wife to find his house emptied of “everything” – including his children. His wife had left a solicitor’s letter on the counter accusing him of being mentally ill and telling him she wanted a divorce.
All three men have struggled for years in the courts to gain access to their children and believe that they should have been made primary carers, in their children’s best interests. They tell of being so alienated from their children by their ex-wives, they’ve had to watch their children’s first holy communions and confirmations from the back of the church. They speak of telling social workers about their ex-wives’ abusive behaviour and of not being believed.
“I was really, really depressed before the separation, sleeping in the back sitting room. You weren’t walking on eggshells, you were walking on razor blades,” says Cathal, who showed The Irish Times an extensive psychiatrist’s report that declares him under stress due to the separation, but well mentally otherwise.
“I know men who killed themselves because they lost contact with their children,” says Declan Keaveney, a retired garda who spent €50,000 fighting through the courts to be made primary carer of his two children and even contemplated suicide himself. He eventually succeeded in becoming primary carer.“Men have no voice – we have nothing,” he says.
Keaveney, who is now is a volunteer with Amen, a support group for male victims of domestic abuse. He listens on a daily basis to men driven to the edge by rancorous separation wars in which children are often used as ammunition. “Parental alienation syndrome”, where one parent turns the children against another, is common, he says.
A report by One Family, an advocacy group for one-parent families, finds some fathers who, despite contact orders, are refused contact with their children by their wives and cannot get the HSE to intervene and enforce their rights.
Court delays also mean fathers can go months without seeing their children. One father says he “just gave up because it was too stressful . . . [my ex-wife] was on legal aid and I had a private solicitor which cost a lot of money and I just gave up”.
There is “no deliberate bias” against men in the family law courts, believes Anne Egan, a researcher who sat in on 158 in camera cases (where cases are heard in private) for her PhD, though the court “reinforces stereotypical views” that children need to be with their mother as primary carer – the result in 88 per cent of cases.
Another PhD researcher, Róisín O’Shea, found only 2.23 per cent of 493 cases had the children living with their father. While many fathers asked for 50/50 living arrangements, O’Shea saw this ordered by the court in just two cases.
Egan, who also interviewed fathers, says most accepted the mother as primary carer, but “they would have liked more contact rather than specific times and dates”. These fathers missed the daily informal involvement with their children over breakfast, the school run or even just a few minutes in the evening to hear about a child’s day.
The second major complaint was being left out of decision-making. “Most were not happy with the situation but it was working for them,” she says.
If a father wants to be primary carer, “it’s not always fair. There’s a battle royale if you are acting for a father,” says Marion Campbell, a private family law solicitor who has been dealing with separation cases since 1981, when she started her career in the legal aid board.
Due to the recession, a growing number of men have become stay-at-home fathers whose wives work full-time. It’s often the wife who wants to separate, yet if the father wants to remain in the home as primary carer, he needs maintenance paid by the wife and her agreement to leave the family home, which is practically unheard of (O’Shea’s study found not one case of fathers receiving maintenance).
Jobless and rejected men may have no choice but to move home to their parents’ house, Campbell says. Would a stay-at-home mother be asked to leave her house with no maintenance and limited access to her children because her husband wanted a separation? The question just doesn’t arise, Campbell points out.
Another unfair perception is that men are not physically assaulted by their wives, she adds. “I’ve come across a lot of cases, but women are much stronger and more proactive in issuing proceedings. Men bury their heads and come in at the last minute and quite a number are upset because they don’t want the separation,” says Campbell.
ONE FATHER WHO WAS physically abused says he never told anyone because “it’s embarrassing”. When parents fight in court over property and children, lawyers’ briefcases heave with psychiatrists’ and social workers’ reports, although hearings can be so brief that judges don’t always see everything.
Keaveney says the men he hears from often feel social workers have sided with their wives and barely listen to them, and that the wives’ allegations are always believed.
Joe says he experienced years of false accusations by his ex-wife before he finally received a verbal apology from a social worker who said he’d been right about his wife’s fragile mental state all along. For example, his wife went to gardaí accusing Joe of exposing their son to pornography during an access visit. Gardaí investigated and The Irish Times has seen a copy of a letter from An Garda Síochana telling Joe they found no basis for the allegations. For Joe, this was just one episode in a long campaign by his ex-wife to “destroy” him, even though she had left him for another man.
