NEWS: Father's Rights; Another Myth in the United States

POLITICS: Father's Rights; Another Myth in the United States

On October 16, 1999, at 12:58 in the afternoon, my life had changed, forever. After rushing my wife at the time to the local emergency room, her water broken, she finally gave birth to my daughter after 21 hours of labor.



I was an emotional mess. Watching the birth of my daughter had to be one of the most humbling moments of my life. Feelings of joy, seeing all ten fingers, and all ten toes, overwhelming feelings of love, and fear for her future and how I was going to provide for her had overtaken me.



I then decided it was my time to exit this marriage due to many personal and viable reasons. I stayed in it because I know how Father's Rights are an outright myth in Family Court. I had decided to go after full custody of my daughter. I filed for emergency custody and had custody of my daughter within a week of leaving my ex-wife.



I really had underestimated what I was in for. My custody battle lasted 3 and a half years in the Family Court System.

I personally was made out to be just short of a rapist/serial killer/child molesting/psycho by my ex-wife. The State of Ohio immediately looked down upon me and took her side, simply by her allegations. I wasn't battling against just my ex-wife. I was battling against the Court System's natural bias against fathers, and the idea that if the mother says it, it must be true. I was struggling to prove myself innocent, even though there was absolutely no truth to the allegations.



I dealt with lawyers telling me that father's aren't the best parent, I dealt with judges saying the same thing, I dealt with an inept Child Cervices program telling me that I was using my daughter to hurt my ex-wife, simply because I wanted custody of her.



I got do deal with things like Child Services agents that would call her ahead of time, arrange a time to come to her house and view her parental skills. The ex-wife could manage to make herself look golden in that time. Meanwhile, they just dropped by my house anytime they wanted, unannounced.



Finally, after 3 and a half years my custody battle came to an end. Why you ask? Did the court system and child services investigate to prove who the better parent was? Did they spend hours upon hours with each parent to find the truth in who my daughter belonged with?



No. What it came down to is that my ex-wife wanted to re-marry. My lawyer was smart enough to write in the legal documentation that divorce wasn't granted until custody was decided. I didn't plan on giving up my crusade for custody of my daughter so that my ex-wife could get re-married. She finally folded and signed custody over to me.



I went from a rapist/serial killer/child molesting/psycho to a suitable father within the time it took for her to sign her name on a piece of paper. The courts didn't question it once, child services never piped up and said anything. It was just okay because she signed over custodial rights. I spent a lot of time, and money, to prove that I was the better parent and to defend myself against all the false allegations she made. It was all a moot point, she signed over custody, they didn't care if I was the better parent, they didn't care if I was a rapist/serial killer/child molesting/psycho, she signed the piece of paper.



I did it though, I beat the odds.

In an era when a person's actions are blamed on the lack of a father figure in a child's life, the Family Court system is doing just about everything it can to force a father away from his child.

This is an important issue to me in the upcoming election. Once you live something it kind of has this way of sticking with you, and you want to hear what the candidates have to say.



When John McCain was questioned about Father's Rights, this was his response:

Wait. What? "Tar baby of enormous proportions". Who the hell says something like that and doesn't expect to offend someone. He later apologized for this statement. Well. Not the entire statement which basically amounts to "I am sorry our Family court system is all Asshole Fuckfaced up, get bent". He apologized because he said "Tar baby".



Barack Obama has introduced legislation to give men the chance to do the right thing, making it easier to be a responsible father.

Great. I am happy that he is making it easier for men to pay child support that they should be paying anyway. But what about us guys that have full custody and have mothers that don't pay child support? What about my rights as a father in Family Court? This bill is falling under great criticism amongst Father's Rights Advocates.



Finally we can't forget Hillary Clinton

Once again, more talk of making it easier to for the man to pay child support, but nothing of a Father's Rights in the Family Court system. Hillary also has some skeletons in her family tree when it comes to late child support payments.



What about Single Fathers who want to raise their child and be a part of their life? There are 2.5 million of us. 740,000 of us go without Child Support. The issue of Father's Rights in a biased court system seems to go undetected.



As a single father, I worry daily that my right as a single father may be taken away from me. That if the ex-wife decides that at some point she wants custody back, she can simply point a finger and make a false allegation, and Ohio's Court system will back her, just because she is "the better parent" according to their archaic views. I honestly think I would be back at square one.



