Skipping Steps

My attention has been recently drawn to another clever legal maneuver by the Court’s awarding child support obligations. The Courts have been skipping child custody hearings and moving straight to child support hearings. This came about by unmarried women applying for child support orders. The Court presumes in these cases via precedent that the mother has unchallenged custody by fact of possession. The old dictum of Possession is 9/10 of the law. With such unilateral filings without any notification to the potential father, the Court has awarded custody without a hearing. In effect, any notion of determining the "Best Interests of the Child" is completely set aside.

In the legal system, all presumptions must be rebutable, i.e. you must be allowed to refute via evidence or witness to the contrary, otherwise it is a due process violation. By allowing child support hearings to occur without first notifying the father, he is denied due process to rebut the award of custody. I became aware of this issue from complaints by men getting letters from the Court telling them they were in arrears in child support when they never knew they even had a child! In many of these cases, women have not bothered to tell their former boyfriends that they had become a parent. In some cases they wait a number of years after having a child, and then decide having the child without the help of a male is not what they dreamed it would be. Such was the case of one male I am acquainted with now having to pay three years worth of back child support, to a woman whom he dated for three weeks, on top of the monthly obligation for a child he is not allowed to see!

To compound these matters, the Court engages in draconian measures to compel child support payments. Did it ever occur to anyone when people are unable to pay child support that the award is simply beyond their means? Do the math for yourself, typical child support guidelines call for 25% of a person’s gross income. Did anyone check to see who are these so-called dead beat dads? Check the on line lists of those so labeled, you will find the working poor, not lawyers or other highly paid professionals. Many of the working poor making just above minimum wage, if they are lucky earn around $8 an hour. Such a person’s take home pay after taxes runs around a $1000 per month. Child support obligation on this hourly wage is approx. $346 a month (tax free to the mother). Now explain to us how a person is supposed to live on $664 a month. This monthly amount is supposed to pay for food, rent, car, car insurance and health insurance for the child? And to add insult to injury no personal tax exemption for the child and forced to pay the Court costs of the hearing. Answer the question honestly, how is someone to meet a child support payment for 18 years when their skills and education simply cannot support a higher income? You wonder why there are so many people not paying child support? Whose fault is it? Our answer is the Family Law judges for showing a callous disregard for the consequences of their decisions. Welfare Reform of the 1990’s created this disaster by laying the burden on the backs of the poor.

Did it occur to anyone, when you suspend a person’s driver’s license and other professional licenses that you cut off any means to pay child support? Did it occur to anyone when a man is thrown into jail for failure to pay child support that there is now no possibility of payment other than debt? Did it occur to anyone once this person is so deeply in debt they will file for bankruptcy leaving society with the bill? Did it occur to anyone that when the Court engages in tactics that unfairly and disproportionately target one group, namely men, it has engaged in discrimination? Did it occur to anyone when the Court acts in such extremes that maybe, just maybe the ends do not justify the means? Did it occur to anyone when men do stand up to the Court and say no by refusing to pay child support it is an act of civil disobedience? Did it occur to anyone when the Court behaves in such an abusive manner towards one group that it looses its integrity?