“Because she’s a woman she can say what she likes, do what she likes and is getting away with it. Because I’ve moved on, the only way she can get to me is through the kids. I know guys who have not seen their kids in five to 10 years.
“One father I know, hadn’t seen his son for eight years. Then he got a call through a solicitor to say his son had attempted suicide. Can you imagine how he feels?”
Tom weeps when he speaks of living “in limbo”. After years of court battles costing in the region of €50,000, he has good access to his children but still worries about their safety. At the height of the conflict, he would drive by a place where he knew his children would be, just to see them from a distance. “I’m trying to move on, but last week, I broke down leaving the kids back to their mother. I was leaving them to somebody I don’t trust.” Sleepless nights have become routine, but he keeps going, trying to rebuild his life and his business, “for my kids”.
This is a novel and excellent way to get attention on a serious matter. We have the traditional Gold Digging wife selfishly keeping sole "possession" and "ownership" of the children while bleeding dad dry with tax free earnings from him of $48,000. per year. In addition, it is alleged, she has alienated the children from him. It's not enough to have sole custody and his money but she also wants to steal them from him emotionally through Parental Alienation, which is child abuse.
I believe this man's story on its merits. No one does this sort of thing unless they are totally frustrated by the misandrist court system. This man is a Doctor of Dentistry and would not risk his reputation and the lies of the feminist law system and their apparatchiks who will try to denigrate him with the abuser label.
I wish him well and wish I had his resources as do many dads sidelined by chivalrous and wrong headed judges. The lawyer who dropped out of the case no doubt is not using the "best interest of the children" mantra anymore. These guys are in it for the money not the children. Money is everything. I wonder why he did not recommend shared parenting to the wife. It would have saved everyone tons of money and heart ache. The following video explains some of the issues in the case and the horrendous financial cost. The emotional cost to all is incalculable, and long term. Many of us will live with the latter for the rest of our lives and the children may bear non-healable psychic scars for life.MJM
Father in lengthy custody battle hires protesters to vent
Picketers paid by a dentist mired in a custody battle hold signs protesting the court system at the corner of East New York Avenue and North Amelia Avenue in DeLand on Thursday. N-J | Peter Bauer
Wardner
DAYTONA BEACH -- Frustrated by what he sees as a court system unfairly slanted against fathers in custody cases, a dentist has hired more than a dozen day laborers to picket courthouses and a law office between here and DeLand.
Dr. James Wardner, 61, of Mims started paying picketers to stand outside the Daytona Beach courthouse annex on Orange Avenue last year.
About a week ago, the men (and a few women) started standing on the sidewalk at the Volusia County Courthouse in DeLand. They carry signs that say things like, "Fathers Have No Rights in This Courthouse."
Wardner, who is frustrated by his lengthy -- and expensive -- court battle, said this week he's decided to use his resources to spread the word on how courts allow mothers to make "dads the bad parent." The key issue, he said, is a condition called "parental alienation."
"It's bad enough if you have one (child) that hates you," he said. "I have five. None of them want anything to do with me."
Wardner said parental alienation includes a systematic campaign to make the children hate one of the parents. "Mostly," he said, "it's the men" who are alienated in this way. "I'm finished with it."
Picketers paid by Wardner have also been seen outside the Ballough Road offices of the lawyers who last represented Wardner's ex-wife. Wardner, who is fighting for custody of his five children, said the issue is larger than his own case.
"The guys are making a statement, that you can't go to court and have a fair say," Wardner said in a telephone interview. "If you're a father, you're doomed because that little guy in the robe is going to cast you into visitor status."
Wardner and his ex-wife, Carol Stillwagon, 47, of Edgewater divorced in 2004. At first, Wardner was ordered to pay $1,800 a month for child support but the amount was increased over time to just under $4,000.
A couple of years ago, he started a court fight to pay less child support or get full custody. He claimed in court documents that his ex-wife systematically tried to cut him out of their children's lives.
According to court filings, Wardner hired a psychologist who is of the opinion Stillwagon "engaged in a deliberate campaign to alienate the children from their father."
Stillwagon, who works as a housekeeper at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, denies that claim.
"That's not my goal," she said. "But I can't work with someone who just wants me out of the picture. I'm in a fight to keep them, but to keep them in order to maintain a more normal life."
She pointed out that Wardner pays for the protesters, while remaining behind in his child support. According to court records, Wardner was more than $13,000 behind in child support payments last December. Stillwagon said Tuesday he's paid most of that off.