This subject is extremely hard to research. Much like any other topic, it has it's extremists. Exploiting sexism, race and all the other things that really don't matter. I read such wonderful things as Hillary Clinton being in office would abominate any chances of Father's Rights because she is a woman. I also read such wonderful things as Barack Obama being being a black male will affect Father's rights. The subject is extremely heated, and with any heated subject, the morons seem to be the loudest.



I have personally lived this subject, and unfortunately I will tell you that at least in Ohio, a father who is going after full custody of his child is fighting an up hill battle, long before the first court date. It took me almost a month just to find a lawyer that would take the case and fight it rather than just attempt to get my child support payments as low as possible and accept defeat before I started.



I cringe when I hear of another deadbeat parent avoiding responsibility, especially when it's a father. This does absolutely nothing for the cause of father's who actually want to be a part of their child's life. I just wish that mentality that all men are incapable of taking care of children wouldn't carry over into a court system that should be unbiased, that should be concerned about what is in the best interest of the child, not about whether the custodial parent has a penis or not.



Family Courts in every state need an overhaul. The archaic thought process of the court system is outdated. We have a failing child support program on our hands, we have thousands of single parents going without justified child support payments because Family Courts and Child Services can't do their job correctly. I am sure there are many single mothers that can add their own horror story to this topic. Something definitely needs to be done to enhance this process, it's not going to get better on it's own.



DevilsReject has watched Finding Nemo approximately 1,562.75 times with his daughter and is looking forward to the next 1,562.75 times

He was only taken to task for the "tar baby" part of the comment. Politicians only apologize for those things that the media or citizens complain about, not the totality of their stupid comments.

By the way, congratulations on getting custody.

The issue of father's rights is extremely disappointing to me. So many times I see kids living with mothers, when they would have had a better life if the court had given the father custody.

I know of a situation that took place in Colorado several years back. The mother was serving 5 years for assault and drug dealing, the father owned his own business, made good money, and owned his own home. Of course the Mom got full custody.

My husband was a bit luckier. The mother of his son did everything in her power to prove what an unfit mother she was. Three different child support claims in three different counties (Which to this day if she ever tries to get child support she'll be arrested for fraud), living on welfare in a house Family Services nearly condemned, missing court date after court date, and when she did show up in court she looked like she just finished her shift working the corner. In the end what it came down too was the Judge felt my stepson was better off with my husband, the state of Colorado didn't need another mouth on welfare, and if the mother ever felt like cleaning up her act the Courts would revisit the case.

That was ten years ago. The funny thing is my husband and his family spent many years helping the mother out to get to the point of Joint Custody they are at now. In fact she was one of my bridesmaids, she is now married and has three more lovely children, a career, owns her own home and is very thankful for what has been done for her, and even though he is a 16 year old pain in the ass, I think my stepson is better off having both parents raise him.

I agree with you completely. I would have loved to have had my father in my life... my mom even moved several times without telling him where we were. Luckily, he found us.

My mother spent child support on booze and cigarettes. We were evicted twice. It was just an all-around messy situation. My father didn't even bother fighting for custody when they divorced because he didn't want to put us through that and he knew he would lose. He just stayed as involved as she would let him, and tried his best to make sure we were clothed and fed.

And that's just not the way it should work.

very, very good article and an excellent critique of the currently flawed system. i would love to see bitch_phd's response.

In Indiana mothers win contested custody 80% of the time - at least that was the statistic several years ago. I have no reason to think it's changed much.

You've put part of the blame where it belongs. Deadbeat dads form a lot of the background for judicial prejudice against fathers. I have heard judges frankly admit that the prevalence of irresponsible men colors their thinking.

But that doesn't excuse the judges from approaching these cases with neutrality. Fathers can win. You did, and I have successfully obtained custody for fathers. But it's harder than it should be.

Linking to Glenn Sacks to back up an argument like this isn't biased at all. Nor is a cite called "fathermag.com"

I would definitely NOT like to hear it. There's enough trolls around these days as it is.

That may be true, but it doesn't excuse you basing your research upon such morons.

Your first link, fathermag.com, doesn't exactly scream objectivity. Here's a small smattering of bias just from the article you linked.

Not to mention the completely un-cited and illogical claims the article makes.

(the mother is not the issue here.)

(Uhhh, citation?)

