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.
Does this article sound familiar to a lot of men? My case went on for over 4 years and I lost everything.MJM
Family court broken, report says
JACK POIRIER
The (Sarnia) Observer
Sarnia's Jason Morningstar says he's the poster boy for what's wrong with Ontario's family court system.
He's more than two years and $110,000 into a custody battle with his ex-wife.
He's seeking joint custody of their two children, aged five and seven.
"I've been drained financially and emotionally," Morningstar says.
Dozens of similar cases were outlined in a newly-released report commissioned by the Law Commission of Ontario and calling for reform of the family justice system.
The 83-page report, Voices from a Broken Family Justice System, says the system fails to find workable solutions for parents, often pitting them against one another in highly litigious cases that alienate children.
Parents are being driven to the poorhouse by an adversarial family court system that fails to protect the needs of children or find workable solutions for families, the report states.
Based on interviews and consultations with more than 100 social workers, family councillors, lawyers, judges and families, the report criticizes the family law system for not better meeting the needs of families at such a highly stressful period.
The report suggests lawyers sometimes use "delaying tactics" to make money and turn to bullying tactics to paint an ex-partner as an unfit parent.
The report says that's a common theme. Meanwhile, "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," it states.
Morningstar's five-year-old son was diagnosed as an infant with an inoperable brain tumour. During a time when both parents should be working to spend as much quality time with their sons as possible, the court wranglings have left them strapped for cash and emotionally drained, Morningstar says.
"I'm living paycheck to paycheck. And the worst part is there is absolutely no one out there that will listen."
Morningstar said he now sees his children three times a week, but that's taken more than two years to get to.
"There's a lot of nasty games. It really doesn't need to be this difficult. I believe my ex-wife and I are good people," he says.
"All I ever wanted was joint custody of my children, and it's going to cost me $150,000 to get it. I've been struggling to keep my son alive and now I'm struggling to keep him in my life ... It's been a nightmare."
Onetime lawyer and former Sarnia-Lambton MP Roger Gallaway has repeatedly called the family law system unfair and biased against men.
Gallaway says little has improved in the system since he co-chaired a joint Senate-Commons committee that spent a year holding extensive hearings into custody and access.
The committee presented its report, For the Sake of the Children, to Parliament in December 1998, detailing harrowing stories of parents who were cut off from their children and driven into bankruptcy and despair by mounting legal bills and an unresponsive court system.
There needs to exist a presumption of shared parenting and equality going into court as it relates to parenting roles, he says.
"It doesn't exist. It doesn't apply in family law."
Gallaway says too often baseless allegations are brought up in court, based on "allegation, rumour, gossip and assumptions" and it is a highly effective tactic in preventing shared parenting.
"The onus should be on the parent who is alleging (the misconduct) to prove it. But courts are making decisions that are not evidentiary-based and that's frightening."
Feminists are wrong to claim that men should do a larger share of the housework and childcare because on average, men and women already do the same number of hours of productive work. In fact, if we consider the hours spent doing both paid work and unpaid household, care and voluntary work together, men already do more than their fair share, argues LSE sociologist Catherine Hakim in a special issue of Renewal: a journal of social democracy.
Until recently, unpaid work such as childcare and domestic work has been hard to quantify and so mostly ignored by social scientists and policy makers. The development of Time Use Surveys across the European Union, however, has provided data on exactly how much time we spend carrying out both paid and unpaid productive activities. The findings show that on average women and men across Europe do the same total number of productive work hours once paid jobs and unpaid household duties are added together - roughly eight hours a day.
Catherine Hakim said: ‘We now have a much more specific and accurate portrait of how families and individuals divide their “work” and this data overturns the well-entrenched theory that women work disproportional long hours in jobs and at home in juggling family and work. Feminists constantly complain that men are not doing their fair share of domestic work. The reality is that most men already do more than their fair share.’
While men carry out substantially more hours of paid work, women will often choose to scale down their hours of paid employment to make time for household work when starting a family. In Britain, men are shown to actually work longer hours on average than women, as many will work overtime to boost family income when the children are at home while wives switch to part-time jobs or drop out of employment altogether.
Couples with no children at home and with both in full-time jobs emerge as the only group where women work more hours in total than men, once paid and unpaid work hours are added up.
The article argues that in societies where genuine choices are open to women, the key driver to how work is divided comes down to lifestyle preference, not gender. Individuals fall into three categories: work-centred, home-centred or wanting to combine work and family (adaptive). 80% of women fall into the adaptive category, Catherine Hakim finds, with only 20% wanting a work-centred lifestyle.