At Wardner's request, four other judges removed themselves from the case. He says he's spent "hundreds of thousands of dollars" on legal bills.
Wardner says the picketers he's paying to spread the word of "parental alienation" are being heard as far away as Spain and France on the Internet.
"People are sick and tired of being alienated and separated from their kids," Wardner said.
Some of the protesters, none of whom wanted to be named for this story, were versed on the issue of parental alienation. Most of them weren't.
The condition, which is essentially defined as a child being pitted against one parent by the other to the point of hatred, is not recognized by the American Psychiatric Association or American Medical Association as a medical syndrome. But the term has become more common in custody battles, divorce lawyers say.
Attorney Richard J. D'Amico had to remove himself from representing Wardner's ex-wife earlier this year because she ran out of money to fight Wardner's request to gain custody of the couples five children.
According to court records, Stillwagon owes $80,000 in legal fees. She's trying to find a new lawyer. But if she can't, Stillwagon said she's preparing to represent herself in court against her ex, who earned between $300,000 and $400,000 in recent years. He's now spending thousands to keep the protesters in front of the courthouse -- and in front of D'Amico's office, which is something D'Amico doesn't quite get.
"I don't want to get into the middle of it," he said. "She can't afford to litigate this and he's pummeled her into the ground."
D'Amico said there's nothing that looks like parental alienation going on in this case. According to court records, Wardner is allowed to see his children three times a month. But, Wardner said, his children do not want to see him.
As an attorney whose handled divorce cases for over 30 years, D'Amico has seen it all. "In every divorce, to a certain degree, there's posturing, and some take it too far," he said. "But not Carol. It's sad, this case is sad for a lot of reasons."
Wardner said he's doing what he can to fight against what he sees as an unjust system. "I can't get it done," he said. "(Lawyers and judges) keep working behind the scenes to make sure the attorneys get paid, and the kids stay where they are. It's nonsense."
Carol Stillwagon said she's preparing for what could be her last month with the children, ages 9 to 15.
"I might lose my kids in a month," she said. "Whether I have an attorney or not, I have to reply with interrogatories. I have to mount a defense."
Her motion to continue the case is scheduled to be heard by Circuit Judge Randall Rowe on Monday.
Like many people, Stillwagon said she drove past the protesters for months before realizing they were paid by her ex-husband.
"I assumed those men with the signs were impacted by the issue in one way or another," she said. "I never thought they were day laborers being paid to be out there."
Keep these names in the forefront when going to the polls in the next federal election in Canada. Each one of them are feminist sycophants who drank the kool aid we men are a dangerous lot and the only way to keep the fembots safe is to maintain a useless and inefficient gun registry. After all we are only men the last bastion of bigotry and bias for the MSM and others to pillory.MJM
Larry Bagnell, Lib, Yukon Fin Donnelly, NDP, BC Keith Martin, Lib, BC Charlie Angus, NDP, ON Carol Hughes, NDP, ON Claude Gravelle, NDP, ON Anthony Rota, Lib, ON Malcom Allen, NDP, ON Jim Karygiannis, Lib, ON Albina Guarnieria, Lib, ON Todd Russel, Lib, Labrador Scott Simma, Lib, gander Andrew Scott, Lib, Avalon Jean-Claude Damours, Lib, Madawaska Wayne Easter, Lib, Malpeque Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville
A cogent, rational, incisive look at the trends in Family Law in Canada and the benefits for children of Equal/Shared parenting. Barbara Kay is one of Canada's leading scribes discussing issues affecting our children and the marginalization of their parents, particularly dads.
Its interesting to observe in jurisdictions where shared parenting has been introduced the divorce rate has dropped. It gives mom a chance to give sober second thought to dumping dad. The wife, in Canada, initiates Divorce in about 75% of cases and gets sole physical custody in over 90% of judges orders.
Despite polls showing consistently close to 80% of Canadians support Equal Parenting governments are shy to tackle it.
There are two main reasons for this which are interlinked. Lawyers oppose it, including the feminist faction in the Canadian Bar Association (CBA) as well as the CBA itself and feminists oppose it. Politicians fear the backlash of both the above, particularly the feminists. Remember when feminism was about equality? Now it’s about victimization. Giving dads equal parenting somehow will victimize mom.
Its time for equality in parenting. We dads are ready and waiting.MJM
The above was sent as a letter to the National Post editor.