I was not able to access your link from glennslacks.com. Are you sure that's the correct URL? The quote you gave me doesn't give me much hope that it's unlike the last one.

Lies, damned lies and statistics. As I'm sure you well know, in many states (Including Ohio) there are several different types of custody. There's sole physical custody. There's joint physical custody. There's sole legal custody, and there's joint legal custody. The difference between these is explained here. (Note that's a New Hampshire site, but the information is pretty applicable to other states). The statistic about women compromising 85% of custodial parents above ignores that. It also asserts that fathers seeking sole custody obtain it in less than 10% of cases. Assuming that means sole legal and physical custody, what it does not mention is that awarding sole legal and physical custody is disfavored by courts in general. If both parents are willing and able to do it, they will rarely award it. It also ignores the flat statistical realities of the situation. Women are more likely to contest an award of sole custody than men.

So, I'll reserve full judgment here on whether the glennslacks.com link is worthwhile, but I have my deep suspicions. Regardless, you could have chosen to focus your research on more credible sources. Here is one. This one is clearly slanted towards fathers, but it at least cites its studies. There are others out there.

It should also be noted that child support and child support enforcement laws (such as the ones proposed by Obama and Clinton above) are written to be gender-neutral. They may not be enforced with the same vigor against women as they are men, but part of that is because men are more unlikely to complain about not receiving child support. Regardless, if you are owed child support and have not received it, you have the same legal rights (at least in theory) as a custodial mother would.

I'm sorry that you had a difficult divorce and child custody situation. I have no doubt that it was acrimonious and unpleasant. Most divorces (especially divorces with children) are. It's certainly true that many courts in many jurisdictions are more skeptical of paternal custodian rights than they are maternal. That is not the way it is meant to be, and that's unfortunate. It should be noted that the topic of Family Law is not at all standardized across the 50 states. Every state has wildly different laws and presumptions. Your experience may have been different somewhere else. It may not have been, but it's worth mentioning. Regardless, in my experience, the topic of "Father's Rights" is generally a front for not-so-veiled sexism and backlash against egalitarian feminist gains. I'm not saying that's what you're doing here, but that one website you cited to certainly was.

(Finally, if you're going to casually mention that Hillary Clinton has skeletons in her closet with late child support payments, you should really, really cite to something like that. I assume you mean her brother and that's fine, but that kind of allegation can be unfairly dangerous and damaging without support. Just a tip from one writer to another.)

^^^^Exactly. I wonder if anyone actually clicked on any of the links. Fathermag.com and Glenn Sack are just about as biased as you can get.

Oh, it's Glenn Sacks not Slacks. I guess his website is down. I've never heard of the guy, but just googled him. Seems like a real winner.

the waters seem to be very muddied here considering the variability of custody laws across states and the different degrees and types of custody. is there a federal agency that compiles data on this topic? that would seem like the least biased source.

i'm glad that things worked out for you and your daughter since i would assume that the fact your ex was willing to sign away sole custody simply so she could remarry was a sign of her maternal fitness. however, its difficult to be objective when only hearing one side which is probably the way many of these stories are presented.

also, i am by no means supporting john mccain but i read the article you linked to and it would seem to me (and subrosa will tell me if i'm wrong) that he was simply stating a position that reflected a belief in maintaining the separation of powers. the president has no place overturning a family court decision or any judicial decision, for that matter. as i understand it, if the people don't like a final court decision it is up to the legislature not the executive branch to amend the law.

Before my dad met my mom, he had two adopted kids with a woman who was mentally unstable (paranoid, delusional, and incredibly short-tempered, not to mention I think borderline schizophrenic) and on more than once occasion hit both kids. My dad never hit me a day in his life and both my brother and sister now say he was a great parent. But the court at the time didn't manage to see it, and gave custory rights to the crazy mother, who eventually followed her cue and proceeded to have a breakdown. My brother then came to live with my dad and his new wife, my mom, but my sister stayed with her mom.

I don't know enough about the whole thing to make an educated statement on the issue as a whole, but I know my father doesn't have much love for this system.

Subrosa has raised legitimate complaints, but I also feel that you are a great person DR. I wish more fathers would fight for the rights of their children. You definitely have my respect, not that you ever haven't. For whatever reason, I've been aware of this problem you've had for a long time, and I have a lot of respect for your fight and the fact that you've made it public. We can't all be perfect scholars, but we can be warriors. You've got my respect. Thanks for the article.