Despite this, most European policies are geared towards full-time worker carers and ignore unpaid work, although there are several countries that are starting to support family work. Finland, for example, operates a homecare allowance system that is paid to any parent who stays at home without using state nurseries, effectively paying the carer for their work. In Germany, the income-splitting tax system for couples recognises the work done by full-time homemakers by aggregating and then splitting the spouses earnings between into two halves, reflecting the idea that both benefit from the home/work arrangement.
‘Instead of looking for the one ‘best option’ policy, governments should offer several’, says Catherine Hakim. ‘One-sided policies that support employment and careers but ignore the productive work done in the family are, in effect, endorsing market place values over family values. But the altruistic and community values embraced by home-centred or adaptive individuals, such as sharing, trust and cohesion, are equally as important to a social democracy.
‘Furthermore, there is evidence that men are beginning to demand the same options and choices as women, with more claims of sex discrimination from men. Policy makers need to be aiming for gender-neutral policies that cater for all three main lifestyle choices.’
(How) can social policy and fiscal policy recognise unpaid family work? by Catherine Hakim is published in a special issue of Renewal: a journal of social democracy, out now.
A copy of the final report can be found here| (PDF).
I offered some comments based on quotes in the article following:
"...fewer than half of Canadians believe a married or common-law couple with no children counts as a family."
The perception that childless couples are not a family is correct. Both the definition of family and the aforesaid perception is : A group consisting of parents and children living together in a household. A family has parents and children. A couple living together married or not is a couple.
"Clarence Lochhead, executive director of the Ottawa-based research and advocacy organization.
There's "no question" that families have changed profoundly over the past 50 years, the report says, but it also highlights surprising stability lying beneath the surface."
I think this person is "wishing" it were so rather than actually showing direct solid peer reviewed evidence. I say this is just left wing social engineering propaganda. The most unstable of relationships is common law which the study admits is growing faster than marriage , which they also admit is on the decline. A married family is far more stable but their are many incentives in place for one party of this marriage to end it. These incentives are part of today's gendered politics. Is there no mention of this?
"...and 88% said they expected to stay with the same partner for life."
I think we all know expectations and reality are divergent rather than convergent. Close to 40% of marriages end in divorce. Second marriages end at a greater rate and common law relationships end much faster in greater numbers.
"We didn't invent single-parent families. They've always been part of the cultural fabric of Canadian society," Mr. Glossop said. "There was a period when Canadians thought that was a function of feminism in the late '60s and kids growing up and overthrowing the traditional family, as though lone-parent families had never existed before."
Well Mr. Glossup I suggest you do more research. I have and it disproves your assertion. For example here is a prominent feminist quote":
"Since marriage constitutes slavery for women, it is clear that the Women's Movement must concentrate on attacking this institution. Freedom for women cannot be won without the abolition of marriage."
"Sheila Cronin, in Radical Feminism - "Marriage" (1970), Koedt, Levine, and Rapone, eds., HarperCollins, 1973, p. 219)"
This is left wing, feminist sociology revising history. The single families of the past were the result of economic and war conditions not systematic dismantling of the foundation of our country, the family, by feminist ideology translated into law. Seventy five percent of divorces in Canada are initiated by the wife and 90% of sole physical custody goes to mom starting a chain reaction of negative outcomes for children.
In the USA 40% of children are born to single moms and its a growing trend.
Here are some of the hundreds of negative outcomes in today's modern single family, mostly involving single moms, the largest deadbeat group in Canada needing welfare from the state. Most of these welfare recipients are getting this through choices they made either by getting out of a marriage or not getting married at all.
Dr. Edward Kruk found: Sole maternal custody often leads to parental alienation and father absence, and father absence is associated with negative child outcomes. Eighty five per cent of youth in prison are fatherless; 71 per cent of high school dropouts are fatherless; 90 per cent of runaway children are fatherless; and fatherless youth exhibit higher levels of depression and suicide, delinquency, promiscuity and teen pregnancy, behavioural problems and illicit and licit substance abuse (Statistics Canada, 2005; Crowder and Teachman, 2004; Ellis et al., 2003; Ringback Weitoft et al., 2003; Jeynes, 2001; Leonard et al., 2005; McCue Horwitz et al,, 2003; McMunn, 2001; Margolin and Craft, 1989; Blankenhorn, 1995; Popenoe, 1996; Vitz, 2000; Alexander, 2003). These studies also found that fatherless youth are more likely to be victims of exploitation and abuse, as father absence through divorce is strongly associated with diminished self-concepts in children (Parish, 1987).