Barbara Kay, National Post · Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2010
In the name of changing social mores and social justice, Ottawa's 1998 Special Joint Committee on Child Custody and Access recommended equal parenting as the default custody presumption (in the absence of abuse) after separation. The report then fell into a political black hole. Today, a tip of a ladder reaches up from that hole, and clanging footsteps can be heard on the rungs.
At least three recent developments in the field of family law are hopeful signs that social justice and common sense may finally prevail in post-separation custody issues.
We have British Columbia's first review of family law in B.C. since the Family Relations Act came into force more than thirty years ago. Their July "White Paper on Family Relations Act Reform" (accepting submissions until Oct. 8) contains progressive draft legislation and policy proposals: It recommends stepping away from courts and the adversarial model in order to "adopt a conflict prevention approach to family law disputes" and urges making "children's best interests the only consideration in parenting disputes."
Next up is the Green Party's unequivocal adoption of a policy of equal parenting at their August convention. By my reckoning that means every single federal party is on board with the idea that both parents have the right to maintain a strong, loving bond with their children, established through credible sociological research as necessitating 40% of the time with children beyond infancy.
Then there is last week's release of the Law Commission of Ontario in-depth report on the family law system. The report deplores a system that can bankrupt litigants and routinely ignores the wishes and interests of children: "Children want to be heard but they feel they have no voice and no power in relation to adults, including their parents, lawyers, counsellors and judges."
Is there anyone who believes that our family court system doesn't need reform? Perhaps some aging radical feminists who are content with the fact that fathers are offered shared or sole residential custody in only about 6% of court-contested cases. And of course the myriad of professionals -- lawyers above all -- who benefit financially in dragging out litigation, mostly unrelated to children's best interests, and who perpetuate a dehumanizing and heartbreaking -- but lucrative --winner-take-all style of "justice."
But disinterested people categorically want reform. A National Post poll indicated that 91% of its readership supported equal custody as an alternative to sole custody determination, and a recent poll by the federal government has 80% of the public, from every political persuasion, supporting equal parenting.
The people for whom this issue matters most -- people whose lives have been negatively impacted by the current iniquitous system -- are united and organized. The Equal Parenting Coalition (EPC) is now an international social movement focused on averting the tragedies that result for children when a parent is legally disenfranchised from his or her children's lives.
I say "his or her," but in reality, the iniquities of the system overwhelmingly target fathers. What are most fathers asking for? According to the EPC, the clearly stated primary goal would appear to be equal physical parenting. Advocacy in the equal parenting movement has moved well beyond fathers' rights groups, and is now a broad-based coalition of both mothers and fathers. More and more women realize that excluding fathers from their children's lives is unethical and psychologically counter-productive for everyone involved. Fathers want more input than just offering suggestions that their ex-wives can ignore. They want to truly share in parenting, including all its responsibilities.
Indeed, the current president of the Canadian Equal Parenting Council is a woman. Kris Titus took up the EP cause when she saw how much her children suffered from the absence of their father after their divorce. She became an activist in the family law reform movement when she actually had to fight with a judge to change his award of sole custody to shared parenting, a move that benefited everyone in her family.
For many years Canadian justice ministers from both governing federal parties seem to have been more concerned with protecting the interests of the divorce industry, which takes up 40% of Canadian courts' time, rather than serving the needs of children. According to a 2003 study by actuary Brian Jenkins, "What do the children want?", 86% of children in North America have no voice in custody arrangements.
Decades ago women told men they had to take more responsibility for active parenting. They listened. Fathers have earned the moral right to equality of involvement in their children's lives in post-separation agreements as a matter of social justice. It is now up to our legislatures and judiciary to assume responsibility for establishing an equal-parenting presumption in law.
Help for pro se users in Clark County, Indiana
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Commissioners OK legal help center for courthouse New appointment made to
fill a void in County Courts By BRADEN LAMMERS
Braden.Lammers@newsandtribune.com ...
Modern Feminism in Canada
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Feminists, male and female, try to disrupt a Canadian Association for
Equality meeting at the University of Toronto in 2013
I am Politically active and right of centre on most issues with the odd exception such as legalization of "Mary Jane".
I advocate on changes to Family Law - an incredibly dysfunctional arena where parents are pitted against one another and children are the victims.
My picture will sometimes show me as a younger man simply because I like them.