You're a good guy, and a good father. And I agree that there's a long way to go before fathers can be on truly equal footing in the legal sense. And that's just sad.

-TM

Lets see if I can help out here.

Accoring to the official Census site:

As for 10% of fathers getting custody, the article doesn't say when the study in question was done, but I found this (it's in PDF), courtesy of the Monthly Vital Statistics Report from the Centers for Disease Control, which, indeed, in '89 and '90, fathers got custody around 10% of the time. And yes, "joint" was counted separately. I've yet to find a more recent report, as the site only went up to '97, and I couldn't find the pertinent info.

Also, this little tidbit is courtesy of the Health & Human Services site, just because:

So, "damned lies and statistics?" Hardly.

-TM

You're not helping, nor are you addressing my issue with the statistic. Did fathers get "sole physical and legal custody" 10% of the time? If that's the statistic, what is the rate for joint custody? And what's the rate for sole physical and legal custody for women? Are they broken out by jurisdiction? Most relevantly, what's the current rate of success for male parents who press for sole physical and legal custody vs. the rate for female parents who press for the same?

Basically, you're not understanding my objection to the reporting of that particular statistic. What does "custody" mean when you say fathers only have "10%" of "custody." I'm not saying the statistic is necessarily incorrect (and if you understood the Mark Twain quotation I was referencing, you'd get that) but I'm saying that the statistic in itself distorts the issue.

Fascinating. None of that is relevant to my particular objections to the reporting of that statistic, so your "hardly" quip predictably misunderstands the issue. In fact, I said the following above which is actually directly relevant to the link that you quoted:

Anything else you want to "help" with?

to be fair, ever since SG purged itself of writers, this is about as good as can be expected. (apologies to Subrosa, FTR, Erin Broadley, Flux and Posh)

...still I appreciate reading about something that would have never occurred to me, even if not well presented.

Edit, I forgot to mention...
congrats on the win. may your influence in your child's life have a profound effect. i hope there are more parents like you out there.

First of all, since I screwed up the PDF link, here it is proper. As I mentioned before, "joint" is counted separately. It also breaks down to men and women, again, as I mentioned above. It also breaks down by the states reported. If you can find a more current report as pertains to that data specifically, by all means, post it. I looked as much as I could w/o going cross-eyed, and came up empty when I posted.

Unless I'm reading it wrong, the PDF I linked seems to be for "physical" custody (page 5, I think). If that is, regardless, can you really sit there and say adding "legal" custody to the mix would swing the stats to a more even level in any negligible fashion?

As for the last bit:

I found it among the myriad of pages I was browsing, and thought it was relevant to the overall topic @hand. I never explicitly stated it directly applied to your objections. My apologies if that wasn't made clearer.

My issue is not w/your post, tone aside. My issue is why you felt an overall need to immediately call foul on the information, when pretty trustworthy corroborating info was readily found? It may not be from last year, but I'd like to think, given the sources I posted, the relevance or validity shouldn't be put into question.

-TM

I'll say to you what many have repeated ad nauseum to others. If you feel you can do better, or don't like what you're reading, find a story and submit.

-TM

i think the point is a relevant one to make, because even if a small minority of custody cases end in a single parent having full custody of the child/children, such an obvious bias in the system is appalling, as it causes a smaller subset of this small subset of cases to end up easily allowing children to be forced to reside in the worse situation. these are children. that the granting of custody is so heavily weighted by gender irregardless of health, safety, and developmental conditions is barbaric. i care not which gender it's biased against, i cannot stand it. it was just as bad, in my mind, when the father held the larger claim to children in the past as it is with the mother holding the larger claim in this day in age.

if full custody of a child is what is sought, custody should go to the parent who can provide the best environment for the child, period. mother, father, i care not. the fact that joint custody is what is agreed upon the majority of the time matters little, because the most specific grievances in this discussion involve bias towards the resolution of conflict over full custody.

Subrosa i appreciate your point of view, but i am extremely biased when it comes to this situation. I don't necessarily agree with everything that Glen Sacks has to say about this subject. He is one of the extremists that i mentioned.

The subject at hand right now really doesn't seem to have a middle ground when it comes to voices being heard, there is no sane voice of reason to calm each side down, it's literally like going through a custody battle when you're reading about it. One side wants to hang the other side out to dry, and vice versa.