Single moms in the USA and Australia are the most likely to kill or injure their child. The family is becoming more unstable and it shows in many facets including the rise of gangs many of whose members have no solid male role model. Look to the Family Courts for a good portion of this result.
Michelle and David Huck married in 2000, and since then life has been a blur of backpacks, lunch kits and homework. As parents to Indira, 10, Soleil, 9, Saul, 8, and Samuel, 6, the couple's Calgary life is one long domestic balancing act — and they wouldn't have it any other way.
"We're at the dance studio, we're playing the piano before school — it's a gong show," Ms. Huck said.
Indira and Saul are the Hucks' biological children, while Samuel was adopted from Sierra Leone and Soleil from Ethiopia. The Hucks have met both of their adopted children's biological mothers and consider them part of their extended family.
The Hucks are a typical Canadian family — in that they don't fit the definition of what once passed for typical. But the results of a new poll conducted exclusively for Postmedia News and Global TV suggest public perceptions of what makes up a family lag behind the reality around kitchen tables across the country.
For example:
-Couples without children now outnumber those with children in Canada, but fewer than half of Canadians believe a married or common-law couple with no children counts as a family. A similar minority considers a same-sex married couple and their children to be a family.
-For the first time, there are more unmarried than married people in Canada, according to the most recent census data (2006), and common-law families — particularly those with children — are the fastest-growing family type in Canada. Yet poll results from Ipsos Reid show that while 80% of Canadians believe two married, heterosexual parents and their children constitute a family, just 66% consider a common-law couple and their children to be a family.
Today, the Vanier Institute of the Family releases Families Count, an encyclopedic book of Canadian family trends and statistics published every five years. The release coincides this year with National Family Week in Canada.
"When people are asked to think about families, they think about their own families; they think back to what their family looked like," said Clarence Lochhead, executive director of the Ottawa-based research and advocacy organization.
There's "no question" that families have changed profoundly over the past 50 years, the report says, but it also highlights surprising stability lying beneath the surface.
In 2006, the most recent year for which census data are available, 85% of Canadians lived with a relative — similar to the nearly nine in 10 who were living with family when it came time for the 1901 census count. The proportion of people living in married or common-law families has held steady at about 84% over the past few decades, census data show, although the proportion of married couples is declining while the ranks of common-law couple families are growing rapidly.
Vanier Institute research conducted by Reginald Bibby, a sociologist at the University of Lethbridge who has extensively studied Canada's Baby Boomers and up-and-coming millennial generation, revealed that people's family aspirations remain buoyant in the face of upheaval and change. Fully 90% of those aged 15 to 19 said they expect to get married, Mr. Bibby found in the "Canadian Hopes and Dreams" project in 2004, and 88% said they expected to stay with the same partner for life.
Public perception hasn't quite caught up to contemporary family life, but our collective notions of what families used to be and how they have changed are equally misguided.
"I think we have a very, very bad historical sense of what family looked like in the past, what it did, how it functioned," said Robert Glossop, former executive director of the Vanier Institute.
Lone-parent families may be increasingly common but they're nothing new, he said. That family type was widespread in the 1930s, he said, although in that era it was created most often by death or family desertion during the Great Depression rather than through divorce.
"We didn't invent single-parent families. They've always been part of the cultural fabric of Canadian society," Mr. Glossop said. "There was a period when Canadians thought that was a function of feminism in the late '60s and kids growing up and overthrowing the traditional family, as though lone-parent families had never existed before."
If there is one constant in the shifting, changing family portraits of Canada and other countries over the past century, the experts agree it's the family's adaptability and elasticity in weathering these changes and remaining intact.
In Calgary, meanwhile, Ms. Huck still can't get used to the adulation of strangers she suspects might be influenced by celebrity adoption stories.
"It's kind of cute. I think people idolize the adoption process or people who adopt," she said. "I'm like, 'We're just a family. I yell at my kids,' but I get quite nice comments."
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, RóisÃn 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 gardaà accusing Joe of exposing their son to pornography during an access visit. Gardaà investigated and The Irish Times has seen a copy of a letter from An Garda SÃochana 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”.
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.