I have several examples that i can present to you from my personal standpoint of the gender bias that goes on in this state. The first one being Child Services. For the last 8 years, including this year, when we figured out what was going on, Child Services has called me to tell me i am behind in child support payments, and that legally i could be arrested for not paying child support for the last 8 years. For the last seven years, i would have to prove sole custodial and legal guardianship of my daughter to avoid having wages garnished, or my licenses suspended, or even worse, jail time.

I went in this year to prove guardianship again, and i sat down with a child services agent to try to resolve the situation so i don't have to keep dealing with it. Normally it's a drive downtown, flash them my custody decree and poof i am off. But this year i sat down to resolve it. With her help, we figured out the problem. When i filled out the "old" paperwork for child support, in the spot that says "Mother" i put my ex-wife's name, in the spot where it said "Father" i put my name.

It was automatically assumed that i was to pay child support because of where i placed my name. I guess after if filled out my original paperwork and some pressure they changed "mother" to "custodial parent", i never thought to update my paperwork until i read it off of Glen Sacks page. He may be an extremist, but he does have some good points i take note of from time to time. He's also one of the leaders in changing the name from "Deadbeat Dad" to "Deadbeat Parent".

After 8 years, they may have it right, i might actually get some payments this year, instead of them backlogging me for payment. Unfortunately due to the clerical error, they can't and won't just load the debt into my ex-wife's name. It's not her fault. I can say, it's a damned good thing i don't rely on child support for anything, nor really care about getting it, i am happy to pay for anything my daughter needs, but it would be nice to be able to put future money away for her.

The second example is dealing with Father's rights organizations. My ex-wife is currently going through some........"issues" that i don't care to get into here. Her visitation with my daughter made me worry about the safety of my daughter. After learning that in Ohio, suspending visitation has the potential to take months on end, legal battles, i finally just put myself in contempt of my custody decree and outright refused her visitation. Right now i could personally go to jail for the decision i made, but i know it's the right one.

I contacted Father's rights organizations, three actually, and the only thing they want to do is make me a spokes person for their organization. All three of them weren't out to help me, they were out to use my daughter and i to better their organization. I gave up on any of them, three strikes and you're out. I don't want to be used as a spokes person, i want help with my rights. From what i understand, they normally get men who don't have any custodial rights or visitation contacting them for help, so when i contacted them and informed them of my situation, i basically got a response of "wtf are you complaining about, you have full custody, you should be happy, hey i think you would make a great story for us" statement.

The whole situation with everything has made me entirely bitter towards dealing with the system. It's made me bitter towards family court and towards child services, lets not mention lawyers. it's actually made me bitter and weary of most father's rights organizations also. I just assume them to be extremists when i get references to them. I really do try to be objective when it comes to this subject, but with everything i have dealt with, it becomes increasingly harder. I guess my bitterness and anger with the system has turned me into the male version of Bitch_Phd on this subject.

I have seriously considered starting a "sane" father's rights organization that doesn't hate women, willing to take on legitimate cases, not ones in which people are just complaining about paying child support. Everything i read on this subject i am suspicious of it all, mostly because like i said earlier, there is no middle ground. Everyone wants to hang everyone and point fingers and blame. It's hard to be objective when you don't know the details, but you're living in your own little personal hell of the situation.

As far as Father's Magazine link, i openly admit that is another extremist attitude, but there are just as many extremists on the other side. I can't tell you the number of times i've read and actually heard "I just want to rake him over the coals". There wasn't even any worry of the children at hand, the mother was must using it as a means of revenge. On that same note i've heard such men complain about even having to pay child support, because "they didn't want the kid in the first place".

What it comes down to is everyone in the situations like that need to grow the fuck up a little bit. The social acceptance of women being responsible for birth control, or being on the pill, or being solely responsible for getting pregnant needs to change before anything else can change.

Oh and a little side note:

Dude, you yourself admit that you linked to two "father's rights" extremist websites. You said you appreciated subrosa's point of view. Now you finish your post with an insult because he didn't like it? Part of writing for public consumption is dealing with criticism. Learn to handle it without the "go whack off, jerk" or stop writing.

Maybe you should go back to writing about Tech shit, because you are obviously way too close to this issue.